Monday, July 19, 2010

Student Gags



The second assignment for the Summer Session "Cartoon & Comic Art" course is generating a set of single-panel gags. Also due to the truncated five-week (as opposed to the normal six-week) session this particular year I lumped the editorial panels in along with this critique - those'll be up on a separate, upcoming post. 


Some of the individual students really start to assert their individual styles plus there's the added bonus of seeing the relative senses of humor put on display. The dynamic between a "good joke will sell a bad drawing" mantra and the aesthetic superiority of a well-rendered panel becomes visible as well. 
Along those lines we briefly covered a mildly controversial statement made by cartoonist James Kochalka on "craft is the enemy" (this and other essays collected in "The Cute Manifesto"), and considered the relationship between stylistic conventions and personal expression and their relative effectiveness communicating an idea; whether a joke, an opinion or telling a story.    

“Pen and ink is wit's plough” - John Clarke

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