Movements within Movements: Following the Line in Animation and Comic Books

Abstract

Animation and comic books share a common field in that both are composed of images sequenced in time: one is driven mechanically and electronically in projection, and the other by the peripatetic and wilful actions of the reader. However, the single comic book panel has its own duration which is co- ordinated both by the exigencies of the narrative and the graphic properties of the two-dimensional pictorial plane. The gestural movement of the artist is implied in each line and it is this movement that presents itself as a ground for understanding movement in both comic books and two-dimensional drawn animation. It is movement that is retained in the animated figure, in the form of the outline, but also runs tangentially in the articulation of both reading movement and artistic gesture.