A study on the visual expression elements and composition of webtoons : Focusing on the media and visual of webtoons

Webtoons are recognized as Korea’s unique digital comics genre, like Japan’s ‘manga’ or ‘anime’. Webtoons were born in the process of implementing print-based comics into a digital environment, so the visual elements and expression methods such as people (characters), objects, backgrounds, and sound effects displayed on the webtoon screen are similar to comics. However, based on the digital environment, columns were arranged vertically top-down along the vertical screen, and multimedia effects were added, resulting in a different narrative structure and expression technique from comics. In this study, by comparing and analyzing the differences between comics and webtoons and extracting visual characteristics unique to webtoons, we presented the basic units and systems necessary to study webtoons from a visual perspective. In other words, the visual expression elements of webtoons can be largely examined from a media and visual perspective. From a media perspective, vertical screen and multimedia-based special effects are used, and from a visual perspective, cuts and margins are the basic units, and pictures, text, speech bubbles, and sound effects are used. You can look at the picture, which is the most central element among these, and you can look at it again by dividing it into people (characters), objects, and backgrounds. If you analyze webtoons from a visual perspective, you can examine the characteristics of each webtoon work by considering its formativeness (shape, color, texture) based on these basic units and systems.