19/12/2019
This week I have visited the Cartoon Museum in the central London in a rainy afternoon. With the freezing air, I walked into this general-size glass house and went downstairs to a basement space——not a very wide space that can exhibit enough cartoon papers. They were showing a regular exhibition of British cartoon from the eighteen century and an additional one for manga works collected from some cartoonists. During this visit, I could enjoy a kind of British comic style which can be found in today’s British cartoons and followed the trace of manga development to consider the future’s form of the manga itself.
Cartoon can be traced back to ancient cave paintings as a sort of illustration expressing feelings, emotions and ideas. While the modern cartoon originated from the caricatures during the 17th century in the west. Many cartoons were drawn as characters with humour in some social events, fashion politics. But some were used as a means of exercises depicting the daily situation. Like the two pictures below, they shows that the late 18th century in Britain some cartoonists drew a situation captured in one moment in daily life. We can see the old gentleman standing in the centre and writing on a red notebook (left), and feel the breeze and breathing to these two long-hair girls (right). They were all simplified and designed images. And characters were looked as the keys to the drawings.
These two below represent one kind of sarcasm art to some social phenomenons by means of creating metaphorically human-like animals in designed circumstances. The class issues, the war and the power all can be found through these cartoons. At that time, British cartoonists liked to animals as an allegory of the humanity and social issues.
These below look like a mirror of the war during the capitalism expansion time. The left below re-enacts the struggle of young soldiers and the right one creates a funny way of depicting the war by engineering a complex machine with a function of blowing the bombs the enemy is dropping. Ironically, they made the war like a joker to some extent.
British cartoonists began to draw silhouette as a cartoon style during the 19th century. And they made it as an efficient form of the storytelling.
This picture describes two constant parts of stories: a robber-like man is walking into a party where someone is smoking near a dancing couple, then this man is shooting someone by guns. The outlines of these characters are various with the details in order to show more information about these figures, even though they are less-featured and are not exaggerating as nowadays’ characters.
And some are depicting interesting moments in different social activities.
From the late 19th century, most British cartoons became more featured and exaggerating. And the styles varied much. We can see the highly simplified and funny characters designed from these cartoons below.
They started to reduce more details and highlight the key features of a character in the cartoon work mostly though using black lines. It is powerful to depict some group phenomenas in the society.
At the same time, some cartoonists were considering the creation of atmospheres in the cartoon. For instance, the picture below emphasises on the light expression by means of shadows in black and light in white, which was used to enhance a feeling of hope from dark.
This cartoon work is very special when comparing others. It reveals an aesthetically designed map of island surrounded by sea and a laden ship sailing towards it from an angle of the high airspace. The colours and style used in it seem to create a strong atmosphere of salvation.
The story comics, which nowadays we call manga, could also be traced back to this period. Under the rapid development of modern industries in the uk, people’s entertainments needed more new bloods. More cartoonists drew funny characters and put them into a story of constant images mostly published on the newspaper. Their contents consisted of the new lifestyle of industrialisation and some elements from circus and fairy tales. We can see the two below.
However, the early comics had a very limit of storyboards and no conception of lens use. Most of them are divided into similar rectangular frames. And the backgrounds look like a stage not a space.
When came to the 20th century, more British cartoons became featured and exaggerating with personal art style. The contents of the images had been from a wider range of areas, though many of them followed the function of a reflection of social and political issues and a sense of sarcasm. Additionally, materials used in these cartoons seemed to vary instead of only monochromatic or traditional pigments or tools. Some works are shown below.
Last century, manga as a kind of entertaining media had flourished in the world, especially in America. Thus, the Cartoon Museum is collecting some wonderful mangas created by American cartoonists. Here, we can have a quick glance of some below.
Some mangas inherited the black-and-white form and developed it as a more detailed expression of images. They can add more information while keeping the whole colours harmonious. Others attempted to be colourful and attractive, as colour televisions during that time. So they needed to avoid being a mess by colours. I cannot tell which style is more popular, because each of them has been successful around the world. And the stories in these mangas altered to be more surreal and sophisticated when they were getting inspirations from novels, documentaries and si-fi.
There are three British authors’ works from our age, showing different explorations of the latest cartoons and mangas. We can see some of them tries to blur the clear definitions of the cartoon and manga. From my point of views, cartoon is strongly connected to the animation and also the illustration and the character would be the first essential element. While mangas rely more upon the paper, individual imaginations and stories. Basically, the fundamental elements remain the same. Therefore, the efforts of trying new access are meaningful.
Moreover, the British cartoon maintains the exaggerating style of old time and the sense of humour, even though it is still experiencing the hit of globalisation.