Assignment for Wednesday (3/2)

The assignment for Wednesday, as a reminder from the class, is to sketch out two pages that are tuned to showing a capital-I "Image." Something that's really stuck with you, something that you've carried in your head for a while. You'll use the pages as thumbnails for a finished comic, or as storyboards for a short video.

The image has to have a strong personal dimension – something that comes from your life, or something you saw in a dream. Something that has put itself squarely in your mental library.

Like the beginning of the film was saw in class, I want you to construct this in a way where we see details of the Image without fully understanding how they might piece together on the first page, and then on the second page, we see the Image in full. In the film was saw the details of the aftermath of the accident with the horse – but couldn't piece together the relationship between the yelling people, the rope, the train and the horse until the final shot of the sequence.

So the first page will be made of multiple panels, showing details of your scene - and the second page will be taken over by one panel revealing the full image. The "details" on page one could be different physical details in space (the way, in the film, we saw the person emerging from the water, the feather floating, the guy grabbing the rope, etc), or you could make them details that extend the sense of time – a detail that changes over time, and it's not clear, till the second page, what those changes have been leading towards.

Homework for Wednesday (2/24)

In your new sketchbook, write down an idea for your "gesture-based" comic/video, which we'll be working on next class. The comic or video will be a story without any dialogue or narration – you will need to show a relationship between two characters (broadly defined – the characters could be two people, or a kid and a monster, or a girl and a dog, or a robot and a pack of cigarettes). It can be an antagonistic relationship or a supportive one.

All you need for the start of Wednesday's class is a brief description of who the characters are, and what their relationship is. And make a sketch of one gesture each character will make during the course of your story, which reveals something about their emotional state or character.

Homework for Monday (2/22)

Due for Monday - your "Diary Comic." Between today and Monday, keep track of your thoughts and experiences, and pick one day to bill down into a diary comic. As I said in class, this doesn't have to be "dramatic" at all - the everyday, the quotidian, the ephemeral are all open as subject matter for you. You can be playful, serious, or, like Keith, you can use reality as a starting point to make some stuff up. No restrictions on format - size or style - you can paint, draw, collage, what have you. For those of you working in video, you can make a mini-video, catching some moments of your life on the fly – for video, I'll put a restriction that it has to be short – 45 seconds, tops.

Here are the examples we looked at/talked about in class – James Kochalka, Gabrielle Bell, Keith Knight (click to see larger):