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plymayer at 6:12AM, Aug. 28, 2024

My cats are capable of understanding me a good bit of the time.

plymayer at 6:11AM, Aug. 28, 2024

Having lived and traveled to many countries. Most people can communicate even if they don't know each other's language.

PaulEberhardt at 11:28AM, Aug. 27, 2024

@marcorossi: Add most of the Franco-Belgian comic scene to that list of heroes. Like many of them, Will Eisner certainly had some appeal to adults in mind, too, nor just with The Spirit but especially in his later graphic novels. Even when it's semi-realist, Western art is no less expressive than Manga, which just does the trick in its own characteristic way. Sometimes I think this symbolism is a way of working around the more standardised look of manga characters making them less expressive on their own. Then again, Western artists often add extra lines, flying sweat drops, imagined halos, question marks and such, too, to give readers some extra hints - I do that myself all the time. I guess it's fair to say that they're two visual languages that are different but quite on a par, and artists of both worlds can learn from the other. They do, in fact: where would Western graphic novels be without manga influences? What would classic anime have become without European picture books?

dragonsong12 at 8:19AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Expressions and gestures are some of my favorite things to draw. I may not be great at them, but they're such a great tool for "show, don't tell" purposes. If a character verbally says "I don't care about you" but their expression and body language tell a different story, that's the sort of thing I live for and strive to achieve through my art. (Though it is disheartening to see the number of people who will just go "they said they didn't care so they must not!" but that's a whole different discussion.) Literally one of the pages I posted this week has this, and I had so much fun drawing it! ...plus it makes pages more interesting both to create and to view!

bravo1102 at 2:07AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Even if the whole 80% non-verbal communication is a real life myth, using the language is invaluable in anvisual medium. You are writing fiction after all. A lot of comic characters have no body language because the artists are working too hard at anatomy and not at all on expression.

marcorossi at 1:37AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Still about non-verbal communication: if you think to social animals, like e.g. dogs, they clearly have no verbal communication, however they communicate each other a lot of social stuff through non-verbal. For example they can communicate friendship, aggressivity, dominance, they can court each other sexually etc. . This sort of communication is older that verbal and in some sense more fundamental (without this, kids wouldn't be able to develop language in the first place probably). So in this sense it is true that it is very important, but the main point is that it is about relationship, not about a description of the world as verbal communication usually is.

marcorossi at 1:31AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Non verbal communication: the point is that verbal and non verbal channels communicate different things: non-verbal usually gives information about the relationship between the speakers (e.g. if one is pissed off, attempts to show dominance/deference, care, curiosity etc.), whereras verbal generally is about content things. For example, if a teacher corrcts a student about when Columbus reached the Americas ("it's 1492, not 1942!") the words convey the actual year, whereas the tone of voice conveys either: anger, derision, sweetness etc.; most ancients studies of language focused on content (verbal) but when psychologists began studying interpersonal communication, they were more interested in "relationship" stuff, so to stress this they started to say that non-verbal is more important than verbal, and then the "80%" bogus number came up. But the two channels really communicate different things.

marcorossi at 1:24AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Mangas are very expressive: the truth, however this comes from the influence of Tezuka, who in turn was influenced by Disney. If you look at old Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck strips (Taliaferro, Barks etc.) you'll see they are equally expressive than mangas. The difference is that mangas use that kind of expressivity also for serious stories, whereas old Disney strips, for cultural reasons, were targeted to kids. Another very expressive american author is Will Eisner, who also has a not-totally-realistic style. But I think that the kind of expressivity we associate with mangas really is part of comics since the beginning, it is only that, for cultural reasons, in the west when comics tried to attract an older audience they became more realistic in drawing style and less cartoony, thus losing some expressivity.

marcorossi at 1:20AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Making faces while drawing: the truth!

PaulEberhardt at 12:55AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Never underestimate non-verbal communication, although I'll concede that it's possible to read too much into it. My animal characters communicate almost exclusively through their body language (btw. my favourite expression to draw is worn by Tiger when some dodgy human antics confuse him again - only complete with an imaginary striped, furry question mark), and I know I can make my human characters show a wide range of complex emotions, too. A forced smile to cover up some deep turmoil underneath? Can be done, even without the symbolic language from Manga, which is fascinating and cool, but has never really been my thing. It takes some very subtle line work, and I'll probably have to give the panel several attempts, because I'm out of practice, but it can be done.

PaulEberhardt at 12:51AM, Aug. 27, 2024

Oh yes, I make silly faces all the time when drawing. I probably mimic my characters' expressions, as far as I can tell; it's certainly different from any kind of guitar face I might make. There's seems to be a difference between art forms, at least as far funny faces are concerned.