F.A.Q.
What is this?
Isn’t this just like CCS?
Why Gainesville?
Sequential Art? What are you talking about?
What about manga?
Is this an accredited program?
Are donations tax-deductible?
What is this?
It will be a school. With a space for workshops, gallery shows and performances. Plus ideally a space for working artists to come get away for a couple of weeks to work in a peaceful environment. At present it’s mostly a promotional/publishing arm. See the mission statement.
Isn’t this just like CCS?
Yes, a little, and maybe no. James Sturm, who founded Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) has done a great thing in White River Junction, VT and we are in constant awe of his gumption and smarts. James has been friendly with us and he has helped us enormously by offering advice in the forming of this school. We too hope to offer a two-year program in comic art, and will require students to publish their own work at the end of the program. Our school is new and we don’t know how it will evolve. Right now, our goals may be similar, but the places and personalities are different enough that soon the differences between the schools will become evident.
Why Gainesville?
We like sun. And sunshowers. And waterfowl and Spanish moss and sinkholes and skateboarders and artists and swimming and coffee and pizza and lizards. In addition, students can find movies, bookstores, theaters, rock shows, cheap food and housing, sunny days, bike paths, egrets, lizards, free yoga at the library, free lunches on the University of Florida campus, midnight soccer, organizations and ad hoc sub communities within communities. It’s a welcoming DIY place that rewards initiative and engagement. The University (UF) has a long-standing academic comics convention/symposium which has flown in such luminaries as Eddie Campbell, Dan Clowes and Kim Deitch. There are also a large number of academic scholars at the University dedicated to study of sequential art and these people, who have done historical research and investigated the mechanisms of comics in unique ways are a great asset. The town is small but there is a lot of culture, including an art museum, a museum of natural history, an arthouse movie theater, good bookstores, a renegade video store, an alternative avant garde film festival and more.
Click here for more about Gainesville
“Sequential Art”? What are you talking about?
Sequential art, comics, comix, graphic novels, manga, bandes dessinees, fumetti, cartooning, strips, funny papers- whatever you want to call it, yes it’s the same thing: words and still pictures in combination to form narrative. Following Will Eisner’s lead, we like Sequential Art, which loses the humorous connotation of “comics” and the movement connotation of “cartoon” (and yes, we know the origin of the word “cartoon”) and ultimately it sounds to us more like what it is.
What about manga?
Everyone copies in their teen years. Manga is such a pervasive force that we see a lot of students who have spent most of their time mastering the tics and behaviors of the most popular Japanese comics. In our teen programs, we will encourage the students to see these mannerisms more clearly, and to allow them more control and more options. In our certificate program, we will go further by emphasizing a breaking down of learned mannerisms (this is true of any over-stylized system of creating) towards finding their own personal mode of storytelling. From there, most students report a sort of breakthrough where they begin to understand their own ideas and tendencies better, and as such begin to settle on deeper and more personal methods, techniques and styles. An attentive student can now go back to a popular manga style if they see fit, though most expand on their new found inventiveness and independence.
Is this an accredited program?
Our short term goals do not involve seeking accreditation, a process that can take up to 7 years. An unaccredited MFA may be in the future, but we are still investigating this. Another option we will be investigating is a partnership with the University of Florida or Santa Fe College in some manner, perhaps offering BFA credits, but right now our MFA-quality program is a certificate program without accreditation.
Are my donations tax-deductible?
Yes. The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
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