Juan Shifa's Le Chat du Rabbin is a French experimental comic strip that published its first volume, The Rite of Passage, followed by five consecutive volumes in 2002, and was adapted into the animated film The Grey Cat of the Jewish Elders in 2012. In just fifteen years, it has been translated into 12 languages such as German, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew, etc., and the Chinese edition (the first 4 volumes of the collection were published) followed by Zhang Yi, a teacher of the French Department of Peking University, and launched by life, reading and xinzhi triptych bookstore at the end of 2016.
The Chinese edition of "The Rabbi's Cat" published by Triptych Bookstore
"Rabbi's Cat" is interesting and cute, but at first glance it is really not "beautiful", especially the unpainted line draft, a large piece of gray and misty does not show the focus, some parts are simply strange; the characters are crooked, the shape is not accurate, the same image varies greatly between different grids; the action depiction is clumsy and casual, the background is rough, and so on. In terms of painting skills, "The Rabbi's Cat" is not outstanding, the author does not seem to be too serious but playful, insisting on saying that it is beautiful and good-looking, it seems that it is not particularly honest.
Unpainted line drawings, black parts are not always shaded. Everyone came to look for stubble: where are the cats in the first 4 paintings?
This strange style of painting can be bitter to filmmakers, when making animation, it is necessary to maintain the unique modeling effect in the original work of history, but also to meet the technical requirements that the animation cannot be too far apart from the adjacent frames, so it takes a lot of energy to reset the characters and backgrounds.
Comparison of the animated version of the scene (right) and the original (left): The original is quite flat and lacks detail
The cat in the manga and anime, the former (above) is obviously "self-releasing"
Is Shi Fa a cartoonist who needs to be saved? Looking at his previous works, it seems that this is not always the case, so why should he treat this work this way?
An attentive reader may find that the historical label in the author's message is "painted"—look at The Giant Tower, written by Von Sois Schitton as the author of the painting and Benel Pitt as the textualist, as well as the black cat detective, written by Juan Diaz Canales, and painted by Juanjo Guarnido. The two different languages of comic text and images are generally handled by different competent people, while Shi Fa has two positions at the same time. How many details can be detected in such a creation?
Relatively unfamiliar European comics
The word "manga" in Chinese was first seen in the Song People's notes "Drawing Water with The Mouth for Fish" of the "Manga Bird", and in the early 20th century, it absorbed the genre "Manga Brush Casual Drawing" that was popular at the end of the Japanese shogunate and the Meiji period, and after the reform and opening up, more things have been nested now. Is the comic strip single or multi-grid? Single page or multi-page? Humor or storytelling? Talk about the present, the real thing or the historical, the imaginary thing? It seems that there are, simply put, caricatures that can be divided into single caricatures and comic strips of story.
Serial story comics are similar to ancient illustrations, differing in the relationship between text and diagram: the correspondence between illustrations and text is generally weaker, while comics place narration or dialogue (if any) at the bottom of the picture in the form of illustrations, with a stronger binding relationship. In later developments, individual pictures, or the relationship between pictures and figures, were more substitutionary words and phrases, becoming the main way of telling stories.
There are three major systems of story comics in the world, and the most accessible to us is Japanese manga (Manga) and American comics ( Comics ) – the former has many publications in China, and the latter is mainly used as an IP image. Contemporary Japanese comics are a popular culture product imported from the United States after World War II, and after years of development, they have competed with American comics, but the selling points are still consistently focused on funny, casual, and informal group fun.
Before these two, European comics represented by French-Belgian comics, the routes were almost completely different. The self-proclaimed BDs, or bandes dessinées in French, mean "drawn belts", express the original process: a relatively casual and streamlined painting, presented to the reader in a strip order, naturally with a plural (multi-figure), continuous nature, so in the neighboring Dutch language is even referred to as "strips". There have been many serious, literary themes in European comics, and when introduced to the United States in the 1960s, some of them exceeded the industry standard of 32 pages per issue and could be written directly, thus earning the title of "graphic novel".
