Over the past several years, I’ve presented a lot of evidence that panel-to-panel “transitions” cannot account for how we understand sequences of images in visual narratives like comics. Rather, I’ve argued that narrative sequential images use a “narrative grammar” that assigns roles to panels, and then groups panels into hierarchic relationships.
Though there are many reasons panel transitions don’t work to explain how we understand sequential images, one of the reasons why panel transitions as a theory may be attractive is because it is intuitive to see outright. A person can easily look at a sequence and assign transitions between panels and it “feels” right because that matches one’s conscious experience of reading a comic (though it is not very cognitively accurate).
In contrast, my theory of narrative grammar is fairly complex, and much harder to intuit. Though, I think this is somewhat as it should be—there’s a lot of complicated things going on sequential images that people don’t realize! However, this complexity means that people might have a hard time of implementing the theory in practice.
SO… to help rectify this issue I’ve now written a “tutorial” that aims to explain the process that people should follow when analyzing a visual narrative sequence and are attempting to implement this theory of narrative grammar.
You can download a pdf of the tutorial here, while it can be found also on my Downloadable Papers page and my Resources page.
The simple summary is that one cannot simply look at a sequence and assign labels to things. There are a series of procedures and diagnostics to use, and there is an order of operations that is optimal for arriving at an analysis. This is the same as most any linguistic theory, which usually requires instruction or dedicated learning in order to implement.
This tutorial is aimed at researchers (or anyone curious) who wish to implement this theory in practice and/or learn more about the underlying logic for how it works. It is also aimed at teachers who might wish to instruct this theory in their classrooms, but may not know how to do it with competence.**
As you’ll find in the tutorial, it only somewhat actually covers the basic principles of the theory. For this you should reference my papers and my book, The Visual Language of Comics. The tutorial can thus supplement these works for a full understanding and implementation of the theory.
**On this point, note: anyone who wants to learn how to do this, especially with the intent of putting into practice in research or instruction should feel free to contact me for more guidance and resources.
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