New Amateurs Academy (NABA)

On the borders of the comic strip, this course will consist of thinking about the storyboard as an autonomous work, made up of drawings “that have no truth in themselves “1. Over the course of twelve sessions,
we will travel through various environments, using fictitious cameras to “collect” clues to build our story; we will also discover numerous books and “zines” revolving around the gestures of storyboarding.

On the one hand, we will reflect on drawing as a transitory object, questioning the lightness of rough writing, the first draft, the speed of execution and the liveliness of the line. For it is not necessarily virtuosity that makes a storyboard interesting: the drawings can be graphically sketchy, “possibly accommodating a clumsy and unfinished graphic style, since the sketch is, in essence, destined to be taken up and surpassed “2. We will integrate scattered notes, multi-directional arrows, indicative pictograms, printed images, etc.
On the other hand, we will explore the temporality fabricated by our embryonic drawings, telling stories “full of endless beginnings, initiations, losses “3 , the reading of which will allow the reader complete freedom of imagination. Interrogating the sequence and the montage as a page layout, we will finalise each storyboard by compiling about ten pages in a collective edition printed at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, of which each participant will eventually acquire a copy.

Courses are taught in French.  Material to be provided by the participant (list communicated at registration).
Break in classes during spring break from April 24 to May 08, 2023.

* Thierry Groensteen, “Interview with Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten, or the image at the post of command”, CinémAction hors série Cinéma et bande dessinée, 1990.
** Thierry Groensteen, ” Les deux esquisses “, Storyboard – le cinéma dessiné, Éditions Yellow Now, 1992.
*** Ursula Le Guin, ” La théorie de la fiction-panier “, 1986.