Literary illustration requires the reader to find the corresponding text description from the large paragraph next to it
In the early comic "Little Nemo's Dreamland Travels", the text corresponding to the frame first appeared, and then the dialog box appeared. Simply put, it is to use pictures to tell stories, which has special requirements for pictures, one is that they are readable, and the other is that the relationship between pictures is readable.
In this way, the bloodline of "Rabbi's Cat" should be self-evident. Today's degree of globalization and networking, nationality is not a problem per se, but the entire work uses highly related groups of pictures to illustrate serious themes such as language and religion, and this creative motivation, habit, and space is obviously rooted in the tradition of European Fabi comics.
Conventional metaphors and divisions
When discussing fine art works, we often hear comments like: "I like his painting style" or "I don't like this style", but what is "painting style"?
In fact, if painting is regarded as a language, there can also be a difference between lyricism and narrative, lyrical painting is probably the ink painting and oil painting created by "loose and handsome people" that we are familiar with, there are various styles, these distinctive "painting styles" are the focus of evaluation and research; but in narrative paintings, such as illustrations, illustrations, comic strips, comics, comics, social media "there is a picture and truth", "painting style" may be going to take a back seat, it is just a carrier to give people the overall impression, Just like the size and shape of writing, under normal circumstances, it will not become the focus of a novel, right? At this time, the information conveyed by the single picture or group of pictures, that is, the reference of the image, is the most important.
In a comic, the reader will read a lot of pictures, if the image information is too much, too close to the visual truth, it is tantamount to writing a beautiful art word to write a thousand words of foreign words, will seriously interfere with the intake of information. Therefore, in a single picture, cartoonists pay special attention to the "shape metaphor" of various key information, using means similar to stick figures and hieroglyphs, exaggerating and enlarging the figures, placing them in an easy-to-read position to guide the reader to receive them quickly. In other words, comics "draw ideograms" rather than "drawing representations", which can be seen in many small works of art.
A simple metaphor, with a water droplet representing sweating or embarrassing emotions that cause sweating, is not a realistic drawing method, but highlights important information to the reader through simple symbols.
Some works with relatively small spatial dimensions will enlarge some small important information and pattern it, such as the key of St. Peter.
Next, there is the problem of group pictures, which are arranged together to achieve information transmission. This process is called "storyboard", a term borrowed from the movie, more accurately "compartment", which is actually to turn the textual manuscript into a comic script, which in turn produces comic sketches such as "small storyboard" and "true storyboard", and clarifies the relationship between diagram and diagram, page and diagram, and page to page.
A split sketch of a Japanese manga (ネームとは Neimu) and an anime storyboard of Rabbi's Cat. The comic deals with grid size, page relationships, mirror movements, dialogue, etc. The film uses the same size of the grid to represent the change of camera perspective.
Cartoonists will use various means to mobilize these relationships and thus express their intentions: guide the reader's vision by the size and placement of the frame; control the reading speed by designing the amount of information; completing a paragraph in a pair of pages, inheriting the above text and leaving suspense to guide the reader to turn the page; designing the border of the frame to express emotions and create an atmosphere, and so on. Through these means, comics can express a lot of content that is not easy to express and cannot be touched by simple words.
The sketch is complete, and the manga can be said to be half complete. No painting technique is required for sketching, and it is only used when the work is made later. Therefore, if there is no drawing of ideograms and comic strips, no matter how strong a person's drawing ability is, it is impossible to draw comics, especially in Japan, where commercial comics are developed, and the means of metaphor are diverse, like dictionaries, and are widely used; each frame in the page is designed with a specific function, and even has a specific name; each type of comic for different readers has a corresponding page number standard. It can be said that comics are already an industrial product that is quantified after accurate analysis.
Experiments that break with the norm
Looking back at "Rabbi's Cat", in terms of drawing meaning, Shifa did not use much "shape metaphor" to highlight important information, the picture seemed to be arbitrary, using some messy black lines to show both visual light and shadow effects and psychological dramatic effects, plus a crooked border, like an unmade sketch.
