Comic Workshop Post-Mortem

Another post-mortem, yay! This'll probably be the last one for the foreseeable future (awww...)

As should be apparent from my blog, this past fall (and January) I've been running a comic workshop in the graphics lab at school. We were working through the book "Drawing Words & Writing Pictures", a sort-of text book on comics. The book covers things like "what are comics", issues relating to panel layout, content design, storytelling, thumbnailing, penciling and inking (with both pens and brushes) and a few other topics. Each chapter has excercises and homework assignments, the last series of which walks you through creating a six page mini-comic (my results having been previously posted on the blog, though I still have to finish the inking).

Overall, it was an interesting book and the experience of running the workshop was also interesting. I did follow the book fairly closely in its presentation, though I drew in material from other sources (such as Scott McCloud's books about comics) where appropriate. I also added some extra workshop sessions on figure drawing and perspective, which is one of the reasons that we went into January.

We only had a small group - just four of us (including me). I think I would have liked to have had two or three more people, but with just the four of us I suppose it was easier to work around scheduling issues that came up and there wasn't any need to worry about finding a special space to hold our meetings.

Of course, for me, the workshop essentially involved giving a twenty to thirty minute talk each week (I wouldn't call them lectures) along with the weekly homework assignments. It kept me busy, but it was interesting and I liked having the extra motivation to do some regular drawing. I was also the only one to do all the assigned homework, but as I was running things I figured I should do my best to set a good example :)

One nice thing about the workshop is that it gave me the chance to try out some things that I wouldn't have otherwise, like using nib pens. One of the big reasons to run the workshop in the first place was that it was much more likely that I'd actually do the exercises and homework in the book. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have done most of them, which would have missed out on part of the point of the book.

As to my presentation style - well, that's a bit harder for me to judge. My fellow participants seemed to find things interesting and we had some good discussion at times, but it was all fairly informal, overall. I was treating it more like a "tech talk" sort of thing than anything else. I mean, I think I'm generally a competent speaker, at least nobody showed up with rotten fruit or sleep masks or anything.

Would I do something like this again? Maybe. It would certainly be less work if I were to do it again since I'd have all my slides already and I've already done all the homework so I probably wouldn't feel the need to do most of it again. It would still be a bit of a committment, of course. Interestingly, the authors of the book have a follow-up one that's being published sometime this spring so there's always the possibility that I might end up going through all this again anwyay. We'll see - though I probably wouldn't mind doing a follow-up session, if i can drum up enough interest.

Well, that's all for now. My next post should be less talky and more picturey.

Freak Out,
-TFitC