This week I read Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, a non-fiction discussion on comics theory by Scott McCloud.
In Understanding Comics, a cartoon McCloud guides the reader through an exploration of the theory, psychology, and tools of comics. Drawing upon the wisdom of masters like Will Eisner, McCloud authored a book that has become a fundamental part of many comics educations.
One of the most interesting discussions McCloud covers in his book is iconography and the sense of self in comics. It's well known that cartoon representations are more endearing and relatable to audiences than realistic representations. Out of all the posts on my own art page, for example, the piece that got the most mention from family and friends was a doodled cartoon rather than one of my more "serious" illustrations.
Most will recognize that emotional bias towards cartoons comes from the simplicity of the characters. However, McCloud goes one step further in this explanation by dissecting what makes simplicity so appealing to us.
Understanding Comics tells us that we are fascinated by simple caricatures because we find them more easy to insert ourselves into. We are only consciously aware of a very limited amount of our own features (eyes, mouth, etc.) instead of the entire picture we see of others. Vague depictions of humans, therefore, are much easier to think of as "me," instead of a detailed rendering of a face, which we only see as "them."
Cartoons, therefore, are not just for children. They can be used for any situation in which a reader needs to, as McCloud says, pay more attention to the message than the messenger.
These principles are also not limited to comics. When considering figure paintings for a gallery, work that shows the model's face in detail tends to be much harder to sell than those with the face more obscured or generalized, such as in this painting by artist Zhaoming Wu.
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