Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud. NY: HarperCollins Publishers 1993. ISBN 978-0-8028-5302-8, Q5/4P

This book has been called the “bible for comic books and Graphic Novels”. It gives you a history and overall theory behind this genre.

-Christina Gendron

 

Format:     Graphic Novel

Curriculum Connection: Visual Arts Grades 9-12

 ISBN:        006097625X

 McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding Comics. New York: HarperPerennial.

 

McCloud uses graphic novel format to discuss and explain various visual elements of comic books and other sequential art formats.

 

Rating:      5Q/5P

 

Lesson Plan #4 For an Advanced Creative Writing Class: High School

 

Note: the following two lesson plans are to be used together for separate classes for the full effect, and the final projects will take a long time to complete.

 

Objective:      The purpose of today’s lesson is to discuss and understand the potential roles that words have in graphic novels/comics. 

 

Materials Needed:  Copies of Understanding Comics.

 

Pre-Assignment:      Student’s should have already read chapter six for today’s lesson (but should hopefully have read other chapters prior to this class).

 

Introduction: Explain the goals of the lesson:

 

The goal of today’s lesson and the following project is to help writers understand the teamwork that goes into creating a graphic novel/comic book when the illustrator and writer are two different people.  By the end of today’s lesson, they should have a better understanding of how words and images can work together to create a different mode of story telling then just by words or images. 

 

Information/Discussion:        Ask the students if they have any questions or comments on chapter six.  These should be used to start the discussion and lead it.  It is important that the class comes to fully understand the concepts of graphic novels being a joint collaboration; two types of art being merged together.   The main terms that should be discussed are the different combinations of words and images: additive, parallel, montage, and interdependent. It is also important to discuss with the students what potential problems that writers could face when working with an illustrator, especially a writer who is use to working along.

 

1.      How is creative writing for a graphic novel different from writing a story alone? 

 

2.      In what ways will the writer have to change his/her writing style in order to work with an illustrator?

 

3.      What are some potential problems that writers might give illustrators? How could a writer make his/her illustrator’s life easier while still giving them artistic license?

 

4.      As writers, are you prepared to see someone else’s portrayal of your work?

 

Activity:           Break the class into groups and have each group write a quick short “scene” (three panels at most).  Only allow them to include the words that will go into the actual panels and a brief introduction to the scene.  When each scene is complete, collect the scenes and redistribute them to the different groups making sure no group has it’s own scene.   Each group is to discuss the scene among themselves and come up with visual images for each panel and then discuss the images they saw with the class.  It should become apparent through this exercise that the author’s mental image of the scene is far different from what their “illustrators” came up with.  

 

Independent Practice/ Assignment:           Introduce the first part of the assignment.  Student’s will be writing a short story in the graphic novel format.  Since they are writers, they are not to include in depth descriptions, but rather, they can include only descriptions that are pivotal to the text (somewhat like a play with scene descriptions).  The format should be like a screen page with each panel having it’s own information. The short stories should only take up two finished illustrated pages, and they should use Understanding Comics as a guide on how many panels per page, how many words per page, etc.

 

Evaluation:     When students return with their finished scripts, they should be reviewed first by the other students who will give their feedback.  Because this is a relatively new format of writing, the teacher should also give feedback not only the story telling, but on whether or not it works as a graphically told story.  The students should be allowed to make revisions until they develop a well written script.  This may take multiple in class discussions of the works. 

 

Hopefully, and depending on the amount of class time per week, an advance creative writing class will have finished scripts in a week and a half to two weeks (depending on how quickly the first draft is finished).  It is at this point that the second half of the assignment is explained to the students; that an advance art class will be picking from the scripts to illustrate, and that the two will have to work together to create a finished project.

 

 

 

Lesson Plan #5 For an Advanced Art/Illustration Class

 

Note: the prior lesson plan is to be used in conjunction with this lesson plan for separate classes for the full effect, and the final projects will take a long time to complete.

 

Objective:      The purpose of today’s lesson is to discuss and understand the potential roles that images play in graphic novels/comic books. 

 

Materials Needed:  Copies of Understanding Comics.

 

Pre-Assignment:      Student’s should have already read chapter six for today’s lesson (but should hopefully have read other chapters prior to this class in other class discussions).

 

Introduction: Explain the goals of the lesson:

 

Like the goals of the previous lesson plan, the goal of this lesson and is to help illustrators understand the teamwork that goes into creating a graphic novel/comic book when the illustrator and writer are two different people.  By the end of today’s lesson, they should have a better understanding of how words and images can work together to create a different mode of story telling then just by words or images, and what role the illustrator plays in the creative process.

