ILLUS-3942

GAINED IN TRANSLATION: COMICS AS ADAPTATION

Faculty: Paul Karasik

Course Level: Junior, Senior, 5th Year

3 CREDITS

Done well, respectful, original, and inventive adaptations can deliver fresh interpretations of original sources that are themselves new works of art that stand on their own merits. In this course students will adapt written works from a variety of source materials into multi-page comics stories, demonstrating how form, narrative arc, cultural context, character, and emotion can be translated faithfully and artfully from one medium to another. In the process of doing the work, students will master the language of comics; a medium with its own vernacular. Using unique combinations of words and pictures to form meaning, students will gain insights into shared principles of story telling that apply to both prose and visual narrative. After deep reading of texts to understand structure, story and meaning, students will interpret and visually amplify the adapted texts, taking the new work from the thumbnailto the full sketch, to final art, and then to self-published mini-comics.

Capacity: 15

Registration Restriction: Major elective; restricted to Illustration juniors and seniors; open to non-majors pending seat availability and permission of instructor. 

Semester Offered: Spring