#285 Split
It occured to me while doing this page just how hard it is to visually show a nod in a comic. I’ve seen other comics do it and I’m not always pleased with the results. I pretty much just had to write the word “nod” in the comic.
Culture Shock
the webcomic
If there’s shenanigans afoot the most likely culprits are clearly either teenagers or ghosts. Though, I don’t know if I’d like to encounter either in the middle of the night.
Showing movement, especially small ones, in a static medium is pretty hard sometimes. I had a fling with learning sign language in high school and trying to decipher what the illustrations in the dictionaries wanted you to do for some signs was next to impossible, no matter how many arrows they added.
I have also wondered what a good way to depict a nod would be. With shaking your head, it’s much easier. The whole head turns side to side, so you can depict it far to the side and you can even close the eyes as another visual cue along with movement lines.
Nods are much more subtle, since it’s simply tilting the head. Placing the head up high might help imply a nod, like the whole “sup” nod but it could just look like the character’s looking down on someone. In the end, I think a lot of people settle with the movement lines and the word “nod”. Can’t win them all. :/
If you’d just introduced characters Winken and Blinken earlier, it would’ve been so much easier…
You could always have two nearly-idenitcal frames to show the nod, but that makes it really slow and drmatic. Like a nod you give before you heroicly sacrifice yourself for the others…
I feel like as soon as you get into really subtle actions like that, it’s almost more efficient to find a more readable way of showing the same idea. A thumbs up, or something like that. That’s a kind of dorky example, but you get the idea.