Quick report after a busy day: I aimed to teach laying out a sheet of bristol board for penciling AND teaching the basics of lettering with the Ames guide as well as the basic drafting ink tools. I probably spent too much time rambling on about a quick slide show of short comics I did featuring:
Bill Griffiths’ The Plot Thickens
Gabrielle Bell’s The Hole
Kurtzman’s Corpse on the Imjin
Dash Shaw’s Cartoon Symbolia
As I tweeted, layout is simple but full of pitfalls from slipping Tsquares to absent-minded measuring–not to mention dividing up a 15″ tall page into three equally sized tiers with two 1/4″ gutters!
Laying out a 9-panel grid. The T-square is a life saver.I decided to save lettering for tomorrow.
Instead four of the students put their work up for critique and all four were in good shape, no major re-writes except maybe whittling down from excessive length. The other three (one absent) were making good progress on their thumbs. I predict everyone in the class will finish their minis for MoCCA Art Festival.
Richard’s thumbs. The three pages up top are a revision he is doing where he is trying to condense the 11-page version below to 8 or 9 pages. Thumbnails are crucial because it’s so easy to rework stuff this way.
Matt, thanks for sharing about your comic class your teaching. I am teaching a comic class this summer and I am getting lots of ideas to use.
Your class yesterday with the post-it notes inspired a comic jam tonight with the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco. Both post-it notes and index cards are great since you can re-arrange the cards to play with the timing and story telling.
Brian
atomicbearpress.com
If your students really do get their minis ready in time for MoCCA, I’ll be sure to drop by and buy a copy of each. I’m looking forward to it!