Chapter Seven- The Six Steps

In this chapter McCloud relates comics property’s to other art forms. He also defines what he thinks art is and describes it as “any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.” At first I didn’t understand this definition as it seemed different to any other definition I had ever heard before. I thought that it was very broad and that if someone said this definition and asked me to define what it was referring to I could come up with thousands of options. Does McCloud mean that everything we do that doesn’t involve survival or reproduction is art? Then what about cooking? People take pleasure in preparing exquisite foods in a beautiful presentation yet because we have to eat it, it isn’t art?

Not art?

And even though some artists paint for pleasure others have to for money as a job for survival. So is some art itself not really art? Or am I going on a wrong tangent here? What I think McCloud was trying to explain was that art is a result of evolution. Everyone can contribute to art and art is all around us; dancing, signing, drawing, music and more and like McCloud said “in almost everything we do there is at least an element of art.”

In this chapter (like the chapter name suggests) McCloud states “the creation of any work in any medium will always follow a certain path” and sets to define the certain path. He breaks it down into six steps:

1.      Idea/ purpose

Refers to the works content, the purpose of it and the ideas and impulses behind it

2.      Form

What medium the art will be expressed in. Whether it is an animation, a comic book, a film etc

3.      Idiom

What sort of language, genre the art will belong to

4.      Structure

The step where you consider how you will compose the masterpiece

5.      Craft

When you construct the art

6.      Surface

The “first superficial exposure to the work”

Even though I think typically these steps may produce art, not all art comes follows these guidelines, indeed not all art follows guidelines. If we take what McCloud said before that “in almost everything we do there is at least an element of art.” When someone is dancing this can be considered art yet, people don’t sit down and follow these steps.

What’s on his plate could be considered art, yet did he plan the six steps?

He also explains self expression and how this may become present when you are creating your own piece of art. I think there is always some form of self expression in any piece of art as art comes from our previous experiences. Even if you are working for a client and have to create something they have virtually designed themselves, you still incorporate some of your own elements into the design. But then what I don’t understand is that expressionism was meant to be a movement that started in the early 20^th century, yet artists have been expressing themselves all along, according to McCloud.

What was the artist  trying to express?