Together, It Becomes Strong. Do you still remember your first time open a can of food? Did you able to fully explain how to open the can with words? || guess most of people will answer no. When we were kid, we use show and tell to explain most of complex thing in our early life. We use show and tell when we choose multiple options. For example, we say “this one,” and “that one” with a finger pointing to the option. One of the famous comics artist, Scott McCloud also shows the important of language in his graphic essay Show and Tell. The essay starts with a child using show and tell to teaching student how to use a toy.
McCloud uses this opening example to explain word and picture could help people understand more about the essay, and word and picture should come together and support each other. McCloud’s point that words and pictures shouldn’t be separated is important to student and people in education area because words and pictures could be more powerful when come together. The essay is hooking people with a simple example of playing toy when they were young. Words and pictures had been separated when we grow up. Then McCloud starts to talk about the categories of different proportion of words and pictures.
Sometime words and picture could do different job, add pictures could help demonstrate words. Separating words and pictures might make the work unclear. Words and pictures should be like partners in dance, support each other and not against each other. McCloud also shows these are many ways to insert picture to words, for examples, word specific, picture specific, duo-specific, additive, parallel, Montage and inter dependent. McCloud stated his point to teacher and people in education area that students start learning with show and tell, but the teaching method has been changed as we grow up. According to believermag. om, the “Interview with Scott McCloud”, his best friend Kurt Busiek hooked Scott McCloud on comics when he was in junior high school.
McCloud then began to create his own comics and majored in illustration at Syracuse University. Show and tell is not only appearing in the comic books, people could find it in real life. For examples, the big commercial billboards, and a textbook. These Commercial billboards are using show and tell to convince people to buy products. No matter how people love comics, another question enter McCloud’s vision zone. The books we usually read are all words books, in other words, they are literacy books.
Graphic books are considered as children books, and not for “adults”. Relate to real life, the books people used to read have more pictures and fewer words, and as they grow up, books become less and less pictures and more words, and finally we read “real” books in high school, there has no pictures, only words. When people think about who made picture and words speared as we grow up, the answer is obviously schools or teachers. They are the people choose what is teaching on class. The reason why people goes into school is because they need a good future and if the book with pictures could help them lean better, why not just keep them up?
When people open a math textbook, what will be understudied if there have no figures on the side? That made the new generation kids become McCloud’s audiences. McCloud thinks together, words and pictures are much powerful. The first example in the text is showing a young student doing a presentation in the class and teaches the class how to play a robot; most of words used were this, these, thing and some simple words. This reminds people what they are doing when they were young. Nobody comes with perfect English, people use this or that represent the object or verb.
However if the artist removes the words, nobody could imagine it is a presentation that only has simple words, people might think the young student is using perfect English to explain the function of robots. That made the words are more powerful, it give a limit to the picture, on the other hand, if the artist remove the picture and only show the words, it won’t make sense at all. Words or pictures shouldn’t stand-alone. A good proportion of words and pictures could make it become more powerful. That is the artist’s idea of words and pictures could support each other.
McCloud is using another example to show words and pictures are much more powerful if they come together. In the graphic essay, the artist gives an example on page 157, that in a raining day, a sad woman went to store for ice cream, then return to her own apartment alone and eat the ice cream by herself. If people only see the picture of this story, they could have a sample idea of what the story about. However if the artist wants these pictures mean something else, he could. The artist also show an example on page 158, that if add different words to these pictures, it will be a much different story.
The artist used different ways of adding words to these pictures, he is using interdependent on the first picture that explain the woman is alone for a long time. For the second picture, artist added words by using parallel, words and picture means different things. Words say, “Mission control, mission control, do you read me? ” this is the words people used in space travel; it has no relation with the picture. For the third, the artist is using words to make the picture become to advertisement. The picture is showing the woman is eating the ice cream, but the words say, “You’ll love the taste. Last but not least, the artist is using the picture that show the woman picking a ice cream up to ruminate on broader topics.
After adding words, could anyone still remember what the original pictures telling? Or, what if artist turns everything into words and removes pictures? On page 159, the artist shows only words and no picture, it also could make some sense, and it also remind people the original story. However this time the artist changed pictures, and it could tell more than just words. The artist only adds pictures that showing detail. For the first part, the artist inserts a picture that shows a street of a raining day.
The second part, artist inserts a picture creepy look. The third part, the artist inserts a sad face in the rain. For the last part, artist insert picture of an ice cream cover and a spoon. People could get more information from the essay than just words. Not only creepy face of the clerk, but also the sadness of this woman. These pictures make words show more detail and make it more powerful. Scott McCloud challenges the “old school” education and brought up the point that Pictures and words shouldn’t be separate. Adding images to words could help words sell themselves. Together, images and words make the essay more powerful.
