2025 is your year to reshape your comics practice with the SAW 6-month Graphic Novel Development Intensive

Build the confidence to finish the project that is biting, begging, tearing at you to be made

Starts June 2025

You Are Ready

This is your time to find the focus and tools to say, 'Yes! I am ready. I am here to bring my Graphic Novel to life.'

The Graphic Novel Development Intensive is what you need.

Here we bring together the combined wisdom and experience of SAW instructors to provide you with inspiration, advice, critique, motivation and structured plan forward.

Through access to unique learning resources, a vibrant community and regular special events with comics professionals, you will gain insights into what it takes to realize your vision.

Make the choice. Make your book happen.

Starting June 1, 2025.

“SAW was pivotal in transforming me from an aspiring cartoonist to the real deal, and I could not have pursued comics professionally without the things I learned, feedback I received and community I built in the Graphic Novel Intensive.”

— Cheyenne Smith 2023 Graphic Novel Intensive Student

Quick Course Overview

The SAW Graphic Novel Intensive is a 6-month guided exploration of the graphic novel-making process lead by professional cartoonists. Through live weekly calls, curated small peer groups, week-to-week course materials, dedicated online community and access to extra resources and events, students come out the other side with new skills to tell their story.

At a Glance

When: 6 months starting June 2025 until November 2025 - 24/7 Online with weekly live calls scheduled in the group

Where: Online via Zoom and Mighty Network community forum (link sent upon sign-up)

Who: For anyone interested in working on a single comics project

Cost: $1,249

Materials: There are no required materials in this course although instructors and students will make recommendations based on their own practice

Level: Beginner to Advanced (we do recommend some existing knowledge or experience in comics making)

What’s Included

Weekly live calls with large group and instructors
Small group mentor calls
Structured course materials
Dedicated online learning forum
Resource package
Peer community
Monthly pro calls
Access to wider SAW community and resources

Together we'll work through the steps of completing a graphic novel

Honing in on your idea: Choosing what to work with
Parameters and Formats: What external specifics to aim for.
Story and Structure: Using tools to compel the reader.
Keeping Going: How to find the energy to keep going.
Planning the Finish: Making a plan for the upcoming weeks, months or whatever it takes!
Publishing and Sharing: Lots of stories about how to wrap it up for the world.
Reflection: Learning from what you have experienced and accomplished.

Pricing Options

Learn more

Pay in Full

Single payment of $1,399

Pay in 6 Monthly Installments

6 Payments of $249

SPECIAL EARLY BIRD DEAL

8 payments of $149.

Sign up before May 2025 for free bi-weekly small group calls with Tom until the course starts on June 1. These are small intro calls, with discussion, critique, community building and more. Plus you save $200!

Institutional Pricing

Do you have additional resources? An institution behind you, or wealth you can share. We ask that you pay our institutional pricing: $2799

Payment Assistance

SAW is committed to ensuring everyone has access to quality comics education. If you require payment assistance, please follow THIS LINK.

Meet the Instructors and Mentors with a combined 100+ Years of Experience and 1000s of Pages of Art Between Them

Instructors

Tom Hart

Tomis a champion of comics education who founded SAW in 2011 to be the comics school he never had. He has since released half a dozen graphic novels, instructional manuals and short comics, including his NY Times best selling graphic memoir, Rosalie Lightning.
Jess Ruliffson

Jess is an award-winning cartoonist who has lectured and taught workshops at The School of Visual Arts, The Drawing Center, and The Center for Cartoon Studies. In 2017, her work was shortlisted for Slate's Cartoonist Studio Prize. In 2022 her latest graphic novel, Invisible Wounds, was released through Fantagraphics.
Elise Dietrich

Elise is a scholar of Brazilian cultural studies who has experience both teaching and translating Portuguese. She began creating autobiographical comics in 2016 and has made hundreds of pages ofcomics, including Key West Diaries and GRANDES EXPECTATIVAS (which she workshopped in this very program).

Mentors

Hyena Hell

Hyena is a cartoonist, illustrator and sometimes-printmaker. Her comics have been published by Silver Sprocket, Tinto Press, Birdcage Bottom Books, and her own imprint, Horror Vacui Press.
Georgia Webber

Georgia is best known for her debut graphic memoir, Dumb: Living Without a Voice, the chronicle of her severe vocal injury and sustained vocal condition which causes her pain from using her voice. This difficult experience lead her to work as a Cranial Sacral Therapist, a meditation facilitator, and as an improvising musician, blending elements of healthcare, body awareness and creative expression within constraints.
K. Woodman Maynard

Katherine is a graphic novelist and freelance graphic designer based in Minneapolis, MN. She’s versatile in diverse range of mediums and styles. Her graphic novel debut, The Great Gatsby was featured in The New York Times and The Guardian, and called, “hugely rewarding” by The Wall Street Journal.

