The Six Steps
In the book's seventh chapter, "The Six Steps," McCloud outlines a six-part process of artistic creation (Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft, Surface). He also notes that artists tend to fall into two classes, depending on which of the first two steps they emphasize more. Those who emphasize the second step "are often pioneers and revolutionaries — artists who want to shake things up," while those who emphasize the first are "great storytellers, creators who ... devote all their energies to controlling their medium ... to convey messages effectively." With these ideas, McCloud anticipates the artistic theory of David Galenson, which divides all artists into two groups with qualities similar to those McCloud notes.
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Famous quotes containing the word steps:
“Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)