 

Information/Discussion:        As in the creative writing class, the discussion should open with questions or comments that students have about chapter six, and also like the previous lesson plan, the students need to understand the concepts of graphic novels being a joint collaboration.  They should also understand the main terms which are used to described the art/word relationship: additive, parallel, montage, and interdependent.  In addition, get the student’s thinking about the role of an illustrator:

 

1.      How is illustrating a graphic novel different from producing your own art?

 

2.      When the written work is already created, what is the role of the illustrator?

 

3.      How will the illustrator have to adjust his/her style?

 

4.      How can an illustrator still have his/her distinct style when illustrating someone else’s work?

 

5.      What are some potential problems that illustrators might give writers? How could an illustrator make his/her writer’s life easier while still giving them artistic license?

 

6.      As illustrators, are you prepared to have someone criticize your version of their work?

 

Activity:           The teacher of this class should have been given the final scripts of the creative writing class, and unless the two classes have the exact same number of students, either some scripts will be used twice or not at all.  The activity then, is to introduce these scripts to the art students and allow them to pick the script they want to illustrate.  Each student should be given a packet which contains the copies of each script, and then rate them in order of most desirable to least. 

 

 

 

Then it’s a lottery to see who gets what script to illustrate.  Each student should have their name put into a “hat” and the first person drawn gets their first pick.  If there are more illustrators the scripts, students have a choice to pick a script that someone else has chosen to do as well; however, this will be limited depending on the number of students (for example, if there are 8 scripts and 10 illustrators, two scripts can be done twice.  The first person pulled gets their pick, the second person can either choose that script or another one, the third person can pick either the same script as student one or two unless one and two had picked the same one. If student one and three picked the same script then only one more person can pick a duplicate, and it’s first come, first served. In other words, a script can only be used twice, and if the limited number of duplications have been used up by the fifth student or so, the remaining students can’t duplicate).  If there are more scripts then illustrators, then the scripts not chosen will not be illustrated and that writer will work as an editor with another writer who’s script was chosen.

 

Independent Practice/ Assignment:            For this particular lesson, the illustrator is to create a story board/rough draft of the illustrations for the writer to look at.  The illustrator should make clear notes on why s/he did the specific things that s/he did and what s/he envisions the final out come to be.

 

 

 

Continuing the Project for both lesson plans:    This project will continue until there is a finished product, but the “trick” is that illustrator and writer will not meet until then (to make it even more fun, they may not even know the name of the student they are working with).  Each week a new stage of the project will be due either by the writer or the illustrator (writing revisions, changes to story boards, etc.), and projects will be collected by both teachers for evaluation and redistribution. As stated before, writers who have not been assigned an illustrator will work as editors for the whole class instead (another important job in the industry), and will work with all of the writers to keep them objective and help with ideas.  If there are editors, the writing teacher will take a back seat on the project and instruct the editors on how to handle their “clients.”  If there are no editors, then the teacher will play that role.  By the end of the assignment, all short graphic stories will be compiled into one anthology where the editors work together (they choose the order of the stories, whether there are chapters, etc.) and all editors should include a piece of original writing that discusses the project. 

 

 

 

Submitted by Amanda Melilli 4/23/08

 

 

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding Comics: the Invisible Art. New York, NY: Harper Books.

 

ISBN-10: 006097625X

 

ISBN-13: 978-0060976255

 

Author and artist Scott McCloud walks the reader through the history, significance, and points towards the future of an overlooked but powerful medium.

 

*Use in art classes [9^th – 12^th grade].

 

Media: Pencil/Ink

 

5Q/5P

 

 

CJS 5/9/08

 

 

 

 

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Kitchen Sink Press, 1993.

Summary: Excellent history and analysis of what comics are and how they work.

Analysis: Hey, something I can use both for my books list and for professional reading! This is engaging, easy to follow, and fascinating. It covers sequential art starting with Mayan art and the Bayoux tapestry, on through to the early '90s, covering the influence of major art and literature movements along the way. It's focused mainly on Western comics, but includes quite a few references to manga and other Asian comic styles as well. There are descriptions of different styles and techniques in comics -- the use of color, frames, words, representational style, and how time and space are depicted. This would be very useful for anyone studying art in general, for the way it discusses how the brain processes images. I was particularly interested in the chapter on "masking" -- how people identify more closely with less representational figures, since they're more generic. I've noticed in several graphic novels I've read for this class the phenomenon he discusses where people are depicted much more cartoonishly than their surroundings, particularly in manga. It also gives me a much better distinction between picture books and graphic novels/comics -- picture books are (mostly) not sequential; comics are, regardless of the age group each is intended for.

Illustrations: Pen-and-ink cartoon line drawings with color towards the end (plus a vast array of different styles in examples).

Rating: 5Q/5P

Curricular connections: 8-12th grade language or art class studying comics or art styles.

 

-- SLH