The reader’s eye follows or ‘tracks’ the movement of a character or object across the panel or page. Often employs kinesthetic evocation.
While all tracking consists of motion, action and time, each type of tracking is differentiated by which aspect becomes the primary.
Movement tracking
The reader’s eye follows the character or object as they move spatially across the page or panel(s). May follow or subvert/break the reading order.
A character slipping into an underground hole. Séance Tea Party, Reimena Yee.
The cartoonist ambles about her studio. Alison Bechdel.
A character sneaks into compound – her tracked actions are respectively confined within a panel. The continuous background art is also an example of the cross within device. As whole, these 16 panels form a master view. Aloha, Maco.
An extreme example of this is known as the De Luca Effect, named after Italian artist Gianni De Luca who heavily employed tracking of his characters as a core element of flow and composition.
Two characters track across the graveyard acting out their individual stories, until their paths merge. Romeo e Juliet, Gianni De Luca.
Hey comics fans, enjoy this thread devoted to the De Luca Effect and embedded closure! Let’s kick things off with a stunner featuring #WonderWoman from Justice League Dark #21 by @therightram, @JamesTheFourth, @AMartinezBueno, @RaulFernandez, June Chung, and Rob Leigh.
👁️🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/tT0bCYKG13— ExplodingPages (@PatientPyramid) August 3, 2021
Embedded Closure is another name for this effect, which Exploding Pages defines as “multiple iterations of a figure (usually a person) moving through an environment in a single panel“.
Diagrammatic tracking
Separate steps of a complex action are depicted in progression and simultaneously, according to the reading order.
Not the same as diagrammatic panel, though a diagrammatic panel can contain diagrammatic tracking.
Each step of an action may be expressed by different characters respectively.
Each goon’s pose represents the steps of getting up and fleeing. Tintin, Herge.
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Temporal Tracking
The reader’s eye tracks a character or object’s movement across time. Unlike the last two examples of tracking, temporal tracking tends to employ drastic changes in background to indicate the passing of time; the changing of terrains, changing seasons, objects added or removed in a bedroom, etc. A character may remain static or perform different actions that don’t link up.
A character moves across a non-literal, heightened landscape as time passes and the environment grows more claustrophobic. The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya Volume I, Reimena Yee.
Reincarnations of the same soul held by its mother/guardian tracked across times and places in history. One Soul, Ray Fawkes.
A soldier marches across changing terrains. We track his movements primarily across time, as the tension builds, as he enters the battlefield. Note how the regularity of the grid allows the drama/environmental storytelling happening within these panels to become the focus. The Arrival, Shaun Tan.
Examples Gallery:
Tracking (WIP)
Further Reading:
Gianni De Luca & Hamlet: Thinking Outside The Box. Paul Gravett.
Back From the Old School: Showing Motion via Repeated figures in a Single Panel. Ben Towle.
Contribution:
This will be moved to the footnotes page. WIP.
Paul Gravett (De Luca Effect/device). Exploding Pages and Zachary J.A. Rondinelli (Embedded Closure). Ben Towle. Reimena Yee (Tracking, as a generic term).
