Floyd Gottfredson on "animating" in comic panels

SABA:...it's obviously important to choose the right composition in the first place. One of the things that I find to be interesting—I don't know whether to call it discipline, but one of the things you have to know what to do when you're putting together a strip is to choose the right moment to draw. Because the balloon carries the dialogue that goes over a period of a minute or something like that. But the drawing is a split second within that time, and you have to choose—
GOTTFREDSON: Yes. You have to draw something... What you have to do is draw something that illustrates what you're saying in the balloon.
SABA: Don't you want to maybe expand upon it, not just to repeat what's in the balloon?
GOTTFREDSON: Oh, no. You want to expand upon it. Or maybe you're wanting to say two things in there. Because of the fact that the reader automatically will glance at the strip, read the balloon first, and then really look at the drawing. You might use an animation process where the drawing itself takes us a step ahead. you've got two characters in your panel, and you want some progression in there. Do the one panel in the primary spot and the next character in the progressive spot, as if this first one had animated into the second one. If this doesn't conflict with what you're saying in the balloons.
SABA: So in other words, within one picture, what looks like one picture in fact would be two moments depicted within the same picture.
GOTTFREDSON: Yes. You can do that with two different characters.
SABA: So it's not a realistic depiction of how it would happen because you have one character acting the other character reacting within the-
GOTTFREDSON: You must never be too literal. Not in cartoons. Be aware of your cartoon license all the time. Don't be afraid to use it (Laughter).