About this program
The Certificate in Creative Nonfiction Comics Making invites you to dive into all parts of creating comics that tell true stories. You work closely with a cohort through two intensive stages: one on nonfiction comics methods and another in a production lab with campus partners. You learn form, storytelling, and publication skills — from layout and pitch to contracts and deadlines. You finish with a polished, publishable comic of your own.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
This certificate program provides training in all aspects of the creation of nonfiction comics for professional publication. This cohort-driven program, is built around two intensives: the first a deep exploration of the practices and methods of nonfiction comics, and the second a production lab in which the cohort produces comics for publication in collaboration with campus partners.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Identify significant formal features in the creation of comics and speak to their purpose and contribution to the storytelling and meaning-making.
- Perform in-depth analysis in the form of a work of comics to delve into the mechanics of its construction and offer deep insight into the author’s choices so to inform their own.
- Effectively communicate a narrative or idea through the comics form, with a command of a variety of techniques to produce comics.
- Create comics utilizing a variety of different approaches.
- Demonstrate command of a variety of techniques and steps that go into making a comic – from conception, to layouts, to producing a finished work and create comics utilizing a variety of different approaches.
- Develop their own method for comics-making in order to convey narratives and conduct research most effectively for themselves.
- Recognize the ways that they can employ the comics form to speak to real-world situations.
- Gain experience and confidence in grasping all the steps to producing publishable work – including pitch, proposal, negotiating contracts, time management, delivery schedule, etc.