Ty Templeton - The Man, The Artist, The Writer, The Teacher:

Last year I took Storytelling and Layout and Writing for Comics with Ty, both of which were real eye openers. Ty is not only a very talented artist and writer himself, but he can TEACH! He really takes the time to think about his process and is able to articulate virtually any storytelling decision that he has made. Quite often he would bring examples of master cartoonists like Adams, Kubert and Kirby to demonstrate a specific point.

Each class would start with Ty demonstrating a basic concept on the board and we would be asked to copy the drawings and make notes. Then he would give us a short amount of time to apply the new info. This would be followed by a careful critique that was totally amazing given the illegibility of some of our squiggles. Many of the students were writers, but that didn’t matter because to learn the basic concepts that Ty was trying to teach all you really needed to know was how to draw stick figures.

The original workshops were only six weeks in length, but were a crash course in storytelling. We covered types of transitions in storytelling, the four important elements that you must have on every page, how to lead the eye through a page, placement of pictorial elements in a panel to strengthen the narrative idea, spotting blacks to direct eye flow, utilizing perspective to direct eye flow, reading a script for clarity in storytelling, character design, location design etc. etc.

Frankly I would categorize Ty’s class as being the comics equivalent of a Syd Field or Robert McKee course in film scriptwriting. He is THE comics storytelling guru. Whether you are a beginner or a semi-pro looking to push your portfolio to the next level, these are great courses.

This year he has combined the writing class and the storytelling class into one. It is being promoted as Ty Templeton’s Comic Book Boot Camp. Part one will run this fall (in October) and part two will be available in the spring. For those who have taken the previous incarnation, keep in mind these will each be eight week sessions that will contain additional info. Definitely worth taking again if you can afford it.

More information - not only on Ty’s classes, but the school he teaches at - can be found here.

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