A few months ago, I blogged about the books we would be reading in my Art of the Graphic Novel class this fall.  One eye-blink later, and it’s already the end of the semester.

For their final projects, I gave students the choice of either writing a research paper or creating “an original contribution to the medium of comics accompanied by a two-page artist’s statement.”  I also required that their work fit Scott McCloud’s definition of the term ‘comics,’ as seen below.

It may not surprise you too much to learn that, given these options, almost all art students will choose to make something, rather than write a research paper.

The better responses to the assignment not only demonstrated an understanding of the course material but also managed to be entertaining, funny, or moving. What follows below is a selection of these.

The first three works consist of entirely original material; the remaining four are visual “settings” of preexisting song lyrics or poems. Other than this, the works are incredibly varied in style and approach. I’ll introduce each student’s work using some quotations from their artist’s statement. We’ll start with the humorous work, progress to more serious themes, and finish on some downright apocalyptic material.

Er… and one more thing. Have I mentioned how lucky I feel to work with such talented students?

Hal Teasler’s The John Connor Show
My contribution is a short illustrated children’s book about a new born, stand-up comedian named John Connor Teasler, the son of my brother. He was born November 18, 2010 in Starkville, Mississippi. I would often look at the baby and wonder what he was thinking. Could he think? Is he even aware of anything going on? He could open his eyes, but could he ‘see’ and make sense of anything? The only way you could try and make sense of what he was thinking or feeling was through the facial expressions that he made. The use of facial expressions became a major component of my work.

[Here are the first12 pages of Hal's 26-page book.]

Sara Renfroe’s My Furry Roommate
I took a lot of inspiration in the creation of my comic strip from comics like Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, and Popeye. I have always been interested in those strips because of their characters, the styles in which they are executed, and simple colors. I wanted to do my comic like the ones in the Sunday papers, a funny story that is told in six to eight panels. I didn’t want to do just black and white because I felt like the color added more personality to the comic.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my dog very, very much. For the most part she makes me very happy, but there are times when I’ve wanted to give her to the pound.

Ashley Jackson’s The Female Heart
The course of a breakup for a female is a tough and trying period of time in which poor decisions are made that are fully governed by emotions. The breakup occurs and the stages are played out in my graphic novel called The Female Heart. The novel is a parody commenting on the strange emotions us women go through after being broken-up with.

Stage One: Confusion. “Is he leaving? Yes.” “Is he really leaving? Yes.” “Am I all alone? Yes.” This stage immediately follows the dreaded breakup where the female is surrounded by a haze in which she cannot seem to function. She realizes that her significant other is no longer there and that their relationship has come to a screeching halt: rather a dead-end where he dropped her off and drove away. She realizes the relationship has truly ended and it sinks in quick and strong.

[Here's the "Confusion" stage of Ashley's book. Subsequent stages are (2) Depression, (3) Anger, and (4) Naivety.]

Mary Katherine Blackwell’s The Mountain
“The Mountain” is a folk murder ballad written by my brother Drew Blackwell, a local bluesman. In six verses, he relates the story of a bootlegger who murders a drunken hobo in order to fabricate his own death so that he can leave his nagging wife Molly and move away with his lover Mary.

The red triangle is used several times throughout the comic in reference to the mountain as indication of the actual place where the murders were carried out and its associated dread; but it is also strongly symbolic of the moral scenario the main character finds himself in: a passionate love triangle.

I decided from the start not to use a grid layout because I felt that the page turn in between frames greatly added to the suspense of the plot. I enjoyed the way the change in paper color transitioned the reader from frame to frame. It has the same effect of a page turn except that it happens in the middle of a two-page spread.

[Here are some sample pages from Mary Katherine's 48-page book]

Steven (and Ashlei) Joshlin’s Me and the Devil Blues / Strange Fruit
My intention when converting “Me and the Devil Blues” to visual form was to mix mythological elements of his life and narrative presented in the song.

“Strange Fruit” is filled dark and haunting imagery. Originally a poem written by Abel Meeropol, it was inspired by a photograph showing the lynching of African Americans. It was later put to music by Billie Holiday and became one of her signature ballads.

On both comics I broke down the songs into individual verses. For each verse I drew one large panel illustration. Within each illustration are smaller panels, mostly detail and moment-to-moment shots. Some of these are invented (or details of the main illustration) while others are details explicitly mentioned in the song.

[Here are some sample pages from the two works]

Stephanie Faerber’s The Raven
My graphic novel version of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” was my first attempt at illustrating a story of any kind. I used a grid based layout, breaking the pages into nine panels, seven on two occasions. While the text flows from panel to panel, only every other panel has an image to accompany the text.

I created the artwork through a combination of Adobe Illustrator and pen work. Much of my imagery is based on reference photos of similar objects from the internet.

[Here are two (non-consecutive) pages from the work.]

Corey Childers’ F# A# ∞
I chose to create a comic based on the album F# A# ∞ (pronounced “F-sharp, A-sharp, infinity) by the band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Though the album is mostly instrumental, each of the three tracks has a few lyrics at the beginning, which provided the basis for my comic.

For the artwork, I chose to use watercolor and black India ink, as I felt they would be good media for the dark tone of the album. The visual style creates an unsettling feeling, much like the album’s music. I purposefully exaggerated much of the contrasts in lights and darks to help accomplish this.

The overall experience of creating my own comic for this class was quite interesting and challenging, and the things I learned throughout the course greatly helped in the process–specifically, the transitions between panels, and the reasons for making characters iconic rather than realistic.

[Here's the title page and two later pages.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Art History, Literature, Sequential Art & Comics, Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.