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2.1 - SAIYUKI Continued
I've been reading the flood of responses to various posts of mine in the past 24-48 hours and enjoying them a great deal, and I shall do my utmost to reply to them sometime in the next 24-48 hours. :) Despite it being spring break, I've got to get some actual work done today.
I have a short follow-up on the SAIYUKI post that I thought of this morning in the shower -- I didn't discuss panel angles much beyond close-ups, and there's some information there, too. In panel 2 on page 44, posted on my previous installment, where Gojyo is boasting that he avoided Sanzo's bullets, note that the perspective on the ceiling emphasizes the angle, so the movement in the panel is higher on the left than on the right. This contrasts with the other panels, where it's level, and heightens the tension in the panel.
The camera is also placed lower than eye level and is looking up - you do this when you want a character to appear dominant for some reason. Gojyo's and Sanzo's heads are higher than all the random, faceless punks in the background, because they're the dominant, forceful personalities in this. Sanzo's head is higher than Gojyo's, so by all rights he ought to be dominating Gojyo, but his face is turned away from us and his head is cut off by the panel border, so that ramps the domination down some. I don't think it's a coincidence in the two close-up shots of Sanzo's and Gojyo's faces, then Sanzo's face is higher then Gojyo's - he's the closest thing to a leader that the group has, and his personality is ever-so-slightly more dominant than Gojyo's when it comes to a face-to-face fight. Not that Gojyo will ever admit that (but it's why he takes off at the end of volume 7 and starts the events of volume 8 - that is completely within his character and we believe it because of little things like these panels all the way through the series).
The camera returns to normal eye-level on panel 1 of page 45 because they're back to working as a team united against outside forces.
And then you notice that the only eyes we see are in Sanzo's and Gojyo's closeups? The punks are faceless because they're unimportant. They have mouths only because they're yelling. In panel 2 page 45, Gojyo's eyes are shadowed. I can't quite articulate why this works, but I think it emphasizes his anger and frustration with Sanzo (and, frankly, tiny eyes are really hard to draw realistically without going cartoony and destroying the mood). Then we see their eyes in the closeups, so we can read the emotions even more clearly. Page 45, with the big panel, has more important things than the eyes going on - as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
keraha pointed out in the comments, you're supposed to be reading their postures in this panel. Gojyo's and Sanzo's eyes are shaded for much the same reasons as in panel 2 on the previous page, I think, although I still can't quite explain why.
Then you get to panels 2 and 3 on page 45. No faces at all - panel 2 has no figures in it, and panel 3 has only their feet. Panel 2 is an establishing shot, yes, but it's doing double duty - I get the feeling in these two panels that now Sanzo and Gojyo have shot their wad, they're doing that thing where you pretend the fight really didn't happen and you don't look your companion in the eye. So they're looking at the mountain, the buildings, the road, their feet, anything *but* each other's faces.
Do I think Minekura put all of this stuff in consciously? Not really. She's been doing this for so long she's internalized most of it, I bet, and when she's roughing out the pages, her thoughts are probably more like "Does this feel right? No? What about this?" She also works in a team, and probably gets input from them, and from her editor, so no one person is consciously analyzing every single penstroke and dot of tone in it.
Index to the Series
I have a short follow-up on the SAIYUKI post that I thought of this morning in the shower -- I didn't discuss panel angles much beyond close-ups, and there's some information there, too. In panel 2 on page 44, posted on my previous installment, where Gojyo is boasting that he avoided Sanzo's bullets, note that the perspective on the ceiling emphasizes the angle, so the movement in the panel is higher on the left than on the right. This contrasts with the other panels, where it's level, and heightens the tension in the panel.
The camera is also placed lower than eye level and is looking up - you do this when you want a character to appear dominant for some reason. Gojyo's and Sanzo's heads are higher than all the random, faceless punks in the background, because they're the dominant, forceful personalities in this. Sanzo's head is higher than Gojyo's, so by all rights he ought to be dominating Gojyo, but his face is turned away from us and his head is cut off by the panel border, so that ramps the domination down some. I don't think it's a coincidence in the two close-up shots of Sanzo's and Gojyo's faces, then Sanzo's face is higher then Gojyo's - he's the closest thing to a leader that the group has, and his personality is ever-so-slightly more dominant than Gojyo's when it comes to a face-to-face fight. Not that Gojyo will ever admit that (but it's why he takes off at the end of volume 7 and starts the events of volume 8 - that is completely within his character and we believe it because of little things like these panels all the way through the series).
The camera returns to normal eye-level on panel 1 of page 45 because they're back to working as a team united against outside forces.
And then you notice that the only eyes we see are in Sanzo's and Gojyo's closeups? The punks are faceless because they're unimportant. They have mouths only because they're yelling. In panel 2 page 45, Gojyo's eyes are shadowed. I can't quite articulate why this works, but I think it emphasizes his anger and frustration with Sanzo (and, frankly, tiny eyes are really hard to draw realistically without going cartoony and destroying the mood). Then we see their eyes in the closeups, so we can read the emotions even more clearly. Page 45, with the big panel, has more important things than the eyes going on - as
keraha pointed out in the comments, you're supposed to be reading their postures in this panel. Gojyo's and Sanzo's eyes are shaded for much the same reasons as in panel 2 on the previous page, I think, although I still can't quite explain why.Then you get to panels 2 and 3 on page 45. No faces at all - panel 2 has no figures in it, and panel 3 has only their feet. Panel 2 is an establishing shot, yes, but it's doing double duty - I get the feeling in these two panels that now Sanzo and Gojyo have shot their wad, they're doing that thing where you pretend the fight really didn't happen and you don't look your companion in the eye. So they're looking at the mountain, the buildings, the road, their feet, anything *but* each other's faces.
Do I think Minekura put all of this stuff in consciously? Not really. She's been doing this for so long she's internalized most of it, I bet, and when she's roughing out the pages, her thoughts are probably more like "Does this feel right? No? What about this?" She also works in a team, and probably gets input from them, and from her editor, so no one person is consciously analyzing every single penstroke and dot of tone in it.
Index to the Series
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Gojyo is just Mr. Avoidance when he knows he's going to lose a fight about something he cares about too much. Vol. 8, and also the Burial arc in Reload.
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Man, I've got to go back to Reload - I've downloaded what I could find (only my Italian connection seems to have only the raw up of one of Goku's chapters, and not the English translation like the rest of it), and I've read about half of it - I need to go through and read more.
Yeah, I think you've got it about the shading in the eyes there.
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Although Tokyopop's updated their site, and it looks like they're going to a monthly schedule for Fruits Basket in June, and then monthly for Reload starting August. Maybe to get the US audience caught up more quickly to the Japanese? Honestly, that's the best way I can think of to reduce scanlation traffic--I'd rather have stuff in book form. Or else it could just be rough scheduling that will get changed later, which will break my heart after I've got it set on more frequent hits of my favorite drugs.
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What I've got of it is everything up to the Burial/Gokyo & Hakkai part 3. Except that Burial/Goku part 2 is in Japanese.
I just realized that I was too tired to draw, I didn't want to start another essay thing, and hey! I've got a bunch of SR that I hadn't really read! Whee!
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Such hardship. ^_~
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