Graphic Narrative Production

By Eddie Gill

Graphic novelsWhat are graphic novels?

Graphic novels are story's that are usually told through progressive illustrations and compared to comic books graphic novels are longer and likely to cover a story from start to finish, instead of ending with the a traditional cliff-hanger seen in comic books. Within a graphic novel, the artwork can be very creative and experimental or can simply follow the more traditional comic book layout. Graphic novels are most likely to be sold in special bookstores and comic book shops instead of your local newsagents. A graphic novel holds a lot of illustrations, which is hugely important, and very little text.

What do they look like?A graphic novel normally consists of a huge amount of illustration, this helps tell the story, set the scene also it helps set the tone. a graphic novel will have very little text but this is because the text is normally kept for a short description or dialogue. Graphic novels can vary from black and white to very experimental colours and collages. There are a lot of different methods used to create the illustrations for graphic novels for example; drawing, painting, photography, collage, digital art and even sculpture.

MethodsThere are quite a few methods used to illustrate graphic novels; drawing, painting, photography, collage, digital art and even sculpture.

• Dave McKean is an English illustrator and a good example of someone who incorporates a wide range of methods for illustrating a graphic novel. Some of his work that includes these methods are; cages, batman Arkham asylum, Mr punch, signal to noise and violent cases.

When graphic novels popularity increased, layouts changed from being in a grid format to muchmore creative layouts. Some of the early comics were always set up in a grid format positionedwithin white boarders and would usually take up a 9 square grid layout.

TextText is also very important within telling a story, it works with the images to help move the story

on. The amount of text within a graphic novel can differ depending on how much is needed to say. The reason why there isn't a lot of text in graphic novels because the point is that the story is told through the illustrations. When reading a graphic novel you read from left to right plus down. There are many different tools for understanding the different meanings for example; balloons tails, connectors, burst balloons' and thought balloons.

X-Men

Very modern style layout that is bursting with creativity.

Colours separate the illustrations to keep the images in order.