Creating the illusion of movement: how do children's illustrated books embody visual sequential movement?
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 16 - 700008
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
-
-
- Title of journal
- Interjuli
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 104
- Volume
- 02/16
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 1868-2049
- Open access status
- Not compliant
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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http://www.interjuli.de/de/assets/Artikel/1602%20Bildgestaltung/09.%20McConnell-min.pdf
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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B - Design Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- There is little research on the creative processes behind children’s book art, or the artistic objectives that picture-book makers pursue in their work. This article reports on research using a novel approach based in the developmental process involved in the ‘making’ of McConnell’s Marvin’s Funny Dance (2008 Hodder Children’s Books). It combines this discussion of the research process with insights obtained from interviews with eminent author/illustrators and the analysis of various existing illustrative works.
The research process included semi-structured interviews with four illustrators, combining this with an analysis of McConnell’s illustrative practice to provide significant insight and enhanced understanding of the dialogic relationship between the way audiences and author-illustrators understand a visual text. The process that is named ‘closure’ in gestalt psychology makes it possible for the reader to subjectively re-construct the narrative as a continuous entity, from the author/illustrator’s conceptual vision of it. The article argues that this results in the perception of the picture-book narrative as a continuous unified reality by both author-illustrator and audience even though these realities may be different.
The article was submitted to the International Journal of Children’s literature Interjuli (2016) and subjected to peer-review. A version of the article was accepted by the Confia International Conference of Illustration and Animation (2016) after peer-review and McConnell was invited to develop a further version of the article by Alan Male, editor of the ‘Companion Guide to illustration’ Wiley Blackwell (2017).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -