blog 4 - McCloud and Jenkins

In McCloud's "The Vocabulary of Comics" he starts out by showing a picture of a pipe and tells you that it isn't a pipe. At first I was like huh... it is a pipe. But as I kept reading I began to understand what he meant by that. It is not a pipe it is a picture of a pipe, a representation of a pipe, because we know what a pipe looks like and therefore we interperate the picture as a pipe, But its not an actual pipe...wow. ok. So then he goes on to show you other examples of what he means and he explains that the word "icon" is a better choice then symbol or becuase icon means "picture images designed to actually resemble their subjects. Then McCloud goes on to explain the levels of abstractness in icons. He begins to state the humans see themselves in everthing because we are self centered. The more simple a drawing of a face is the more we can picture ourselves in it, like cartoons. :) or even that icon. I know you just pictured yourself smiling in your head, hehe. What I thought was really interesting was when the cartoon guy shows a drawing of himself that is very vivid and asks if you would listen to him if he looked like that? It's funny cause I now thinking about it I think that I would have been more concentrated on the features and details in the second figure and it might have hindered his message to me. The simpler figure is cute and you don't judge it as much because it is not realistic enough, it is easy to brush it's appearance to the side. There are icons everywhere on the internet eventhough most of the time we don't realize they are there because we are oblivious to them. People who design icons must know (technically) how to get the user to unconciously see the icons representation they want. I'm assuming alot of thought goes into this process, this is something that I never thought about or realized was happening. Now when I will look at icons on the internet or in life, I will question it, and question if I see myself as a representation in it.

Jenkin's essay discusses Fan Fiction and it's controversy as negative or positive. Jenkin's starts by giving a general description of what the main idea is. The story of home schooled Heather explains how she created an online journal for children to write about The Hogwarts school. It is interactive were children can write fiction, but alot of the stories are based on personal issues, at least thats what it seemed to me.