3373: Illustrated Narrative Workshop...Syllabus Managed

21º ~ feels like 9º ~ about an inch of snow on the ground, schools around the area are closed, freezing air to continue through the weekend


This morning, I set out to continue my work on syllabi for the upcoming semester. We start classes on Thursday, so today's "snow day" is just another work-from-home day for me. As I got settled into work mode, I did remember my last post and the fact that "we schedule what we value." In that spirit, I spent about an hour revising a couple of the poems from the self-exphrasis project before moving on to the first of three syllabi.

Today, I finished off the syllabus for Illustrated Narrative Workshop. This is an undergraduate class that follows the Forms of Illustrated Narrative course I taught this past fall. My brain must have grown at least three sizes from teaching that forms class, as much of the material was so new to me. We covered writing for comics/graphic novels, writing for video games, and creating hybrid 2D/3D projects. I'm so thankful that I had a group of awesome students with whom to navigate the mostly unfamiliar terrain. (Of course, I've engaged in all of these as a "reader," and I have my collage background for the hybrid section, but I had to learn how to teach about the writing side of things.)

With the fall's steep learning curve summited, I set off now on the next challenge, re-focusing the material and class on a workshop. In the forms class, we focus on exposure to many different examples and small projects for micro-workshops. In the workshop class, the projects grow in breadth and depth and our examination of samples is more exacting.

Here's our reading list:
· Abrams, JJ and Doug Dorst. S. New York: Mulholland, 2013.
· Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. New York: Mariner, 2007.
· Bryant, Robert Denton and Keith Giglio. Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games. Studio City: M Wiese, 2015.
· Krysa, Danielle. Collage: Contemporary Artists Hunt and Gather, Cut and Paste, Mash Up and Transform. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2014.
· Madden, Matt. 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. New York: Chamberlain, 2005.
· Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 2014. 

In this class, students will write a script for a comic or chapter of a graphic novel/memoir. This will entail a script for 16 - 22 pages of panels. A thumbnail appendix is encouraged but not required. Those who want to explore creating their own art as well may turn in 1 - 4 complete graphic pages. After the workshop on these scripts, we will dive into writing for video games and students will be writing 16 - 20-page game concept documents. Finally, after video game workshop, we will move on to the 2D/3D unit. Here, we will work with collage (2D or 3D) as well as creating 3D art objects that convey a narrative, including ergodic texts. ["Ergodic" = either hypertext or print text with "extra" material that must be read to complete the narrative...think Griffin and Sabine...check out S. by Abrams and Dorst.]

16 weeks? I think we're gonna need a bigger semester.