FROM DUSK TILL DRAWN: Comics Art Studies and Graphic Narratives Composition, Workshops, Events & Zine Publishing @ Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University [Bangkok – THAILAND]
On Thursday September 29, 2022, we held a stimulating guest lecture and workshop with French non-fiction graphic-novelist, editorial cartoonist and animation director Aurel whose movie Josep was honoured by the 2021 César Award for Best Animated Film.
My warm thanks to Aurel for his time and enlightening and captivating insights, and to La Fête, Beyond Animation Festival and Clémentine Arfi for making this meaningful cultural exchange possible!
Analysing comics motif braiding, page composition, text/image interplay, abstraction tricks, variety of techniques and standpoint inversion in a remarkable 12-page sequence from the comics Singes by Aurel.
The workshop consisted in applying the various graphic non-fiction composition techniques discussed during the guest lecture to the comics adaptation of an imposed paragraph excerpted from the chapter A Race of Cooks in Yuval Noah Harari‘s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011/2015). The 35 participating students -from Faculties and Departments of Literature, Architecture, Communication Design, Communication Arts, Psychology and Chemistry- had 30 minutes to compose individually a 2-page comics breakdown (drawn draft) of the paragraph. After completion, Aurel’s own graphic take on the Sapiens paragraph in his comics Singes and David Vandermeulen & Daniel Casenave’s comics adaptation in Sapiens: A Graphic History were introduced to the students to compare radically different approaches. Each student’s comics breakdown was later commented individually by yours truly.
The Sapiens paragraph in Aurel’s Singes.The Sapiens paragraph in Vandermeulen and Casenave’s Sapiens: A Graphic History.
Here are some results from the students’ workshop:
By Communication Design student Gun.
By Literature/BALAC student Phuri.By Architecture/INDA student Cherry.By Communication Design student Fond.By Communication Arts and Myanmar student HsuHsu.By Communication Design student Kim.By Literature/BALAC student Kong.By Literature/BALAC student Kuku.By Architecture/INDA student Lookkaew.By Psychology/JIPP student Mimi.By Communication Design student Will (1/2).By Communication Design student Will (2/2).By Architecture/INDA student M-M. By Communcation Arts and Myanmar student Susan. By Communication Design student Palm.By Psychology/JIPP student Utter.
The perks of teaching comics composition; being offered some of the sweetest gifts. My warmest thanks to former CommDe thesis advisee & soon-to-be Graphic Storytelling student at LUCA Beeldverhaal (Belgium), mademoiselle LycheeVanabudChaiprakorb, for this comics page which nicely encapsulates what my job is (sometimes) about, some nice comics features (non-linear narrative; De Luca/Siamese murals effects…), and an important lesson: comics help us to cut across boundaries. As Shane Denson puts it: the comics panel’s frame marks “a boundary that defines the image as a unit, thus separating it from the space around it, but it also marks a zone of connection and in fact invites the viewer to cross its threshold, to pass into the territory it defines” (Framing, Unframing, Reframing: Retconning the Transnational Work of Comics, 2013). It’s one of the many beautiful paradoxes of comics making; drawing borders that are meant to be respected AND passed through, in a constant back and forth, connecting each image with the ones around and beyond, intertwining the individual [panel] and the collective [page] in a all-at-once & one-with-everything unique experience. Little Muay gets a bit hurt at the end of the page, and that might be another lesson; comics’ scaffolding composition is no easy feat.
Thank you dear Lychee for this great page; it means a lot to me. Keep crossing borders, from Thailand to Belgium, from each panel to the others! A. Nicolas
As an individual assignment for the “Creative Writing Section 11 [Experimental & Fiction Comics Composition]” (International Program, Faculty of Communications Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand), students were asked to explore the concept of “windows on time in a single place” developed by American cartoonist Richard McGuire with his two stories titled “Here” (1989 in the pages of RAW, and 2014 as an extended graphic novel). The complete groundbreaking graphic narrative can be read on this post: “Here” by Richard McGuire. Some of our students’ comics are displayed below in this post. More will be added soon.
