Storytelling with The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan
Understanding comics through the graphic novel, The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan
Telling stories with moving images
The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan, written by Bryan Doerries and drawn by five different artists, is a unique retelling of Homer's The Odyssey for modern soldiers and veterans. This online course is a compliment to the stories in that book, and designed to be used by anyone. It uses images from the book for maximum engagement with the themes and stories in Sergeant Jack Brennan's tale.
Led by Tom Hart of The Sequential Artists Workshop , this course is a basic introduction to the mechanics of comics and visual storytelling.
In this course, we'll use examples from The Odyssey of SGT. Jack Brennan as we learn how comics work and mod the book for our own projects and stories.
Comics or sequential art is a storytelling form as old as man. Some historians believe that even some cave paintings were meant to be read in sequence.
By the end, we'll have learned how pictures work, how characters are placed, how text works, how pages are designed, and how story is told not just through the pictures, but through the even design underneath the pages and pictures.
Course curriculum
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Balance and Symmetry in Picture Composition
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Balance and Composition Asset Pack
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Angles and diagonals. Danger and Drama.
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The Shot
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Framing
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Staging: Where to Put the Characters
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Learn More: Staging Video
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A Word About Style
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Implying Time
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Juxtaposition of Images
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Learn More: Juxtaposition Video
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The Size and Shape of the Panels
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Learn More: Page Compositions Video 1
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Composing the Page
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Learn More: Page Compositions Video 2
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Overcoming Obstacles
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Story Structure
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ComicsOdyssey2016-03
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About this course
- Free
- 18 lessons
- 0 hours of video content
About the instructor
Tom Hart
Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop
Tom Hart is a cartoonist has been the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop, a school and arts organization in Gainesville, Florida since 2012.
His 2016 memoir, Rosalie Lightning, debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was featured on many Best-Of-2016 lists.
His Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books, were nominated for all the major industry awards. His The Collected Hutch Owenwas nominated for best graphic novel in 2000. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in the Comics Journal and other comix publications. He has been called “One of the great underrated cartoonists of our time” by Eddie Campbell and “One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Scott McCloud. His daily Hutch Owen comic strip ran for 2 years in newspapers in New York and Boston, and his “Ali’s House”, co-created with Margo Dabaie was picked up by King Features Syndicate.
He was a core instructor at New York City’s School of Visual Arts for 10 years, teaching cartooning to undergraduates, working adults and teens alike. Among his students were Dash Shaw, Sarah Glidden Box Brown and other published cartoonists like Leslie Stein, Jessica Fink,Josh Bayer, Brendan Leachand many others. He has taught comix and sequential art at schools and institutions all around New York City for more than 10 years, and has conducted week-long workshops from Maine to Hawaii. He also teaches sequential art in the School of Art and Art History at UF.
A couple other recent books:
Daddy Lightning
Let’s Get Furious
The Sequential Artists Workshop Guide to Making Professional Comic Strips
His website is http://www.tomhart.net