Język narracji w rysunku: Współczesny Komiks

Język narracji w rysunku: Współczesny Komiks/Narrative Language in Drawing: Contemporary Comics

Kierownik/Head of the laboratory: mgr José Manuel Jiménez Muñoz

Kontakt/Contact: jose.jimenez-munoz@uap.edu.pl 

Asystent/Assistant: mgr Agata Sophie st11811@uap.edu.pl

Adres/Address: Budynek F – Ul. Szewska 16, Pokój 18

Języki wykładowe/Language(s) of instruction: English/Angielski, Spanish/Hiszpański

Program pracowni/Program of the laboratory

The laboratory Narrative Language in Drawing: Contemporary Comics or Język narracji w rysunku (współczesny komiks) is an English taught subject within the Department of Image and Interdisciplinary Practices where students can learn about graphic storytelling and narrative strategies within plastic mediums.

The laboratory provides students the tools needed to develop and polish narrative aspects focused on Comic’s sequential language.

When originating a story based on those standards, it is imperative to acknowledge the intricacy of the gear that makes this narrative system work; not only to ensure the emergence of new narratives inputs but also to secure a whole new array of possibilities for artistic expression.

Comic is a complex system of intricate mechanisms that provides us with the possibility to build new realities and create communication bridges, thus allowing the readership to dive into those visual conundrums. Most certainly, its complexity is noticeable as the media requires the artist to have a very wide set of skills affixed to narration, storytelling, sequentialisation, plastic and artistic matureness or literacy abilities amongst others.

The programme, designed to fit an annual timing, is compartmentalised in two separate groups of students: the advanced and the beginners group. Both include theoretical content and, most importantly, a set of practical tasks or projects destined to improve the skills of the students as they approach storytelling equipped with their own ambitions and interests.

These practical exercises are as follows:

Beginners Group/ First timers in the Lab.

WINTER SEMESTER

Project I: Accordion Book Narratives. The usage of space in comics.

Project II: Newspaper’s with shortage, limitation, and solution solving in storytelling.

SUMMER SEMESTER

Project III: Shifting stories, script writing and tackling the drawer’s storytelling voice.

Project IV: Limited surface stories. Annual collective project from the laboratory, published as a fanzine.

The program of the laboratory, although focusing on the practical enterprise of students as they tackle each project designed to explore and expand on specific skills, also provides theoretical information serving as guidance and instruction for the proper performance of students on the aforementioned tasks.

This information is yearly distributed along both semesters and expands as follows:

Comic History:

• Introduction to pictographic narration and the ideas prior to a true narrative system.
• From Middle-Aged manuscripts to the Engraving and printing era: the construction of a picture-based storytelling language.
• The appearance of comic as an artistic medium: American press, European albums and Japanese manga.
• Graphic novels and neo-comic, the contemporary side of narrative constructions.
• Homage to the past to intervene in the present.
• Comic’s possibilities: storytelling in the sequential form of juxtaposed plastic images. 

Understanding comics:

• Typology of the sequence and its uses.
• Spatial and timing perceptions: how to overcome an artistic medium based on time and the coordination of images.
• Texts and images: oral, written expression and the balance between literature and plasticity.
• Plastic qualities of comics: construction of a multi-level complex system.
• Typology of the page and its categorisation according to its uses: an approach to the frame and the different aspects of space treatment in the media.
• Narrative vectors: the impression of the story and the control of the reader’s visual and narrative patterns.
• The representation of time through graphic and format distribution and composition.
• Storytelling procedures and creative process of scripts. Planning of intentions: what and how.
• The reading exercise: relationship between readership, context, and the artist. 
• Asterios Polyp: Analysis of medium and its narrative opportunities.
• Comic as an art form disjointed from other sequential forms such as cinematography or video art. 

Iconicity in Comics:

• Typology of the icon and the picture. 
• The development of the perception of reality and plasticity. 
• The identity of a narrative visual world and McCloud’s triangle of abstraction.
• The vocabulary of comics

Time perception:

• Understanding of timing procedures and its impression in the media and over the readership.
• The different closures according to image sequentialisation.
• The invisible storyline: narrative vectors and timing.
• How to measure and perceive time in visual representation: structures, forms and uses.
• The grammatical practice of comics.

Spatial aspects:

• The Cage: analysis of the treatment of space inside a story or diegetic spaces.
• Analysis and review of the space outside the story or extra-diegetic spaces: the form, the shape and the formalisation of comics.
• Space in and out the panel: the manipulation of frames and its significance, spatial construction, planning and composition.
• Comic as narrative architectures and storytelling infrastructure. 
• The contextualisation and formalisation of comics beyond two dimensions.
• Comic outside the editorial form. 

Techniques:

• Digital and analog ways for comic creation: production, colouring, retouching, typographies and final art.
• From sketch to final art: the process of comics. 

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IG: @comic_lab_uap