Scott McCloud, 1993, ‘Blood in the Gutter’, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Northampton, MA : Tundra Pub)

Growing up I was obsessed with flipbooks. I used to draw on every corner of all my books to try and tediously create the perfect animation powered by …THE MIND. I was inspired by Andy Griffiths’ “Just” series and his Illustrator Terry Denton. In the corner of each book was a super snazzy flipbook animation. Flipbooks are similar to comics to me because for either to work, your mind has to join each image together with both meaning and movement.

I also read a few comics but more so manga in the early years. I still have my collection hiding at the top of my bookshelf.

One part of the comic that really caught my attention was the segment about how the reader is just as involved in the way a comic is perceived as the creator. It is because, often without realising it, we fill in the gaps with our own imagination. When a murder sequence only showed an axe being raised and the sound effect of the victim “all of [the readers] held the axe and chose [our own] spots.” This excited me because it made me wonder how this could be applied to film. Creating a sense of mystery, tension or even fooling the viewer by allowing them to come to their own individual conclusion.