Okay, Scott, bless his little comic-addled heart, has done a weak job of explaining his tool here.
His explanation in
Understanding Comics is much better.
Here's a re-hash:
We'll start with only purely representational art, that is, art in which every stroke of the pen is meant to convey something physical: the curve of a nose, the shadow in a room, etcetera.
Take this and arrange it on a line, from that which is most like reality and that which is most cartoonish and simplified, and you have the base of the picture plane Scott means to draw.
To show forms of art in which there are lines and shapes meant for purposes OTHER than representation, we move UP. Since the idea of a purely abstract image that is like a photograph and one that is like a cartoon is a pretty meaningless distinction, he's decided that this axis of his "graph" of images narrows to a point, at which there is no meaning whatsoever to ANY line or shape in an image.
At this point, Scott notes that really, there is a level of simplification
beyond cartooning, where the visible and the invisible are represented together by something that doesn't look anything at ALL like the thing represented:
The printed word.
So, on the bottom line of this picture triangle, Scott lets us go out even further, and find words. With a little bit of abstract thought, you can imagine words themselves moving up towards design and meaninglessness. Like the following:
Starship. Grace and Mass. Cherry-toast longway.
That was meaningless words. Very near the apex of his big triangle. Most of this jibberish is near the base, although the various effusive words and throw-away phrases represent departures from the very base. His unification of words and pictures on the same graph leads to some interesting thoughts. Like that really sophistochated, complex writing might really have a hard time "connecting" to highly realistic artwork, unless carefully anchored, where as simple, direct language and cartoony artwork might work so well together that the artist might have to worry that the wrong ideas get expressed before he or she became consciously aware of it!
I'm a TOTAL McCloud acolyte, so you'll have to forgive me if I tend to rave about him. Oh and DO read his marvelous comic
I can't stop thinking as well as the delicious
Zot!
