Conceptual Framework in Studying the Visual of Comic Art

Karna Mustaqim, M.A.

Faculty of Art and Design (FSSR), UiTM Shah Alam

karnamustaqim@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

Gray and Malins (2004) suggested that artistically paradigm of inquiry is illustrated as the
role of ‘practitioner is the researcher’ whereupon the ‘subjectivity, involvement, reflexivity
is acknowledge; Knowledge is negotiated – inter-subjective, context bound, and is a result
of personal construction’. Regarding obscurity in comic art upon two disparate modalities,
the visible (pictorial) and the writeable (textual), Dronsfield (2009) said that ‘visual art is
not simply visual – there is always something written in the work’. As for comics its
impact to contemporary popular culture is huge but only lately, comics gradually succeed
to influence other storytelling medium (Talon, 2004), as well as the eagerness to study
comics at large make it notable as an emerging art and literature medium (Harvey, 1996;
Hatfield, 2005). A study of comics as popular culture as art is a search for meaning through
reading comics’ activities, or a re-reading the lived-experience into-the-world of comics.
This study accordingly analyze the visual content based on observing the appearance of
amount characteristics in purposively sampling of four local Malaysia’s comics magazines:
Gila-gila, Ujang, Gempak and G3. In this study, the quantitative numbers simply denote
the presence of a specific sign which is defined objectively and limited to the surface
(manifest) characteristics of the comics. It focuses on the visual by carefully examine the
drawings characteristics. This research into drawing method and models derived from
Charles Sanders Pierce which is constructed within the triadic models of semiotics theories
and develop by William Morris that deliberately used in visual communication design. The
understanding of comic art is an intersubjective one. To read is to share the perception
amongst the reader. This study is a re-reading for meaning through the lived-experience of
comics.

Keywords: arts, aesthetic, lived-experience, sequence, phenomenology.