May 12 2017

Agenda

  • Presentations
  • Score card / Calendar time
  • Comix-olarship conversation (maybe)

Presentations

  • Devon presented her collage contrasting the art styles of two Captain America comics, issues 1-4 from 1941, and 4 issues from the 2015 Secret Wars run. The collage draws attention to the bright iconic colors that typify early comics (plus huge amounts of extraneous dialogue). By 2015, dialog is spare and colors are muted, and backgrounds and small drawn detail take on heavier narrative weight.
    • Then she presented her artist interview, which she developed into a journalistic blog (posted on Canvas). The article follows how drawing emerged from her life, to impress friends
  • Kieren presented his collage of contrasting comics: Mob Psycho 100 vs Attack on Titan. Both manga were adapted into highly successful anime. His collage not only shows their styles, but also includes and overlay of fan reviews. Both manga use basic or even flawed drawings, focusing instead on strong story.
  • Matthew presented his piece on local comics culture (on canvas). His piece focuses on the behind the scenes work that led up to the WWU Queer Con. This included the work of contacting vendors, running ads, raising money, changing dates, and so much emailing.
    • Then he presented a comic about Magdalene Visaggio, a comics artist who presented at the WWU Queer Con. She’s an English major who went on to draw for DC and Marvel, and her current series are a mini-series Kim & Kim (a trans Bladerunner-style sci-fi) published with Black Mask, and Quantum Teens are Go. She has written publicly about trans representation in comics.
    • Finally, he presented an elevator pitch for a superhero comic about a family whose grandparents were in the Japanese-American internment camps of the 1940s. This webcomic will explore the legacy of internment, but also life as a queer Japanese-American descendant of this family. (Alisa recommeded using topastic as a web comic publishing platform)
  • Alisa presented a piece about local comics culture, which she made in her own comic. Her story describes her experience on Free Comic Book Day in Seattle. She was able to meet the artist of Colorful Monsters as well as Ms Marvel. (comic on canvas)
  • Megan presented her Why Comics statement, which explains how she had never associated with being a comic book reader (though she had long read comic strips growing up); comics allowed her to draw on her interests in graphic design, and to learn to balance between the efficiency of graphic communication and the nuance of verbal communication
    • gave a drawing demonstration of her technique for drawing snails and snakes. This is Megan’s version of Lynda Barry’s spiral technique for drawing as you listen or think. She uses this basic technique to make little characters on her poetry notebook.
  • Jacob presented his prototype semi-autobiographical art comic about a young man living with his grandfather, and how they experience the latter’s failing memory. In his prototype, he went from a scene-by-scene sketch, to full character examinations, to basic draw-throughs of scenes from the story. The drawings follow a simple Barry-style line art, but with heavy emphasis on facial expression of the characters.
    • He then did a drawing demonstration of how he uses eye shapes for emotional effect, a challenge, for example, when drawing characters with glasses. He prefers working with eye shape to adapt his characters’ emotions, rather than eyebrows. He also drew the characters from a three-little-pigs cartoon he created for a previous class.
  • Celine presented her why comics statement about why she want’s to be a middle-school English teacher. Scott McCloud’s emphasis on visual rhetoric and narrative making would fit beautifully with the common standards for literacy instruction. With Lynda Barry’s emphasis on creative thinking and and creative character development, this seems like a clear tool for teaching these 7th grader
    • Then she showed a remediation of this essay, a side-by-side comparison of two 7th grade classrooms, one stale and focused on words along, another one where kids are drawn in and voluntarily choosing graphic texts to engage with.
  • Elijah and Matthew presented a collaboratively made comic called The Scientist. A sci-fi fantasy about a man who is accidentally frozen in time until he can resolve a terrible lie. Using a script he had already developed, the two of them created a storyboard drawn from images located in the public domain (Creative Commons). They then adapted these images using PhotoShop to imitate the style in the comic. (All is on Cnavas)
  • Meghan presented her Why Comics statement. While she too had grown up reading Calvin and Hobbs, she had not chosen to be a comics reader until this class. The comics medium intrigues her for its ability to show diversity and use the visual for rhetorical effect.
  • Samuel presented a story about the rappers MF Doom and Madlib, who take on comicbook personas and employ comics tropes in both their songs and their music videos. He showed their project All Caps published by the duo as Madvillian.