First page (out of six) of the short comics Here by Richard McGuire, published in RAW Volume 2 #1, USA, 1989. Full story… here.
The graphic narratives produced by my Thai [and exchange] students were inventive and striking, as some explored not only the COVID-19 crisis but addressed social and political issues in a straightforward way, revealing Thailand’s traumatic decades made of military coups and bloody crackdowns. I guess the assignment came timely, capturing the frustrations of a new generation of young adults, revealing visually the overburduning and endless cycle of coups and sociopolitical struggles. With my students and with Richard McGuire’s approval, we decided to set the assignment as a challenge and invite everyone to take part, as we believe that in these times of self-isolation, it might be interesting to widen the limited and constrained space we now inhabit by exploring it through time.
“Like how does something happen, and… how does it reverberate through time? And that act of memory is important, and comics are great for memory. Like even when you have a short comic, like a three-panel comic, you’ve got a past, a present and a future as soon as you look at those three boxes. And that allows you to reflect and compare times.” (Art Spiegelman, in: Conan, N. (2011). MetaMaus: The Story Behind Spiegelman’s Classic; radio interview, Oct 5)
OPEN-ACCESS LAYOUT
So here’s the layout that you are free to use [click on the image for larger version], and please add the hashtags #MeanwhileHereComics and/or #การ์ตูนที่นี่ (‘KatunTiNee’ which means “Here Comics” in Thai language) so that we can follow your artworks online.Thank you in advance for joining!
“Time, as cut into minute sausage slices and laid out on the [comics] page in an array from which larger connections and patterns may be sensed, is the cartoonist’s ‘paint’ or ‘clay.’ […] Trying to communicate the hugely incomprehensible yet indescriptibly fine texture of life in little reconstructions sort of mirrors the way we remember it… Really, when one come right down to it, in the end, that’s all we have: our memories!” (Chris Ware, in: Why I Love Comics. The New York Times , 2015)
OUR STUDENTS’ COMICS
#MeanwhileHereComics pages by students of the “Creative Writing Section 11 [Experimental and Fiction Comics Composition]” course. More will be added soon. In the captions below some pages, I’ve introduced links to some local/Thai events referred to in the graphic narratives. PS: I’m proud of my students’ hard and meaningful works. #ProudAjarn
Click on page for larger size. Panel 3 [2019]: waves of harmful [Particulate Matter] PM 2.5 levels in the air.
Click on page for larger size. Panel 1 [1934]: tree growing two after the Siamese Revolution leading from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. Panel 2 [1976]: reference to the [graphic] photograph of Pulitzer Prize winner Neal Ulevich showing a junta supporter striking the lynched body of a student with a foldable chair in front of a cheering crowd, during the Thamassat University Massacre. Panels 3 and 5 [1976]: reference to the same photograph (lynched student). Panel 5 [2020]: ongoing University Students Protests for a fairer democratic system, with students making the “three-finger [Hunger Games] salute” in a sign of defiance against military rule. Panel 6 [2020]: COVID-19…
Click on page for larger size. Panel 1 [2012]: reference to the Democracy Monument which commemorates the 1932 Siamese Revolution. Panel 4 [2020]: COVID-19…
Click on page for larger size. Panel 4 [2020]: COVID-19…
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Click on page for larger size. Panels 1 and 6: Chinese-type funeral altar above which a portrait of the deceased person is placed.
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Click on page for larger size. Panels 3 and 6 [1868]: reference to the famous Thai ghost story Mae Nak (where the spectral nature of a female ghost is revealed to her husband when she stretches her arm oddly to pick a fallen lime).
