Continuing Education

This course focuses on studying the skills of comics creation. Students will gain hands-on knowledge of the principles and techniques for juxtaposing visuals, narrative and sequential visual storytelling to tell clear and compelling stories. Through a combination of presentations, readings and short comics assignments, students learn to combine instinct and intellect to create comics and become more versatile comics creators. Students will initially produce an assigned four-page comics sequence that is designed to identify their strengths and weaknesses in visual storytelling, drawing and composition. Based on the assignment, the instructor customizes feedback, exercises and reading assignments to help each student improve their weaker areas and leverage strengths. In the latter part of the course, students plot and draw a short original narrative, or they can choose to draw from a professional script.
NOTE: Students who work with traditional tools (pencil and ink on paper) will need to use a scanner to turn their work into JPG or PDF files. Smartphone scan apps like Adobe Scan and Genius Scan can be used if a flatbed scanner is not available. All students with an active registration in this course will be given free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud. This course is held on campus at SVA.