A comic book is a narrative and an image in one. In two days, we’ll help you figure out what’s what. We’ll teach you how to tell stories through images, relying not only on the plot, but also on visual language. We’ll show how to make your comic not only understandable to the reader but fascinating and interesting from the first to the last page. We will tell you about the peculiarities of making a storyline for a comic book, will teach you to make up a storyboard, to use composition schemes, tone and color when creating a comic book page.

Program of the intensive course

  • Introduction to comics: formats, history, genres
  • How comics emerged and developed as an art form.
  • What formats and genres exist in comics.
  • Composition in general and in comics
  • Reading order, hierarchy, juxtaposition of big and small, simple forms, statics and dynamics, rhythm and meter
  • The synopsis and script of a comic book
  • Briefly about the main idea, the synopsis (what it is and why we need it)
  • How to write a comics script: schemes and techniques.
  • The storyboard in a comic book
  • Composition in the storyboard
  • Features of the narrative visual language.
  • Frame sizes and shapes, placement of cylinders with text, plans
  • Concept art: characters
  • Features of concept art for a comic book
  • How to make characters vivid and recognizable
  • Character detailing
  • How much detail should be worked out of a comic book character
  • How to tell a story through details
  • Concept Art: the Environment
  • How to draw space without drawing space
  • How to make a scene memorable

How the course goes
In 10 lectures and 8 hours of practice we will have time to work in detail on your own comic strip. We will go through all the points and stages from the initial idea to the script writing, storyboarding and enlarging it into pages, we will introduce you to a number of graphic techniques that can be used in drawing a comic, help you learn the basic principles of design of comic characters and locations.

At the end of the course you will have a small comic strip of three to five pages, a script for it, written on a theme of your choice, and concept work for characters and locations for that comic strip.

If you’ve long wanted to tell a story, no matter if it’s a comic or a heroic epic, and put it in comic form, or if you’ve been dreaming of working as a comic book artist, we’ll tell you where to start. We’ll give you a step-by-step guide on how to create a comic and turn it into a book, magazine, an anthology or an online publication.

What you’ll learn

  • How to make a cool storyboard
  • How to get started
  • How to develop a good script
  • About materials and techniques
  • How to make characters vivid and recognizable
  • How to visualize a story
  • About the stages of comic book creation
  • Tricks and tips