1-page Graphic Novel

Assignment:

For this assignment, I want you to write and illustrate a one-page graphic novel story. Although I won’t be grading you on your ability to draw, I do expect that you are thoughtful about the way you organize your material. The story should use a combination of text and imagery that highlights structure, manages diegetic timing as well as the reader’s time, creates tension, and develops characters.

Intended Outcomes:

The objective of this assignment is to bring an alternative mode of storytelling into the classroom. It is also to get my students to think about scene and character through image and action rather than just telling (I did this, I like that, I felt sad, etc.). In the lectures leading up to this assignment I share clippings from graphic novels that we close read. During the close readings I emphasis the interaction between the text and the picture: when and why do you use text rather than a picture and vice versa?

Basic Key Terms I Highlight for Graphic Novels:

Panel: A single frame or box that generally contains one sequence or segment of action.

·      The spatial arrangement allows an immediate juxtaposition of the present and the past.

·      Unlike other visual media, transitions are instantaneous and direct but the exact timing of the reader’s experience is determined by focus and reading speed.

Gutter: The blank space between panels is “the gutter.” Action that occurs here is not literally seen or experienced by the reader; rather, it is to be inferred.

Captions: Captions are information bubbles or boxes that are generally separate from the rest of the panel or page. Often, captions are used to create a voice-over technique to the action in front of us. They are also spaces for soliloquies, personal thoughts, and, occasionally, dialogue. Read them carefully.

·      External dialogue, which is speech between characters

·      Internal dialogue, which is a thought enclosed by a balloon that has a series of dots or bubbles going up to it

Speech Balloon: Speech balloons indicate dialogue in a text (although they may serve as thought balloons/bubbles).

 Splash Page – When a panel consists of the entire page.

Foreground: The image closest to the viewer.

Midground: Allows centering of image by using natural resting place for vision. The artist deliberately decides to place the image where a viewer would be most likely to look first. Placing an image off-center or near the top or bottom can be used to create visual tension but using the midground permits the artist to create a more readily accepted image.

Background: Provides additional, subtextual information for the reader.