Hi, I am Valerie Bodel and welcome to Comics Communication
as promised you don't need to have any prior knowledge
or skillet of drawing to take this course also you do not need to buy any books
for this course
the syllabus is posted on d2l and you can read it in its entirety there
but there's a couple things I wanted to bring up in particular discussions are
large part of your grade
to get full points and discussions you need to participate in the conversation
just replying with "I agree" is not going to be enough
you have to express your opinions and back them up with examples from the
reading
my contact information
is on my profile in d2l and on the syllabus
but I want to make sure that you know the best way to reach me
is my email I respond to emails generally within 24 hours
but I check email less often on the weekends
so please do not wait until late Sunday to read assignment and all of a sudden
realize that you don't know what you're supposed to do.
Please read assignments early in the week email me any questions
and I'll have can help you the final project is a five page comic
the don't panic art is not the focus of this course
the focus on this course is learning to communicate using the comics medium
summer you're probably artists that's great, that's part of that process
but those of you who are not watch the video demonstrating
the use of stick figures trying stick figures the couple have other
comics elements and send me any questions or concerns
and we'll deal with it will work it out the art should not be a stumbling block
for you in this course
some love you are probably tech-savvy another great thing
you're having trouble sending me your assignments for those of you who do not
feel comfortable with technology
the only Simon for which you have to send me images
is the final project and you have some options as long as I can read your comic
you can send it to me that way so you can scan it
you can fax it you can take pictures with your iPhone or your digital camera
you can send a hard copy by United States Postal Service
or you can drop a copy by my office any of those ways would be fine
let me point out if you use United States Postal Service
in may take a couple of days to get to me depending on how far away you are
so allow time you might notice
that the due date for the final project is the last day of exams
there can be no grace period for that if I haven't gotten it by the end of exams
I'm not even gonna look for assignment after that I'm just gonna
grade papers and post grades and that'll be it
so please make sure you get it to me before that point.
I know that there are tools online that will create comics for you
and that's fine if you want to use them for somebody assignments and go above
and beyond
that for your final project I need for you to draw your own pictures
I want you to draw the specific images
that help convey the specific message you're trying to communicate
so if you broke your moms couch when your kid
how not the couch look like did you break a leg off
did you break in half? how did you, what were you doing?
who was helping you? All of those particular details will make your story
different and stand out from all the others
so I don't wanna see generic images or generalizations
it will help if you decide
what you gonna try to communicate earlier in the semester there are
assignments that have
you create rough draft and if you're creating a rough draft of your actual
final project
you will be that much further along. Now that I've given you an idea of what to
expect
and what I expect let's address the question
have why would anyone communicate with the comics medium anyway?
does the media matter well imagine a lover breaking up with his partner
by email instead of face to face would that make a difference
I think it would, I think would make a big difference,
I think the medium makes a big difference in what you're trying to
communicate.
comics creators use
images to portray the background facial expressions
gestures body language in general and the use
text for intangibles like justice and freedom
and for narration so we might put a text above me that says
five minutes ago image might show me with a blank look on my face
a couple images might show my eyes going back and forth
maybe a little speech balloon coming out that says are we recording yet
which is indeed how I started the session
and a wider angle might show that I'm not teaching in a classroom at all.
I could say that I'm teaching in an empty room and if I said to you that I'm
teaching in an empty room
you would imagine any into you room that you are familiar with
if I showed you an image of the room you would know that particular room I'm
teaching in.
but if I drew you a picture than I could emphasize
those elements that would help communicate what I'm trying to say
I can't draw myself in a tiny little cubicle or I could draw myself in a huge
cathedral sized room
with hundreds of chairs all of them empty
I could draw a room with windows with perhaps nothing going on outside
or perhaps everything going on outside
whatever my particular message is I can tailor the images
to help communicate let's move on and talk a little bit about comic's history
when you read Mccloud you're gonna get his version of comics history
and I'm not gonna start as far back as mccloud does
coming scholar _________ explains that comics became popular in the 19th
century
because they help sell newspapers at that time
comics were purely for entertainment and help some newspapers because the images
were
cute weird absurd and what _______ calls
swarming. A swarming image is a very detailed
image with lots of stuff going on an example would be
cartoonist _______ picture above the yellow kid
visiting Coney Island this is an image with
rides and attractions and people standing in line
and people in weird situations and predicaments
very busy like a Where's Waldo picture
that would be a swarming image.
As comics evolved they moved from being just a picture
on a newspaper page to having pages have their own.
and having group's pages and finally being little booklets of their own
and comics began to be used for educational purposes
and for horror and superhero stories
Robert C Harvey rights but in the nineteen sixties
comics creators began to use the medium for their own personal expression.
and he feels that by the nineteen eighties the median have matured into
literature.
Relatively recent discussion in the comics scholarly community has revolved
around
what are the essential elements of comics
_______ feels that the essential elements are those elements that make
comics popular in the first place
so images that are cute, weird, absurd,
and swarming when you read mccloud you will find that he feels
that the sequences images that tell a narrative
are what's important many scholars agree with McCloud, but not all of them.
Hillary shoot and Will Eisner for example
feel that you must have sequential images interrelated
with text that if you don't have text you don't have a comic
Harvey takes this a step farther and feels that you need to have
speech balloons in order to have a comic he explains
that you have a visual representation of the body
and a visual representation love the sound
speech and that would include different colors and sizes and shapes
a five-month that help communicate your message
so he feels the essential elements of comics are sequential images that tell a
story
and speech balloons that would distinguish the text from traditional
literature
from the text in traditional literature from the text in the comics
modern comics include all kinds of genres
superheroes and manga are really popular as you might know
there's also comics about social commentary and comics
that deal with things like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
and the attack on the World Trade Center towers on 9/11
and as comics have broadened to include more subjects
we have gained more recognition the literary community has awarded
awards to several comics and I took note of some so I could you about them
Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The
The Smartest Kid on Earth, in 2001
won a guardian prize for best
first book and Spiegelman's mouse which will be reading excerpts of
was nominated in 1986 for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography
and his book two in 1992 won
a special Pulitzer Prize that's kind of amazing to me
comics have come all that way, and not only are they gaining recognition from
the literary community, but
from academia as well. There are more and more scholarly journals
more and more articles being post about comics
Special issues have journals devoted to comics
more university and college courses like this one
about comics and some universities and colleges
have program so you can get a degree in comics
and of course an online presence there's all kinds of
online comics online journals devoted to comics
and blogs about comics well I hope that will give you some
feeling about the field maybe get you a little bit interested in it
I'm sure it's enough for me to tell you today thanks.