Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Megan's Blog Post 5-Time, Motion, and Emotion

Peanuts

Charles Schultz uses motion, emotion, and time in each panel of this Peanuts comic strip.

(I do not know the character's name, so I'll refer to her as the girl).

Panel one is the beginning of the test the girl is taking. The time is early and the emotion is unstressful. True or False; easy enough? The motion of the strip is stationary, as she is sitting in her desk, moving only her hand.

Panel two's emotion is a little more urgent, and it's motion a little more frantic, when the exclamation points end every word. A few minutes have elapsed since panel one and the test is getting a little more difficult.

By Panel three, you can forget about easy. The motion lines are used greatly for the arm movements that are franticly used as she tries to figure out the answers to her test. The repeated words of "TRUE" and "FALSE" with exclamation points shows the urgency and how lost she really is. She hasn't got a clue, and the emotion of this panel shows this. Along with the motion lines, you can tell time has passed and she is quite plainly, freaking out, as her face shows.

The last panel, number four, the girl isn't even sitting down anymore. Standing in her chair, Schultz uses more motion lines to show her frustration, and the last line, to indicate that that is the end of her test--she hasn't got a clue, and is done. While the previous panels set up the tension like a volcano, the last panel is the explosion so to speak, and it all her annoyance leads up to the comical line: "And one good old fashioned MAYBE!"

Schultz told his story in four panels and uses the first three to lead up to the fourth, using time span, motion lines to show bubbling annoyance, and emotion to show how the girl is feeling about her true and false test.

2 comments:

  1. You did a great job with this post. I really enjoyed. The best part about this post would have to be your analysis. Your opinion on the time, motion and emotion of the comic strip was riveting. The one suggestion that I can make though would have to be for you to improve your structure/syntax. Other than this, you did a great job. Keep up the great work!

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  2. Great post, I liked how you broke down the comic by panel. You covered all three topics very well. my suggestion would be to maybe talk about the facial expression in each panel, because facial expressions have a lot to do with emotion! Good job Megan :)

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