In terms of compartments, it can be said that there is no page design at all. The Chinese edition presents nearly two hundred pages, about a thousand frames, almost all of which are squares of about the same size, each page is fixed with 6 squares, 2 columns and 3 rows, and a cross-shaped gap is formed between the frames - the staggered T-shape arrangement has become a general industry standard because it can guide the reading order, but the author does not comply; in addition, a complete paragraph of the story is often interrupted by the page, that is, if the comic abandons the existing layout method, like the "Little Man Book", only one picture is placed on one page. Or simply make a long strip with a wide frame, which will not have much impact on the rhythm of the narrative.
"Black Cat Detective", staggering the T-shaped arrangement of the picture grid, can effectively guide the reader to read the order
T-shaped arrangement
Compared with the author's previous works, when drawing "Rabbi's Cat", it seems that he is deliberately avoiding the use of comic technology, and he probably does not have a literary story, comic script, and storyboard sketch prepared in advance, but a grid of grids, a word by word to think of where to remember, the so-called "hand is as fast as a shadow". At this time, the relationship between text, diagram, diagram and diagram is simultaneously burst out and output to the paper, without the concept of the overall "page", and the frame becomes the smallest and only unit in the comic. In this way, the word "painting" is used very well, and he quickly and intuitively accomplishes two things: painting and writing, or more dialectically: painting.
In contrast, industrial mass-produced comics are large, cheap, popular, and easy to consume, but some readers will fall into rebellion: the mood swings when reading comics seem to be completely designed, will they be too passive? "Rabbi's Cat" obviously does not have this kind of pre-arrangement, but adopts a very contemporary way of creation, the work is quickly produced, retaining the traces of creation, getting rid of the shackles of production and craftsmanship, and appearing in an original appearance, with a rough freshness - this is the rhythm that can only be had today, to be precise, it is the speed of information dissemination that can only be achieved at the moment, which makes people react, digest and continue to pay, and maintain the continued existence of this set of works.
In the case that the information of mass-produced comics has been quite redundant, "Rabbi's Cat" brings sharp contrasts and presents characteristics that are difficult to imitate, but this way of creation has higher requirements for cartoonists, can not be copied, can not be promoted, can not be industrialized, can not meet the needs of the public, does not have the ability to occupy the mainstream market, is obviously an experimental work.
Experimental challenges
Any work of art needs to master the language of interpretation, and the same is true for comics, if you want to really read it, sensitivity, comprehension, and aesthetics are relatively empty, rather than to quickly perceive image information. Especially for experimental comics like "The Rabbi's Cat", if you want to appreciate it in its entirety, you should master the ability to read pictures and group pictures, all of which depends on conscious accumulation.
Unfortunately, the matter of reading pictures is often at a disadvantage in the transmission of information compared with words. For example, comic strips, because of the lack of words and pictures, are often called "little people's books", often showing the functions of "popular", "children" and even "literacy". Similarly, the concept of serious adult comics has emerged in the United States and Japan, whether called "graphic novels" or "drama drawings", which reflects from the opposite side that comics in the conventional sense are oriented to the minors market and have immature writing ability. As a large country with a long tradition of writing, China has a deeper mustard in some aspects, resulting in the long-term exclusion of picture reading materials.
Some people will say that now we have entered the "era of reading pictures", it seems to be justified for reading pictures, in fact, it is more deeply branded as "cultural fast food" - do we really read pictures well, or glance at the pictures or expressions; do we have advanced "reading pictures", how do the pictures come from, how to fit with the text, how to place, how to receive... This kind of "intensive reading" is almost impossible to talk about. As a result, "looking at comics" and even watching experimental comics can only be removed from the mainstream knowledge system for a long time, and is regarded as a certain special and weakened.
In this case, for non-professional readers, it is very simple to accept "The Cat of the Rabbi", just to put aside the discrimination against the comic and the habitual cleanliness of the drawing style, return to the European tradition of Fabi story comics, and cherish the experimental soil that it can bring with it. At this time, no matter whether you say that its cat is "like a big rat", it is "flat and straight", it uses image grammar that does not conform to the public aesthetics, and reading the picture carefully is much more earnest than the value judgment of "like/dislike".