Recap: Cartoon & Comic Arts 2024

In an earlier post I highlit the UAF campus newspaper publishing a piece about the Cartoon & Comic Arts course inaugural class for the first time ever offered during a regular semester (as opposed to the twelve years during the summer). This was half a year after the interview, but I easily doubled that time delay by just now finally getting around to a recap post – uploading this only a few days away from the Fall semester restarting, and kicking off a radically revamped syllabi + schedule.

Sydney

This, thee second time ART F220 + ART F420 was being offered during a "normal" timeframe (two nights per week, 2.5 hours per class) it went into waitlisted status I think after only a few days of general registration. Degree-seeking (art) majors get first dibs, and there is a section of the course specifically geared towards satisfying the requisite upper-level credits that they need to accumulate.

Hailey

The majority of the students are not, however, and that’s partly the reasoning behind offering it in the evenings, so as to attract folks who are not traditional students. Usually a healthy percentage of the class comes from outside the department, the college, and even the university. There is a vibrant community of like-minded individuals all hiding in the Alaskan wilderness, and if you shake the bushes, not only do you get blueberries and cranberries, but many a fellow aficionado and partaker of craft will roll about the tundra. *Join me after the jump for more...

 Speaking of newspaper pieces, and older folks, a mysterious benefactor dropped off some old copies of a feature article that ran two decades ago, heralding the very first Cartoon & Comic Arts course taught as a special topics studio class back in 2005. A number from that original group is still creating comics, as is at least someone from every session since, it seems.

I originally modeled the course as a compressed sampling of the two-years of graduate studies at SCAD for my MFA, and compiling experiences picked up along the way at various other events and organizations, and basing much of it on a personal approach as a professional practicing since 1988, when my work debuted in Alaska with the FreezeFrame feature.

Flexing the “accordion of comics” from a 6-week session to a normal 15-week + finals semesterly-based structure required as much creativity as drawing does. In other words, that’s teacher-code for flying by the seat of my professorial pants, as in, “well let’s try THIS.” I mean, I can even condense everything into a TWO–week session what with the VAA training, but still working on that one-shot take. and you bet much of this redoubled effort and drive stems directly from the awesome workshop with Hilary Price earlier this summer at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

 The departmental hallways are once again flush with the leftovers from years of offerings: my collection of student original comic art is impressive now. As is the ever-growing pile of minicomics and class comic books from previous semesters. I’m able to briefly retain examples from each of my Intermediate drawers for the first few weeks of the Fall semester as they each maintained a sort of best-of rolling portfolio in a couple of their own dedicated showcases, so as to inspire the incoming classes. And yeah, their comics are included. So more comics. Comics.

Same for the prospective cartoonists who are also welcomed with walls of trophies to aspire to themselves. I also can now take breaks during the first day’s show & tells in the drawing studio and give a quick tour, pointing out examples of things that they themselves will soon be doing, like caricatures, self-portraits, landscapes and figurative studies.

character development

Though seeing as how this is still technically an art class taking place within an art department, there are therefore many aesthetic components and attributes that will be stressed and tested upon, such as range of textures to impart volume through value, an composition, and linear perspective, and line weight, and so on. One major concession is having no prerequisites, as I want this to be welcoming to all, and that includes all skill-sets along with genres. Mainstream comics, online, graphic novels, manga, alternative, underground: there are inevitable camps, but guess what kids... it's all comics. It's all good. 

Forrest & Natalie

I still don’t have the relative beginners to use color – the advanced ones are encouraged, but not required. There’s simply too much stuff I want them to do without the added layer of production, being more concerned with content, even quantity over quality, though again the art majors are judged in accordance with heightened expectations, as ostensibly they are aiming to be a professional, and instilling good habits now, such as a strong work ethic and accompanying discipline, will really pay off later.

Letting people develop their own styles and settle on a favorite tool is another successful outcome in this class. Skipping a rock across the surface of many options out there when it comes to literally learning how to make you mark on the world, another hope is to open the door into further studies like say, Pen & Ink, or Life Drawing, or printmaking, geology, anatomy or history – it all comes back around and feeds into the comic art.

Alexis & Amy

On the very first day of class there will be two separate slide shows: one an intro to my career, creative process, and personal favorites; and a second, much longer, is an Intro to Cartoon and Comics arts. This is a sampling of upcoming assignments, a basic guide to the field and some sub-genres, techniques and myriad of examples. It’s also an introduction into my wharrgarble approach with something around three hundred pictures put up on the screen, right outta the gate.

Sydney & JB

But if anybody balks at the prospect of that avalanche of information, they’ll take comfort in it’s only a fraction of the couple thousand more coming their way over the next fifteen weeks. The sheer volume of data dumps that are now cued up in conjunction with in-class exercises and assignments and critiqued work is exciting. And I say that instead of “overwhelming,” because amidst all of what’s going on, carving out this little buffer zone against it all can be such a powerful incentive, and it never fails to amaze me how much of a labor of love making comics can be.

Jeks & Kevin

Because the slides are only one thing – that’s not counting the actual hard-copy portfolios, hundreds of books and handouts. I still have them fashion their own “textbook” that my blizzard of photocopies get 3-hole punched and filed away as an important repository of information. I have many such well-thumbed through tomes on my own shelves to turn to for answers and ideas.

Joseph, Hailey, Mari, Jenae

Once again we’ll be awash in timed exercises, a veritable tsunami of exercises and jams and critiques: I upped the number of works for the 220 level from four to six total graded critiqued assignments. We now will be developing characters (at the same time experimenting with different pen & ink techniques); then creating single-panels (both gags & editorials); then strips; then comics poetry; then the collaborative pages; and lastly their own minimum 3-page final for publication in the class collective comic book.

Mari

The 420 folks will also complete five of those six assignments, and do all the daily exercises, and also their own individual 12-page standalone comic, to also be printed + distributed on the day of the final. Which is a lot, and I’m well aware of how much time and effort that workload takes especially if you have other classes, probably at least a part-time job, and trying to maintain a relationship perhaps as well. It all sounds terribly familiar, and this burning the creative candle at both ends is part-and-parcel of learning how to somehow maintain output even amidst the collective demands of juggling a life.

Characters

It’s those individual lives, and their dreams and nightmares that drive these stories. All of the student’s respective interests and challenges and even disasters provide the fuel to burn through the semester. We are powered by our desire to put pen to paper and share our perspectives, tell our takes on the wonderful world around us, even as it crashes and burns. These pieces of paper bundle into a raft atop the rising tide of stress. Every sheet of Bristol is plastered upon us to eventually build up something of a suit of armored mâché.

Rei

Okay, okay – getting carried away again. But honestly, I’ve taken some really long, wide and deep dives into my archives, and it leaves me feeling so much about all the many and diverse and unique panels and pages I have been fortunate to see. And it never ends: there’s no shortage of other folks with their own tales to tell. Giving them the time and space and support is the ground floor of this entire class – we’ll all help put up the walls, and but what goes on them… and into each frame, is what it’s really all about.