Week #4


Shadow and Texture in Hergé and Carl Barks' comic


For this week, I read Explorers on the Moon by Hergé and The Hard Loser by Carl Barks. Needless to say, the stories in these comics are much complicated and have continuous storylines from the beginning to the end compared to the comic strips from last week. However, another factor interested me was their use of shadow and texture. 
The comics by Hergé and Carl Barks have a very similar style in terms of shadow and texture. Although shadow and texture can be seen in the background, such as major cast shadows on the ground, both Hergé and Carl Barks rarely use shadow and texture on the characters; the characters are drawn with clear, minimum amount of lines, and painted with one solid color for each section (e.g. wrinkles on the shirt is not darkened). I relate this characteristic to the explanation in Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Without shadow and texture, the characters in Hergé and Carl Barks’ comics stay away from being too realistic; as a result, the readers are able to project themselves into the characters.

Regarding Carl Barks’ comics, it was interesting to know that they do not really use shadows because Carl Barks is an artist at Walt Disney Studio. Disney films often utilize shadows in order to frame the scene, create a dramatic effect, and so on. Therefore, I expected that the Disney comics would also have a similar style as its film; however, Carl Barks treated the style of his comic separately. Without shadow, Carl Barks’ comics look very clear, and more comical than dramatic in my opinion. 

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