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Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art.

Hey, it’s been a while.

Before I head off to HAR 2009, return to NYC, and become wedged uncomfortably between Thesisland and Teachingville, I want to share one short thing. I’ve stated that comics are remarkably good at instruction. When I attended The Last HOPE this past July, I saw the first release of Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone‘s project Citizen Engineer. What a great setup: provide free hacking videos, then sell the parts to build stuff. Recently, they’ve done one better.

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On alternating Fridays, Michael Carlisle examines the world “outside” sequential art to find… more sequential art. Expect mathematics and a dash of pessimistic optimism.

In my first post, I posited that math is a sequential art. I’d like to expand on my comment, making a semi-counterpoint to this post.

Mathematics is certainly a sequential art, but math is not comics.

Math can be done completely in words, without images or even symbols outside a written language’s letters and numbers; specialized symbols and pictures are used almost universally to aid in the understanding. It should be pretty easy to see that without these specialized symbols and illustrations, written math would be nigh-unreadable, but it is possible.

While understanding is strongly desired, some hardcore Platonists would probably have you believe that your comprehension is not necessary for math’s existence. As there may be an “ideal chair” or “ideal pizza” from which all chairs and pizzas gain their physical characteristics, your suboptimal, barely-adequate chair and pizza, as just an example of these ideals, give you the idea of them without giving you full access to PIZZANESS or CHAIRNESS.

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Every Wednesday, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

Okay, kids. It’s party time. On Monday, I started digging into the settings of stories. I explained the concept of the “Story Bible” and how it can apply to a work. I referenced Watership Down again. Now I’m going to explain how one would go about building a world…if that’s your sort of thing.

World Building exercises help a writer to more fully envision the setting into which he has plugged his characters (which by now should have been mapped in relation to each other as per Monday’s DBTP). Even if every detail you develop doesn’t make it onto the page, it’s important that you, as a writer, have a holistic world view. Here are three areas which merit special attention. I hope you are able to use them, or at least that they give you a little something to think and expand upon.

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