Though
this is specifically a Mark Twain blog, it was formed for the purpose of
fulfilling course requirements for Dr. Beringer’s ENG 405 course. However, this
week my class was told that we could write a reflection of a comics workshop
rather than a traditional blog post, and I have decided to go that route.
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| A sketch taken from Chris Garrison's website - saltyham.org - depicts a character from his strip "Our Heroes", which ran for 64 weeks. |
I attended the Comic Creation
Workshop, led by local Birmingham artist Chris Garrison. The focus of the workshop
was to illustrate the full process of comic creation, and to talk about both
the brainstorming and the actual planning and drawing stages. Dr. Beringer
introduced Garrison as a man of many talents, with career highlights including
a range of creative endeavors spanning from writing to film directing. Garrison
opened up the workshop by having attendees help brainstorm the exposition of
the piece – we were asked to shout out types of animals, favorite names, and
near death experiences in order to provide audience based inspiration. Our
group decided that we would focus on an otter and a chicken in a lover’s feud,
with a prank and a daring zip line escape.
This workshop was extremely
interesting to witness, as I never truly realized how many steps go in to the
creation of a comic. Understandably, there is a lot of planning and this takes
the form of many different stages. So many factors have to be considered in
order to have an idea of a layout. Garrison first wrote out his dialogue, and
then separated these into panels. After this, he considered which panels should
go where on the page, and how large they should be – naturally, more climactic
scenes have larger panels, and something else to consider is what all needs to
be in a frame in order for a panel to make sense (for example, when drawing the
zip line scene, Garrison pointed out that the shot would have to be drawn from
a very distant perspective in order to get the house and power pole in the
panel). After all of this careful planning was finished, Garrison took another
moment to sketch a quick layout of panels to make sure that they lined up with
one another. Finally, after all of these necessary steps, we were able to
witness Garrison sketching the actual comic. This was incredibly exciting to
watch – Garrison is talented at drawing cute animal figures, and it was
intriguing to watch an idea that we had just conceived 40 minutes ago together
come to life. The session unfortunately ran out of time, so we were unable to
see any more than a rough sketch, but at that point it was obvious what further
steps needed to be taken – detailed drawing and polishing of the work – but the bulk of the effort was complete.
Though I am not myself a comic
artist, I am an appreciator or comics and I enjoyed being able to watch someone
work and bring an idea to life in front of our group by means of a document
camera. This workshop was entertaining and I feel that though I thought I
already understood the process of comic creation, I learned a great deal about
how intricate it truly is and how important planning can be in order to create
a polished product. It makes me want to revisit my favorite comics and truly
appreciate how much went in to a brief moment of entertainment.
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