Comic Terms Flashcards
The exaggeration of specific traits in the depiction of an individual, a social or ethnic type in order to facilitate
recognition and to convey character or the artist’s (often
ideologically-influenced) perception of the depicted figure.
Caricature
A line that changes in thickness depending on how much pressure was applied to the drawing tool.
Inflected line
Rendering style associated with the Belgian school of comics, and more specifically with the work of Hergé and his followers,
defined by the use of homogenous (uninflected) line weights for the outlines of all figures and objects depicted; other characteristics usually include the clarity and easy
readability of the panel compositions, and a relatively homogenous degree of cartooning in the figures.
Ligne Claire
A means of suggesting grey areas within a black-and-white drawing with the help of parallel inflected strokes, forming a comb-like or saw-tooth effect.
Feathering
A visual sign that functions by resemblance. The rendering of most figures and objects visible within the diegesis is iconic. Icons can be said to have a “natural” connection to the things they stand for, and therefore are “motivated signs.”
Icon
A visual sign that functions by convention. Letters are symbols for the signs they stand for, just as most words (other than, say
onomatopoeia) are symbols for the objects and concepts they represent.
Symbol
A visual sign that functions by physical connection or contiguity.
Index
Graphic signs that can indicate an object’s or figure’s momentum of movement or the path described.
Motion Lines
The set of choices made by the artist in isolating a part of the diegesis to illustrate in one panel.
Framing
The formal arrangement of panels within the space of the page.
Layout
A single-panel page. Often the title page (for which, indeed, the terms was originally reserved), in which case it may be used for the depiction of a crucial story moment out of narrative continuity, for a montage panel symbolic of the story’s themes, etc.
Splash Page
A term introduced by Thierry Groensteen (in The System of Comics) to indicate that comic panels are never read purely by themselves, but in the context of all other contiguous panels in the layout.
Iconic Solidarity
The perception of the layout of a comics page as a unified composition. Prompts us not so much to scan the comics from panel to panel in a linear direction of reading, but to take it in at a glance, the way we might take in an abstract painting.
Iconostasis
