INTRODUCTION TO GRAPHIC STORYTELLING AND VISUAL NARRATIVE IN MANGA

HELLO STUDENTS!

I hope you are all staying warm and feeling healthy. Welcome to a new semester here at Edwards Middle School!

Last semester the manga class studied the concept of sequential art; we covered different types of drawing and how different types of drawing can tell specific stories. We also talked about page layout and composition and we talked about various drawing techniques.

However, powerhouse layouts or excessive figurative rendering techniques, which can overwhelm and distract the reader and dominate the story, are counterproductive to the form. Remember that a manga is a book - what is significant in the end of the day is that a story is told.

This semester we will focus on using our drawing vocabulary to tell graphic stories, or, manga! We touched a little bit about this last semester - now we will go full throttle into storytelling.


Quick review of the ficiton flow chart. All fiction goes through this process.

TODAY:

THE READER

To whom are you telling your story?



There is a classic, cliche image of an old man telling a story. This is because the success of a story depends on the storyteller's own memory of experience and visual vocabulary. The elderly have experienced much, have learned much. As storytellers in training, you must all work every day towards this goal. Increase your vocabulary, live your lives! But most importantly, attempt to gain understanding of the people around you.

Why do we like listening to older people tell us stories? If you think about it, all of your favorite manga titles are written by people older than you. Bleach, Deathnote, Bearfoot Gen, Persepolis, Ran ... these are all stories told by people older than you, even older than me in most cases! What makes a story "good"?

This is a big question: But for today's assignment, we will be focusing on EMPATHY. Empathy is one way you can make a story appealing to your reader.

What is empathy?

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

Empathy is the ability to understand another's joy or pain. The ability to "feel" the pain, fear or joy of someone else enables the storyteller to evoke an emotional contact with the reader. We see ample evidence of this in movie theaters where people weep over the grief of an actor, who is pretending while in an event that is not really happening.

Empathy is used to create "page turners", manga and graphic novels you can't put down.


Art Spiegelman's "MAUS" is a memoir of his father's experience in the holocaust during World War II. Jews are portrayed as mice while nazis are cats. As a result, we can empathize with the mice! Using visual metaphor is one way to create empathy.


Francisco Goya wasa 1700 Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. While the vast majority of his work was doing court paintings of Spanish royalty, he felt very strongly about the human condition. The third of May, 1814 is a very famous painting depicting an execution.

Notice the facial expression and the hand gesture of the man being shot. Instantly we have empathy for him. We can all relate to that face of panic and horror. This painting has made many people cry because the painter created EMPATHY.

Manga is a perfect form for creating empathy because the size of character's eyes are exaggerated. Here, from Berserk 19, the character Lucca comes to the aid of a young girl accused of witchcraft and being whipped. She leaps onto her because she feel empathy for the little girl.

Of course, empathy is not just for negative emotions. We can laugh and be happy too from relating to a character that is happy! This is why we laugh at comedies.

Princess Mononoke is about a young man empathizing with the characters around him. The characters are all at war, but he has a global view of the situation; as a result, he becomes a warrior for peace, attempting to have the characters around him EMPATHIZE with one another - to hopefully live in harmony.

CLASS ASSIGNMENT:

It is one thing to write a story, it is another to construct a "page turner". Using empathy is a great way to intrigue your reader. How do you get a reader to pick up your manga and not put it down? The readers has to CARE about the characters. The reader has to CARE about the setting. The reader must EMPATHIZE AND RELATE.

With drawings, with writing or with both, make me, the teacher, and reader, CARE about a character. This character can be you and you can write from your own personal experiences.

I'm giving you this assignment because this class will be hard. I will judge what you create accordingly. Why should I, the reader, CARE about what you are writing?

Write me something that will cause empathy. Make me cry, laugh or give me a deeper understanding of who you are. Why should I read what you write?

Please take 45 minutes to create empathy in me, your reader. This is a difficult task, which is why we will pause and discuss.

THE ONLY WAY TO FAIL THIS ASSIGNMENT IS TO NOT TRY.

Good luck!

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he pain, fear or joy of someone else enables the storyteller to evoke an emotional contact with the r. We see ample eviKentardence of this in movie theaters where people weep over the grief of an actor, who is pretending while in an event that is not really happening.

Researchers argue that empathy results from our ability to run through our minds a narrative of the sequence of a pa