A cartoon film consists of hundreds of motionless cells, but when they are put together they convey movement in a thoroughly convincing way. A comic book story has the same basic origin - although presented on paper - but it is also a completely immovable medium to watch. So when a comic book artist needs to show a character, an animal, or an object in distinct and convincing motion, he has to use a series of tricks. The foremost being that he shows a lot of simple cartoonish movement multiple times in the same panel, movement which mostly just consists of pencil lines curving in the same way as the 'moving' focus point. This gives the viewer a sense of the target's movement and liveliness in a certain situation, which is all contained within one panel.
Carl Barks used these tricks in most of his stories. He was a master of comic book 'movement' which is not that odd, because he had worked for several years in Disney's cartoon department and had seen how movement in a motionless medium came about. The sub-pages present you to a tiny fraction of story panels containing different sorts of movements rendered in fairly few pencil strokes but with powerful impact on the spectator.

NB.: Excluded from the sub-pages are the most common examples of movement represented with a few straightforward pencil strokes such as speed lines caused by characters moving fast or objects being swung. Still there are hundreds of examples to choose from, and the sub-pages attempt to present you to the most diverse ones within each group. You will probably agree that some of the panels are so subtle 'movement-wise' that you have never properly registered them before as movement panels. Thus it might be a good idea to refresh your memory by using the examples as stepping stones and also scour through Barks' stories to find more 'overlooked' movement panels.

 


http://www.cbarks.dk/THEMOVEMENTS.htm   Date 2009-11-04