Don’t just take our word for it

Testimonials from Past Students

Vernon Meidlinger

I’ve leveled up my comics-making! What a sense of accomplishment when the first copy of my book came from the printer!
Anna Bloomfield

“SAW provides the community, encouragement, inspiration and guidance I need. I wish I'd signed up when I was 5 - with this kind of teaching and fellow students - who knows what I might have achieved?! Meantime I'm grateful to have found it aged 58.”
Denise Tremblay

“The community, the materials, the instructors, the weekly calls (and pro-calls!), and the feedback - everything was amazing, useful, and so much fun!”
Robert Danberg

“I'm still getting the hang of the range of "finished" in this kind of work and this piece feels kind of like a breakthrough to me - the result of the SAW courses I've been taking and finding this great community.

You know, the kind of thing you look at a couple of days later and say to yourself, ‘Did I really make that?’”
Layne Glasgow

“I got my first book in the mail today! I couldn't have done this without all of you and without SAW. I have to say it feels amazing to hold a physical copy of my first book in my hands. I thought a digital copy would be enough but I like this more than I thought I would.”
Syne Mitchell

“I am really appreciating the Graphic Novel Group right now. Creative work is hard in a way that I think only other creative types can fully understand. So thanks for your encouragement.”
Jeff Eggleston

“I feel like the past two weeks in SAW have been the most productive art weeks I've ever had. My story, in my mind and on paper (both digital and real paper) is taking shape. I have never been more excited at the prospect of actually getting somewhere with this.”
Maia I

“My dear Graphic Novel Development Community, I just learned that I received a grant to create my graphic novel The Ruins of Everything I Love. I owe a lot to this community. Thank you for your help, without you I would not have been able to do this.”
Vanessa Martinez

“I've finished the planning stage for that album cover I've been juggling with this program. Sorry this isn't technically my graphic novel but I used the coursework to help me through all this, too. The "Honing in on your idea" and "Parameters and Formats" sections were instrumental to working through my anxiety and committing to ideas.”

Past Student Work

FAQs

This program is focused on a single project.

The online certificate program is more of an exploratory, tool-building, voice-finding program.

When you have some tools and a sense of your voice and project, then you are ready or this!

1. Do you want significantly more skills to be able to do comics "right"?
2. Or do you just want to make your graphic novel happen ?

*We put "right" in quotes because we believe everyone can make something stunning with what they have if they have the will and a support system.

The Year Long Certificate Program:When you really really want to up your skills to something more akin to what you see in the graphic novel aisle of the bookstore or library you go to. We teach an amalgam of skills including anatomy, landscape drawing, composition, color/value placement, character design, etc.

This will help you find your voice to create your own comics from start to finish.

After that, we often recommend the Graphic Novel Intensive for: Wisdom, project management, working skills, and mentorship- that's what the Graphic Novel program is about.

Of course your path may be different. We've had people do only one of them. We've had people do them in reverse order.

We're here to help you get YOUR comics made!
No! We understand (boy, do we!) how hard it is to START.

But you should have some idea of what the project is, and be eager to start. We will hold you accountable, but YOU have to do the work. Accountability, group discussion and critique is a lot of what this program is about.

We will ask you to show up, again and again and again.
The time commitment is entirely up to you. As with most programs of this kind, the people that get the most out of it put the most in. You have to find a rhythm that works for you. As for interacting in the group, you can get away with as little or as much as you like as well. There is at least one zoom call each week that generally runs for 2 hours and functions as an informal check in with instructors and peers. As the course progresses there are additional check in calls. We recommend spending 3 to 5 additional hours each week actually working on your project in order to make significant progress by the end of the 6 months.
All the video components of the course materials are prerecorded. The community is open 24/7 and the instructors and mentors will be in it daily. Additionally, we meet weekly via Zoom. At least one instructor, sometimes two, will be on each of these, with one call per month featuring a professional cartoonist, editor or creator.
The calls will be weekly, alternating 2 pm and 8 pm Eastern on Tuesdays. They are not mandatory and are recorded unless otherwise stated. The additional small-group mentoring calls will be scheduled once the program starts but tend to be Mondays and Thursdays.
No, not in its entirety. We can only read short-story sized excerpts at the scale of this program.

Our main personal offering is an ability to help you see the whole project in context, the motivation and some strategy to work on it, and editorial feedback and critiquing help where needed.

If you want more in-depth feedback, or editorial services for the entire project, please look to our 1-on-1 consulting page.
There is no materials list. This course is for people working on something in a medium they are comfortable with. For people who are looking to change their practice, we can help them figure out the best materials to help them reach their goals.
One of the instructors will be in the discussion group at least every other day. The online community works best with investment from the cohort of students all working on similar problems and challenges together. Discussions range from issues of practice to direct feedback on work. We are excited to guide the discussions in important and valuable ways.
Yes! Absolutely! We want to make sure this course is the right fit for you and for us. If we aren't already in touch with you, please email us, or use the MESSAGE US tab below, if you want to share what you want to be working on so we can make sure we can serve you.