Week 1 and 2 with Paul Karasik

The past two weeks have been an introduction to comics making. Our teacher has been the very nice and tall man of Paul Karasik, who adapted Paul Auster's City of Glass into a beautiful graphic novel in 1994.

An analysis of the 1930's newspaper comic strip Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller became the starting point to understanding the fundamentals of comics language. Our first task was by using the understanding of this strip: ...

... to draw the last panel in two other Nancy strips.

My attempt to think like the genius! of Ernie Bushmiller:

Here are my notes on the whole thing: 

All these things are observable in the first Nancy strip.

Our second task was to create a 3 page "How To..." comic. An instruction in how to do some everyday action. I chose to do "How to read a book". When the three pages were done we were told to condense the three pages into one.

The result:

The last big task has been to make an autobiographical story into a twelve page mini comic. I haven't finished inking the pages, but I will some time this week and then I will upload it here. All the stories people have told are really great, some are horrifying, others hilarious. 

 

Here my comic finally is (uploaded the 16. of September). It is called Night Out.

 

The two weeks have been amazing and I am starting to look at comics in a new way. It is inspiring to be among people who all have different jumping off points and inspiration sources. I have opened my eyes to the comic art of Chris Ware and Osamu Tezuka among others, whom I haven't really gotten before. 

Paul Karasiks way of working is a very methodical way, where you really work out the whole structure of your story before anything else. A mantra has been that comics is a reductive language and that form follows function. I really love this way of working, since I am not - at the moment - necessarily that much into drawing as I am to planning, structuring and writing (i.e. telling a story). The drawings kind of comes in second at the moment.

I am so excited about the next four years.......... wohoo.

PS: We analyzed and read some really amazing comics during these two weeks, and I want you to check this out: Dreams of the rarebit fiend by Winsor McKay, the guy who also did Little Nemo in Slumberland. Dreams of the rarebit fiend is the adult version of the Nemo comics, where every page will contain a nightmare and in the bottom right corner, the dreamer who has woken up. This one is really beautiful, and you really don't have to read the balloons to get it: