Today's Class- Our topic today was narrative, which we determined was the quality of telling a story.
The inspiration for this project is the comic strip Maus, published in the 1980's and early 1990's, and collected in bound volumes in the 1990's, what is often called a graphic novel. It simultaneously tells two stories, one of the events in the life of two Jewish people in Poland, captured in the Holocaust, and imprisoned in a work camp. The two prisoners do survive, the camp is liberated as World War II ends, they emigrate to America, and have a child. The second story takes place much later, from the point of view of that child, now a grown man living in NYC, and having to deal with his often cantankerous elderly widowed father. What made it unusual was that the characters are all portrayed as animals, in a cartoon hierarchy. The Jewish characters, or all nations, are shown as mice, who are constantly pursued by German soldiers (cats), until they are defeated by the American soldiers (dogs). Other animals play roles as well. Sometimes the animals are drawn as cartoon characters- personified with human style arms and legs, and with expressive faces. Sometimes the characters are shown as humans wearing animal masks, Halloween style.
What our project will have in common with this is that students will be creating a comic strip that tells a true story from their lives, so it will be autobiographical, and portraying themselves and other characters with symbols instead of people, so it will be symbolic. The symbolic characters can relate to the nature of the story, or be personal symbols the student associates with the people. The story can be serious or inconsequential, happy or sad- it doesn't matter. Here are a few examples from previous semesters:
These first four are one I have in my possession, and if we were meeting you could see them in person. These are all examples of this strip done by students taking this class, the same problem. In this one, the characters all all beach related- a ball, pail, umbrella, etc. These were chosen as a personal symbol, of interest to the participants, or based on characteristics possessed by the participants, according to the creator. The story has nothing to do with the beach, but the characters all liked the beach. The story is actually about a time the group was playing field hockey and an injury occurred. In the first page, the group gets together to play the game, but early in the second page, the ball gets injured, has to go to the hospital, is seen by a doctor (a shell) and eventually emerges on crutches. (in the class, the student no longer needed them, so a happy ending.
The second strip also has a beach theme, but this time the story is also a beach story, so the symbols are related to the story. Two friends decide to go to the beach, the two friends are depicted as bathing suits with no further personification. The two bathing suits take a trip to the shore, lay on the beach, enjoy some pizza, then more time on the beach. A nice day.
Our third example has no beach at all, but three Kean friends who decide to go see a view of the George Washington Bridge. The symbols are a flower, a water drop, and an apple, none of which have anything to do with the subject, so these are personal symbols chosen by the creator. They depart together by car, later walk through the woods where they have a scary encounter with a spider, eventually reach their goal and see the bridge, the spider incident not so bad.
Our fourth example is a less good one, what not to do. The story isn't bad, about a student getting a job to earn some money. He portrays himself as a 50 lb. dumbbell type weight, which may be a personal symbol, but in this case it is a story symbol as well. The job is working in a weight room. Our character gets the job, helps spot lifters, cleans, organizes, and at the end of the first page, gets a paycheck. The second page shows him going to the bank to turn it into cash, which he takes to the store, and uses to buy some nice sneakers. The story is good, the character/symbol is good, but the art is lacking. The drawing is perfectly fine, but there isn't enough color- too much empty white space. The grade ended up being a B, but would have been a A with more color.
Here are several more good examples of this project from past years.
Each strip should use two full pages from your 18" x 24" pad, with 6 more panels per page- panel size can vary as needed. Format can be horizontal or vertical. I suggest using pencil to sketch out the layouts. You may use pencil, pen, or markers to put in lettering (as in dialogue balloons, boxes of captions) or outline objects, but all color must come from pastels. You can also go wordless if you want. New colors can be created by combinations (like we did with the paints), typically layering one over the other and blending, such as with fingers, a scrap of paper towel, or anything else you prefer. Objects that one might expect to be white may remain that way (pastels or white from the paper), but otherwise use color everywhere, like what you might see in a Sunday paper.
Other rules:
1) Story should be true, something that happened in your life. You will be a character in the story.
2) Story can take place in any time, and can cover as long a period as you want- a moment, a few days, a year, a lifetime.
3) Characters must be symbols, not just humans. You have the options of adding limbs, faces, and other human attributes, but you don't have to. There are examples of both styles above.
4) If it makes sense for the characters to change (age, etc), that is permitted, but make sure it is clear that the character is still the same.
5) We can do anything permitted in comic strips. Words can be used in transitions or to show sound effects. The above examples can provide guidance. Dialog balloons, thought balloons, all available.
