Entry requirements

General entry requirements + English 6.

Progression level in relation to degree requirements

The course can usually be included as part of a general degree at undergraduate level.

Course contents

The course is divided into two modules:

Module I contains short introductions to the basics of digital comics, forms of narration, the formats of digital comics and related artistic practice. It also looks at strategies for developing and marketing digital comics, and at ethical and legal aspects. This module addresses practical and theoretical issues: reflective papers as well as short comics are to be produced for the assignments applying and reflecting on these areas. Students will experiment with tools, styles, and construction of sequences to produce comic strips and visual material. This module develops the practical skills of visual narrating, layout of individual images and picture sequences, digitalisation, production, distribution andmarketing. Results are presented online.

Module II is dedicated to an individual project to be developed and presented online as part ofthe project. Students will choose the topic and medium together with their supervisor. It is carried out independently, with limited supervision. It concludes with a final reflective paper and written peer-reviews of selected other comics projects on the course.

Learning outcomes

After completing this course, students will be able to

• describe and discuss forms of digital comics (1)
• describe and discuss several important research areas for the medium (2)
• describe and discuss production of a digital comic, from idea and concept to published product (3)
• show development of their abilities in visual storytelling in digital comics (4)
• reflect critically and analyse their own and other's work in spoken and written form (5)
• reflect in writing and orally on and evaluate their own and others’ comics in regard to content, form and topic. (6)
• be able to judge ethical aspects of digital publishing and their consequences (7)

Learning activities

Digital comics is a part-time (50%) distance learning course. The course relies on active student participation and reading. Teaching involves filmed lectures, online seminars and workshops, as well as media-based group work and supervised individual project-work.

Assessment

Module I

Digital formats, digital media and forms of webcomics, learning outcomes 1-4; assessed by one written and three creative assignments (6 credits)

Publishing and marketing digital comics, ethics, copyright legislation, learning outcome 7; assessed by one written assignment (1 credit).

Module II

Individual project (chosen with supervisor) assesses learning outcomes 3-7 based on completion of the individual project and its presentation to the class online (4 credits), as well as a written final report (3 credits) and peer-reviews of selected comics projects (1 credit).

The course combines individual artistic work and group-work, take-home tests, a final report and peer-reviews.

Course literature

• Aggleton, Jen (2019). Defining digital comics: a British Library perspective, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 10:4, 393-409, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21504857.2018.1503189.
• Dittmar, Jakob (2013). ”Digital Comics”. Scandinavian Journal of Comics Research, http://sjoca.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/SJoCA-1-2-Forum-Rabea-Heyden.pdf.
• Dittmar, Jakob (2015). “Experiments in Digital Comics: Somewhere between Comics and Multimedia Storytelling”. Comics, Forum.https://comicsforum.org/2015/03/14/experiments-in-digital-comics-somewhere-between-comics-and-multimedia-storytelling-by-jakob-f-dittmar/
• Kukkonen, Karin (2013). Comics and Graphic novels. Wiley Blackwell.
• Miller, Ann (2007). Reading bande dessinée: critical approaches to French-language comic strip, Intellect Books, Bristol.

Additional chapters from books and other articles are to be read amounting to approx. 100-300 pages.

Approx. 200-500 pages of digital comics to be selected partly individually and partly by the teachers of the course in relation to specific course topics.

Course evaluation

Malmö University provides students who participate in, or who have completed a course, with the opportunity to express their opinions and describe their experiences of the course by completing a course evaluation administered by the University. The University will compile and summarise the results of course evaluations. The University will also inform participants of the results and any decisions relating to measures taken in response to the course evaluations. The results will be made available to the students (HF 1:14).

Interim rules

If a course is no longer offered, or has undergone significant changes, the students must be offered two opportunities for re-examination based on the syllabus that applied at the time of registration, for a period of one year after the changes have been implemented.

Additional information

This is the English version of a Swedish syllabus.

If a student has a Learning support decision, the examiner has the right to provide the student with an adapted test, or to allow the student to take the exam in a different format.