Course Sequence | Visual Storytelling & Comic Arts Certificate

Students in the Visual Storytelling & Comic Arts Certificate program can take classes at their own pace, in any order they choose. To finish in 9 months, take two classes in each 7 week session.

2023/24	Session Dates	Class Name
Fall 1	Sept - Oct	Introduction to Comics and Visual Narrative: From Panel to Comic (Required)
Fall 1	Sept - Oct	Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 1 (Required)
Fall 2	Nov - Dec	Non-Fiction and Memoir Comics (Required)
Fall 2	Nov - Dec	Introduction to Comics and Visual Narrative: Character Design and World Building (Required)
Fall 2	Nov - Dec	Reading Comic Books (Elective)
Spring 1	Jan - Mar	Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 2 (Required)
Spring 1	Jan - Mar	Comics and Speculative Fiction: Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Imaginative Graphic Storytelling (Elective)
Spring 2	Mar - May	Color and Form: Colors, Letters, Comic Systems (Elective)
Spring 2	Mar - May	Comics Journalism (Elective)
Spring 2	Mar - May	Graphic Publishing: From Comics to Video Games (Required)

---

Required classes

Introduction to Comics and Visual Narrative: From Panel to Comic

This course is focused on the production of short and long form comics and the visual narrative form. Students will become familiar with 1-3 panel comics, page design, lettering, inking, digital drawing, and 3-part narrative structure for long and short comics.

Looking at the history of storytelling through comics, students will explore various examples of comic genres, including classic EC, Marvel and DC comics, Indie Comix, Neo-Noir Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels, Diary Comics, and Poetry Comics, also learning how these forms are presented in contemporary online comics.

Introduction to Comics and Visual Narrative: Character Design and World Building

This course focuses on the production of short and long form comics, with a focus on the development and design of characters and the worlds that are drawn and written for them. Continued research into the history of storytelling in multiple comic genres will be folded into the course.

Non-Fiction and Memoir

Memoir has dominated adult graphic novel publishing, in part because memory is often viscerally linked with imagery. Similarly, visual and comics journalism allows authors to tell non-fiction stories about politics, war, and trauma in ways which meld non-linear experience with factual accounts. Students will explore interview, landscape, and visual translation in order to honor memory, experience and factual accounts of the real world.  Borrowing from the strategies of ethnography, documentary filmmaking, and photo-journalism–and traversing genres from comics memoirs to comics journalism–courses in non-fiction comics will examine how to “interpret the truth” ethically and honestly.

Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 1

Focusing on the direct, iconic imagery of the cartoon, this drawing course teaches the elements of design, along with expressive and abstract illustration to focus the eye in support of storytelling. This course covers the mechanics of narrative techniques in story-driven art. Students will develop skill in using the theories and principles of design to assist in the storytelling process in various forms of media. With a focus on the specifics of comics design, a specific focus will be on the organization of space and time in panel and page design that is unique to the language of comics.

Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 2

How is stylistic drawing utilized by comic artists to advance storytelling? This class is continued from Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 1 and will focus on a deep dive into narrative drawing techniques. This course will provide more ‘advanced’ drawing systems to choose from, building on the skills developed in the Cartooning and Narrative Illustration 1 course.

Graphic Publishing: From Comics to Video Games

In this capstone project, students create a publication-ready comic or graphic novel. The course will incorporate visiting artists, professionals from the publishing world, and other networking opportunities. a branding/marketing comics class, this course will create accountability systems for students and time management for creating comics, building community online and in-person networks with professionals, and documenting progress with social media.

---

ELECTIVE classes

Two needed for certificate

Reading Comic Books

Graphic novels have particular literary devices and artistic tools used to communicate in the visual narrative form. This class will read and discuss some of the great graphic narratives, from Krazy Kat to EC Horror Comics to Maus and Persepolis, along with contemporary comics. This research will inform their own writing and drawing, as students learn what makes a great graphic experience. Students will work on a creative project that responds to a comic style and genre that appeals to them.

Comics and Speculative Fiction: Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Imaginative Graphic Storytelling

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics are cornerstones of the comic storytelling form. Inventing fascinating stories that take place on invented worlds incorporates the ability to draw and write from the imagination, and the ability to speculate about the shape of alternate worlds that include invented monsters, machines, and cityscapes from the science we know is true, and that which we still think is impossible.

COMICS JOURNALISM

Graphic storytelling can be a beautiful and emotive way to tell larger social and political stories that give us insight into the lives of others. This course will focus on how to develop a visual journalistic ‘voice’ in comics, how to work quickly and with an editor and some basic ethics for journalism in the graphic form. Each student will choose a topic to research and represent visually while researching a venue where it could be released into the public sphere.

Color and Form: Colors, Letters, Comic Systems

This course will focus on the fundamentals of color, lettering, page and panel layout, and other technical processes in comics systems. Students will learn basic color theory, and workflow techniques for digital color, as well analog color and color processing for print. We will cover approaches to lettering including traditional processes, working with typeface, balloon placement and the basics of font design. How to use color, lettering, layout, and other technical processes for maximum effect in comics.