THE BAND AT ACHOOL

WORKING WITH COMIC IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

Xosé Tomás | illustrator | English teacher at CPI Manuel Súarez Marquier
www.xosetomas.com

1. The partial work with elements of the comic language, separatedly: collection of vignettes individually or in groups following different criteria:

a. Shot: make a mural exhibition of different vignettes from different books, to exemplify different shots, angles and sequences

b. Finding ellipses, and public exhibition of them

c. Page design: choosing different patterns, and justifying them by their meaning (verticality-falling or rising / horizontality-calm / chaos,...)

d. Collection of different types of vignettes, from different books, or balloons.

2. Work with only one book, from different points of view.

a. Content: of a social interest (domestic violence, emigration, racism, love, ...), historical, documentary. etc.

b. Aspects of aesthetic interest. One example: color in Miguelanxo Prado; graphic expressionism in Gipi (some recommended books: Apuntes para una historia de guerra, El local, Los inocentes)

c. Character analysis and their evolution.

d. Any technical element characteristic of comic: shots, script, ellipses, page dessing, ...

3. Playing with narrative ellipses: after finding some in a book, practise creative writing (even combined with image narration), trying to "fill" the gap that the ellipse hides.

4. Choosing significative mute scenes, practise to write the script, or making the balloons for them.

5. Comparing a literary work with its adaptation to comic. It can also be done the other way round.

6. Starting to create a comic work with a limt in the number of vignettes. First, practise with only three vignettes the equivalent of a short narrative fragment. With this method one understands the importance of concision, and the discrimination of contents according to their relevance to the whole story. Later on, amplify the limt of vignettes.

7. Making couples of creators: illustrator-scriptwriter.

8. Taking one comic page (or two, three, ...)writing the technical script.

9. Choosing several works in which places and settings are relevant (El Escorpión-Rome; La mansión de los Pampín-Galicia; Blacksad-USA southern states...)

10. Erasing the texts from a page or story, fill them up again with new dialogues.

11. When they are more fluent, create short adaptations of some short text (by Manuel Rivas, Ánxel Fole, Allan Poe, ...)

12. Making use of ICT tools, making a theme blog to work on comic with students: create categories, or even publish projects made by them.

13. have a good comic section at the school library, and acquire new publications periodically. There is no better way to learn and love comic than to read and enjoy it.

 

SOME BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR SCHOOL LIBRARIES:

- Miguelanxo Prado: Ardalén, Trazo de Xiz, De profundis, Tanxencias, Pedro y el lobo, Quotidianía Delirante, Quotidianía Delirante 2, Papeles dispersos.


- Chauvel and Pedrosa: the series Ring Circus (Los pringaos, Los inocentes, Los amantes, Los revolucionarios). NORMA.


- Paco Roca: Arrugas. NORMA.


- Desberg, Enrico Marini: the series El Escorpión. NORMA.


- Díaz Canales & Guarnido: the series BLACKSAD. Highly accepted by young people. NORMA.


- Loisel y Tripp: Magasin Général. Very interesting for the humane plot. Outstanding documentation. Homosexuality is dealt with in a very sensitive way.


- Krassinsky: Corazones Rollizos. Several stories about women. All of them live in fat bodies, being this a problem for some of them, and not for others. Especially good to work with self-esteem.GLENAT.


- Art Spiegelman. Maus. Essential!!!. it won a Pullitzer award. nazi holocaust, where the jews are mice and nazis are cats. Planeta D'Agostini.


- Marguerite Abouet / Clément Oubrerie: Aya de Yopougon. Six books. The world seen by a young African woman. A raw reality, fresh reality, easy to believe. A wonderful trip to a very different culture.


- Marjane Satrapi: Persépolis. Very interesting. A girl from Iran, the muslim revolution, her trip to europe, ...EDITORIAL RINOCERONTE.

4 WORK

PROPOSALS

BLACKSAD
EL ESCORPIÓN
MAUS
ARRUGAS