Re: Nerd Boy, episode 544

"Rainer Rosenthal" <r.r...@web.de> skrev i meddelandet
 news:2i3...@uni-berlin.de
>
> "Joaquim G�ndara"
>
> > Aww, it escaped into its hole!
> >
> >  `-m\o.o/m
> >
> > Keep watching the hole, it might come out.
>
> Well now we caught you, Joaquim!
>
> You provide us with stories in such a way that we
> imagine everything you want us to imagine! [snip]

Oops, busted! It's true, I use context a great deal to maximise the comprehensibility of my mini
ascii art. I always try to find a way to explain what my art is supposed to be, without being too
obvious of course. Dialogue is a great help in my Nerd Boy strips, since people are naturally
talking about what's happening. I've noticed that people are less likely to understand unexpected
events in my strips, and I'm guessing it's because the mini ascii art that represents the unexpected
event isn't properly supported by the dialogue, or at least implicitly explained by preceding
panels. This is a good example: http://www.nerd-boy.net/300 Maybe I could've drawn an initial
outside view, like the cinematographical "wide view" used to facilitate comprehension.

Sometimes I rely on the reader being accustomed to seeing Nerd Boy's glasses as OO or Mandy's
ponytail as ~ so I can just use those in a new context and you can still understand them. It's a
matter of creating new symbols through usage. I'm always afraid new readers will be completely lost
when I pull stunts like that, because they don't know the symbols I've created in Nerd Boy; they
don't know the Nerd Boy language like my old readers do. I haven't used Nerd Boy symbols in a while.
The best example I can find is one that sets up the usage both with preceding panels and with
dialogue: http://www.nerd-boy.net/315 If Nerd Boy hadn't been standing next to the drumset a while,
the reader might not understand what's happening when Nerd Boy is sitting behind it.

What I did this time, with the cat, was create the \o.o/ symbol and the m symbol in the reader's
mind through repeated usage, and then I was free to combine them in a new way. I guess you caught me
this time because the mini story wasn't that much of a story. :)

-- 
 OO  Joaquim G�ndara
.||. http://www.Nerd-Boy.net
 bb  jg

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