Understanding Comics
While reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, there was one idea in particular that caught my interest. It was McCloud's six step theory. McCloud claims that whether an artist realizes it or not, they will always follow these six steps that he has laid out: Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft and Surface.
I had never thought of artistic growth as a process that was trackable, besides the obvious tracking of quality and growth of your work, so to see it laid out in this way was really interesting to me. The examples he used to show how artists grew and maybe, for some of them, settled into different steps without progressing was interesting as well - I liked that even though it was a six step process, it wasn't necessary to complete the entire cycle to be satisfied with your work and your artistic identity. McCloud doesn't look down on artists who settle into earlier stages of the six step process.
As we proceed on through the six steps, he presents steps 1 and 2 as choices. Step 2 is Form, where an artist can push the limits of their work and art in general and see what they/art as a whole are capable of - McCloud lists examples of artists who do this such as Windsor McCay and Moebius.
Step 1 is Idea/Purpose, where an artist's art becomes a tool with which they can effectively tell a story with, like Charles Shulz or Will Eisner.
While McCloud presents these two steps as choices, he does make it clear that neither choice is permanent if the artist doesn't wish it to be. I really like that McCloud's six steps can flow into one another and aren't extremely restrictive, or even need to be followed in order. There's a certain freedom to the six step theory he presents that instead of making it seem like a checklist of things an artist MUST do, it rather seems more like a natural order of things that happens to an artist organically.
Ideas and form are important to an artist, and comics in particular. You cannot have one without the other, and by laying it out so simply, McCloud helps us, the reader, truly understand this.
