Gestures!
Takeaway 3 in our 18 takeaways from our Year Long Program
** Gestures
What is a Gesture?
A figure in a graphic novel needs to communicate narrative and emotion. We want to use the body to communicate the story. A good body or figure, in fact, communicates more than the face.
The essence of drawing the body in comics is the gesture. The gesture communicates feeling and contributes to the storytelling. The gesture is at the core of moving our story along and expressing the humanity beneath the actions in the story.
A gesture is stripped down communication. We can even ignore proportion. We are looking for fluidity and movement of the body. If we get the gesture right, then we can stack some structure on top, we have a pretty expressive figure.
In demos, presentation and the PDFs, Sidney Davidson deconstructs what a good gesture is and what how figure drawing can work well in comics.
Will Eisner was a great model for this:
Here’s a Roman mosaic with great, clear gestures:
From there, you'll see instructors sharing their working methods looking at the same things. Here's Tom's from 2022, trying to identify gestures as the first step in developing his comics.
These snapshots are a sliver of what the full program provides
Have fun!
For Conversation:
Will Eisner, in his Comics and Sequential Art, makes the case that figures in a comic are like an alphabet that we "read."
In this example below, he shows the example of a "worship symbol."
Do we create emotion symbols with our figures? What do you think?
TAKEAWAY 3:
The gesture is the basic building block of narrative images
Enjoy, and check out the full program at https://learn.sawcomics.org/bundles/online-certificate-program
Want to learn more? We’re doing live trainings of all 18 takeaways weekly in summer 2024.
