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Mail Bishan Samaddar at samrc@vsnl.com or call 2455 6942. Workshop fee Rs 1000.
There are going to be two workshops at Seagull. Workshop 1: The Basics will be 1, 3,4,5,6 August, and Workshop 2: The Masterclass will be 8,9 August.
Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre
Graphic/Comics Scripting Workshop 1: The Basics
1, 3,4,5,6 August, 3pm-7pm
Rimi B. Chatterjee and Avijit Chatterjee
Five days, four hours per day = 20 hours
This workshop is intended for people who have imagination and ideas but have never written/drawn for comics before. It is equally for writers and artists, and for that fortunate few who can do both.
Day 1: The workshop will begin with the wild and wacky phase of brainstorming story ideas. I will do a series of imagination-freeing exercises with you to get the storytelling muscles limbered up. This will help people work out what kind of story they want to tell and discover what tales they may have lurking inside them.
Day 2: Once we have the seeds of our stories, we need to water them and grow them up. This is where we work on the details of characterization, setting and plot, and troubleshoot any conceptual rough spots. People listen to each other’s story ideas and give feedback as well as get it from other participants and from me.
Day 3: Now we move toward turning the story into a script. We identify key narrative points in the story which will absolutely have to be visually shown. Then we work out how the story will get from point to point as interestingly and economically as possible. At this stage we draw up tentative page and frame counts. We change or eliminate scenes that won’t work well visually, and we hunt for ways to dramatize the story adequately. We’ll also do some tentative character and location designs.
Day 4: Now we start working on thumbnails of pages. This is a rough scheme with little sketches of each frame that indicates how the story will actually be told. Where possible, writers and artists will team up in this phase, or I will give you input on visualization. Page and frame counts will continue to change but will be closer to final. We firm up our character and location designs.
Day 5: We polish up our thumbnails and fair them out as far as possible. If writer/artist teams have been developed or there are writer-artists they could do a few final pages. We now have a good idea of what the story will look like when done, how long it is and what the main action is likely to be. There is always some shift when the final artwork is developed, but if the thumbnailing process is done well then much grief and energy are saved.
At the end of the workshop there will be a session on publishing and guidance on what to do with your story.
Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre
Graphic/Comics Scripting Workshop 2: The Masterclass
8,9 August, 10am-1.30pm, 2pm-5.30pm
Rimi B. Chatterjee and Avijit Chatterjee
Two days, seven hours per day with lunchbreak = 14 hours
This workshop will take place over a weekend and is intended for people who are already quite skilled in drawing and storytelling, and who have probably done Workshop 1 and want to take their skills to the next level. They will probably be senior people who may be working weekdays. It is equally for writers and artists, and for that fortunate few who can do both. Participants should ideally have a story idea to bring to the workshop, but this is not compulsory.
Day 1 Session 1: The workshop will begin with a series of imagination-freeing exercises to get the storytelling muscles limbered up. This is irrespective of whether you already have a story idea and may help you indirectly with any knots you’ve been struggling with in it. We will then share our preexisting ideas if we’ve got them.
Day 1 Session 2: We start to rough out the theme of our story and get an idea of the main character. We then work on the details of characterization, setting and plot, and troubleshoot any conceptual rough spots. We think about the look and feel, design our characters and locations. People listen to each other’s story ideas and give and get feedback. We identify key narrative points in each story which will absolutely have to be visually shown, and which may be represented by pages or episodes in the work. Then we discuss how to control pacing and action, and the visual language that will embody this.
Day 2 Session 1: We now have a rough idea of how long our story will be and where it will go. Now we move toward turning the story into a script. At this stage we draw up tentative page and frame counts. We change or eliminate scenes that won’t work well visually, and we hunt for ways to dramatize the story and externalize any thoughts and feelings we need to show. Here there will be a short discussion and demo of expressive anatomy and visualization. We’ll demonstrate and discuss various methods of scripting and their merits and demerits.
Day 2 Session 2: Now we start working on thumbnails of pages. This is a rough scheme with little sketches of each frame that indicates how the story will actually be told. Where possible, writers and artists will be encouraged to team up at this point. Page and frame counts will continue to change but will be closer to final. Here we’ll troubleshoot the visual design of the story, think further about pacing and action and look at how camera angles, perspective and framing all work to make the story move. There’ll be some material on the idiom of comics and how to use it.
Finally there will be a short debriefing session and some tips on publication.
June 12th, 2009 | Tags: Comics, creative writing, graphic novels, Workshops, writing | Category: Comics, Workshops | Comments (2)
