Theory: (Visual) Literacy

Thursday, I was talking with an aspiring animator about the proper use of reference. (See my previous post on this subject.) I was explaining that when he watches a cartoon, he shouldn't be watching it the same way an audience views it. He should watch it as a filmmaker. A lot can be learned from cartoons, but if you view them passively on a surface entertainment level, you will never learn anything of value. Even the slowest moving Silly Symphony can contain a wealth of information about effects animation... or color... or rendering technique... or use of music... The story may be trite and the gags may be humorless, but the cartoon can still teach you something useful. It's all how you look at it.

I ran across this quote by Zadie Smith on Boing Boing today, and although it's speaking specifically about reading, it can apply to visual literacy as well...

But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true. -Zadie Smith

Keep your eyes open, and think about what you are seeing. The more you exercise analytical thinking about visual communication, the stronger of an artist you will become.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

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