Tom Hart is a professional cartoonist, digital artist, animator with over 6 years teaching experience at School of Visual Arts, Parsons, Education Alliance, Young Audiences, numerous places across the country and all over New York City.
He is the creator of Hutch Owen graphic novels and comic strips, critically acclaimed by The Comics Journal, Time.com, Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal.
Summer 2010. I'm teaching two great classes to help you say everything you want to say.
First, a solo class called Comics Storytelling. Tuesday nights. This class will be about finding your voice, about following, focusing and articulating your idea in comix. I bring in tons of work to pour over, we begin with a number of quick exercises to get us going, then work on longer projects towards the goal of a single large-scale piece. It’s always a good class. Usually I teach a separate Monday class, this summer I'm taking Matt Madden's Tuesday night slot.
Next is the SUMMER INDEPENDENT STUDY SEMINAR that I am co-teaching with Matt Madden. This class, always a great success for students, helps self-motivated students develop and finalize their longer projects. We meet on three Saturdays over three months to critique, outline plans and discuss ideas and options for our stories. Matt and I give small lectures.
I'm reminded of a comment from a interview with a Walt Kelly, who stated (somewhat adamantly): "You have to be articulate!"
In my teaching, I try to focus on learning the craft of storytelling as a way of being articulate. Of giving yourself the largest vocabulary possible, but also to give you a deep understanding of how to maneuver, access and control that vocabulary.
More importantly, in learning that vocabulary, we often learn what it is we WANT TO SAY. By working deeply and by paying attention, our own unthought thoughts and hidden aspects of our emotional narrative can reveal themselves. In other words, what I try to teach is discovering what it is you want to say and how to best say it. Through exercises and personal connection, I hope to bring you to a new place with your own ideas and inspiration, while giving you the tools to connect with your readers.
My students over the course of my 7 years of teaching continually thank me for helping them learn to access their creative fire, but also to organize it. For giving them the ability to literally find new life on the page, and the tools to keep it alive and find purchase in the mind of a reader.
Huzzah!
Some Resources:
How To Say Everything: My teaching philosophies, ideas and book-in-progress
Facebook group for How To Say Everything
Archive of many amazing stories by amazing artists HERE
including: Jack Kirby | Harvey Kurtzman | Jaime Hernandez | Samm Schwartz | Peter Arno and more
Scott McCloud UNDERSTANDING COMICS Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 6
Some Examples of Location, Place and Environments
Andy Bugpowder's Early Comics Archive
Printers and printing your own comics
Some pics by Eduard Muybridge here
Tom's 2004 tutorial from notion, inspiration and theft to idea development to final inks and scan. (7 MB PDF)