A 'reduction' comic strip by Gilles Ciment, based on 'The Adventures of Tintin'
In the example below, Gilles Ciment, a co-founder of the Oubapo, presents a constraint called “reduction.” The challenge is to distill one of the standard 62-page stories of The Adventures of Tintin to as few as six images. Obviously, to some degree, the appreciation of such reductions relies on the readers knowledge of the source text, in this case Les cigares du pharaon.
In his “reduction,” Ciment seeks to valorize the “ligne claire” or “clean line,” one of the most distinctive formal characteristics of Hergé’s early albums. In deciding on his method, Ciment specified that he had to respect the order of the images in the narrative and limit his choices to key moments of the story, in order to simultaneously say something new and interesting about the story, the characters, and the author.