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COMPOSITION PROCESS
As these “constrained comics” & concept are quite challenging, composition was achieved over a couple of weeks, and with the submission of several drafts commented by yours truly… via the Line app due to current COVID-19 crisis. If you want to spot the differences, and see how every minute detail [from color to fonts or encapsulation] matters in comics composition where “each element is thus: one with everything” (Nick Sousanis in: Unflattening, comics dissertation published by Harvard University Press, 2015).
#BiggerQuestions: in-class creative assignment (Intro Comm course developed by the Faculty of Communication Arts; Interpersonal Communication chapter); weaving 7 scattered wordless panels (taken fromAnders Nilsen‘s Big Questions) into a 2-page graphic narrative.
BLURB!
“Great exercise!” Matt Madden(February 9, 2018), cartoonist and teacher best known for his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style (Penguin), as well as a member of OuBaPo (Workshop for Potential Comics), and later a French knight in the Order of Arts and Letters.
“More good stuff from [Bangkok], thanks for sharing!” Nick Sousanis (February 9, 2018), assistant professor of Humanities & Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University. He received his doctorate in education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2014, where he wrote and drew his dissertation entirely in comic book form. Titled Unflattening, it argues for the importance of visual thinking in teaching and learning, and was published by Harvard University Press in 2015.
January 2018. Fifty (1st year) Thai students at the International Program in Communication Design (CommDe, Department of Industrial Design, Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University) received 2 pages displaying 7 scattered panels (with erased text) taken from various pages of the graphic novel Big Questions by American cartoonist Anders Nilsen. Within 90 minutes, they had to produce additional panels (if necessary) -and add dialogues- in order to bridge the imposed panels and weave a cohesive and convincing graphic narrative. Following brief comments provided on their comprehensive layouts, students finalized the artwork at home. See below for 20+ of their #BiggerQuestions constrained comics.
Inspired by on a constrained comics exercise used atPierre Feuille Ciseaux international comics residency-lab.
Pages from Anders Nilsen‘s Big Questions (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011).
The 2 imposed pages -with scattered panels and blanked-out dialogues- taken from Anders Nilsen‘s Big Questions (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011).
CommDe student bridging the gaps between Anders Nilsen‘s panels.
CommDe students working on a “exercise in style”… with style!
CommDe student bridging the gaps between Anders Nilsen’s incomplete and scattered panels.
CommDe students bridging the gaps between Anders Nilsen’s incomplete and scattered panels.
Fifty CommDe students bridging the gaps between Anders Nilsen’s incomplete and scattered panels.
Click on the 2-pagers below for larger size.
“Bigger Questions” constrained comics by (1st year) CommDe student PLYE
“Bigger Questions” constrained comics by (1st year) CommDe student YOSHIYUKI
“Bigger Questions” constrained comics by (1st year) CommDe student BYRD
“Bigger Questions” constrained comics by (1st year) CommDe student PT
PAGE 3/8. “Histoire de M. Jabot” by Rodolphe Töpffer (CH), 1830/1831.
PAGE 4/8. Up: “Histoire d’Albert” by Rodophe Töpffer (CH), 1845. Bottom “Impressions de voyages aériennes et maritimes de Mr. A.A.N. Trouillard épicier de la veille” by Cham (FR), unpublished and unfinished story, France, 1847-1848 but may be earlier than 1840.
PAGE 5/8. “Puis”; then. “Quand soudain”; when all od sudden. Bottom left; “Der Virtuos” by Wilhelm Busch (DE), 1865.
PAGE 6/8
PAGE 7/8. “Ainsi”; thus.
PAGE 8/8: “Enfin”; finally.
BRAIDING: “The way panels (that is the images in the panels) can be linked in series (continuous or discontinuous) through non-narrative correspondences, be it iconic (repetition of certain symbols or elements) or other means. In a way this is a kind of rhyming for comics.” Derik Badman commenting the term introduced by Thierry Groensteen in: Système de la bande dessinée, Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.
On “braiding”, from the first Graphic Writing lesson, CommArts, Chula
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