Icons, Patterns, and Textures
What you need:
Pen or pencil
Paper
Post-It Notes
A willingness to approach comics as type
Instructions:
Pick a short story you want to tell. Perhaps a childhood memory, a fear? Write the whole thing out.
Go through your writing and highlight anything you think you might want to depict visually.
Next, create an icon, pattern, or texture for each word you highlighted. Rules might help, like objects and people are icons, and places become patterns or textures?
Images do not need to be abstract, but be as non-literal as you want!
Make images you are interested in and work with materials you like to work with! The goal here is to make the kind of work you WANT to make, or go somewhere new.
Write a script if you want to. I did.
Create panels using your icons, patterns and textures. Zoom in and out, combine them, isolate them, create transitions and let things change and morph. The images and marks are a starting point to help you be less literal, let things evolve and surprise you.
Story highlighting example:
Icon, pattern and texture examples:
Outcome example:
Thoughts:
I have been in the somewhat unique position of teaching design students how to make comics for the last six years. Some of them like to draw, but not many. For most, the word “comics” becomes a problem. They get hung up trying to draw stick people rather than trying to create a compelling visual story they actually enjoy.
This exercise is my attempt to help students avoid making “comics”, and use their own visual interests and aesthetics to create stories they actually like the look of and won’t be ashamed of. The goal is to help them approach comics like they would approach type and/or collage.
My version of this exercise is still very much a “comic”, but try this exercise with a computer, or with collage, or… with type!
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