BA Comics and Graphic Novels

About this course

Comics and graphic novels are a form of sequential visual narrative that has undergone a remarkable cultural revaluation over the past several decades, moving from the margins of popular culture to serious critical and academic attention while also achieving unprecedented commercial and mainstream prominence. The form demands a unique combination of visual art and storytelling, asking its practitioners to convey character, emotion, action, and dialogue through the interaction of image and text across a sequence of panels. From superhero comics to literary graphic novels, political satire to memoir, the range of what the form can achieve is vast and still expanding. At Teesside University this part-time programme develops your skills in visual storytelling and sequential art, helping you build the craft and creative understanding needed to work in comics and graphic narrative. You will develop teamworking, communication, project management, and negotiation skills through collaborative creative projects, working with course mates to produce creative work in response to subject-specific briefs. This reflects the reality of professional comics production, which often involves writers, pencillers, inkers, colourists, and letterers working together in a coordinated creative process. You will develop your own visual language and storytelling abilities alongside your understanding of the history and traditions of the form. Graduates from comics and graphic novels programmes work as comics creators, illustrators, graphic novelists, storyboard artists, and visual development artists. Some work within the publishing industry, either independently or for established publishers, while others move into adjacent areas including animation, video games, advertising, and children's book illustration. The skills developed in comics, including sequential visual storytelling, character design, and visual communication, are transferable across a wide range of creative industries. Many graduates develop independent creative practices alongside other creative or commercial work.

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