Comics: Art in Relationship

Comics are one of the most popular and exciting ways to tell a story. This course offers a look at the fundamental building blocks of the comic book medium. Exploring panel to panel transitions, text to image relationships, and the intricacies of page layouts, students will examine new and innovative ways to bring their stories to life.

This course is designed for both beginning and advanced visual artists. Whether students have tried their hand at comics before or are simply interested in investigating how comics work, this course will provide insights to help storytellers make the most of every page.

• Defining Comics
• In this session, we will ask a few fundamental questions about what makes comics such a special art form. We’re also going to attempt to identify the basic building blocks we can use to tell compelling stories with the comic book medium.
• Comics Relationships
• This session will explore various text-image and panel to panel relationships and how to utilize these relationships to create dynamic and engaging comics.
• Time and Space
• In this session, we'll explore the role time and space play in comics and how we can utilize the concept of compression and decompression to create exciting narratives in comics.
• Layout and Grid Design
• Each comics page can take on a different personality depending on its panel layout. In this session, we'll explore the impact layouts have on the story you tell with each comic book page you make.
• Thumbnails
• In this session, we'll take a close look at planning out a multipage scene through the use of thumbnail sketches.