Visual Narrative I

To Do This Week

DUE 5 story summaries (5%)
Submit in Slack

Read: Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud - pgs 2-117

Journal:

Digital storytelling may involve images in sequence (comics, slides, video), arranged spatially in an interface and/or integrated with other media such as text and audio. After reading about "sequential arts", "gutters" and "time frames" in the chapters of Understanding Comics, how might you approach the next visual narrative assignment? What do McCloud's ideas generate for you in your own digital storytelling? Try to think outside the box.

Notes

McCloud Review:

• icons, realism < —> abstraction Rhasmagian
• picture plane -> language -> reality triangle pg 51
• blood in the gutter (panel-to-panel relationships) pg. 70
• closure – what to leave out (the gaps in storytelling)
• time frames - using the frames to express time, multi-linearity pgs 101-105
• expressing motion
• expressive lines

overview picturing time:

• scroll/timeline
• nonlinear (distributed and asynchronous)
• sequential (chronological frames)
• spatial montage (simultaneous frames)
• cinema (duration, temporal frames)

examples of digital graphic novels:

3D Comics: Panoply

hobolobo of hamelin

SPATIALLY CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE

Digital Comics - Erik Loyer

In-Class Activity

Sequential Visual Storytelling (5 Panels)

The challenge of this exercise is to use sequential images — with or without accompanying text — to narrate a short anecdote. Your goal is to express a series of events visually, while also conveying the emotional shifts in the story.

For example: if the anecdote is about a child getting lost, how do you create a sense of isolation or anxiety in the frame? How can color, line, scale, space, or framing communicate emotion?

This is NOT a finished project. This is a fast mock-up — something you would share with a creative team to explore ideas. We begin in class today and refine next week. Share on Slack and we can discuss them.

Exercise Structure

• Partner up and share short anecdotes (real experiences).
• Each partner takes notes on the other’s story.
• Translate the anecdote into exactly 5 visual panels.
• Focus on narrating the events clearly through images.
• Think about structure: what belongs in each panel?
• Some exaggeration or visual embellishment is allowed.
• Consider emotional shifts — how does the feeling change?
• How might color and line express tension, warmth, confusion, calm?
• How can text support the image — or deliberately contrast with it?

Workflow: Move Fast, Iterate Quickly

Start with 5 quick sketches (tiny and rough). Think about framing, staging, gesture, and emotional tone.

Then build your panels in Google Slides. Your visuals can be:

• Clean pen sketches on blank paper (photograph them)
• AI-generated images
• Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator
• Collage from found images
• Geometric shapes directly in Slides

Speed and clarity matter.Perfection does not.

Recommended Tool: Vizcom (Sketch → Refine)

I recommend Vizcom if you want to sketch quickly and generate variations.

Quick Vizcom Technique Breakdown

• Make a simple black-and-white sketch (stick figures + arrows are fine).
• Use short descriptive prompts to refine mood (e.g., “dim blue lighting, long shadows, cartoon, photo”).
• Keep character features consistent across panels.
• Generate multiple variations quickly — choose clarity over spectacle.
• Export and place one image per slide.

Visual Narrative Assignment 10%

DUE March 7

We have discussed many strategies/approaches to visual narration and how story time – events and incidents, actions and reactions – can be made visible and relational in pictorial space through:

• single frame composition
• scroll navigation
• nonlinear navigation
• panel-to-panel relationships
• cinematic sequence
• spatial (simultaneous) montage

In this assignment, you are to use images to tell a story. The images may include symbols, shapes, colors, drawings, graphics, photos and/or video. Your images may be accompanied by text (narration or dialogue), but images and their spatial relationships should drive the narrative, not the text.

In other words, try not to make illustrations for a pre-written script. Instead, investigate new ways to organize images – on the single page and from page to page – in order to get across your particular visual story. Remember, the pictorial frame and the user’s navigation of the frame(s) are elements of visual storytelling.

Use Photoshop or Illustrator, your pencil, phone camera, AI image-generation, public domain image downloads. If you are drawing your images, please bring them into Photoshop or Illustrator to outline/color. Use Google Slides or create a webpage (with ChatGPT?) to present your image sequence.

Storyboarding: download and print storyboard paper