Posted in: Comics | Tagged: art, Comics, san francisco, university

Academy Of Art University – Piecing Together Figments

The comic industry is growing in a lateral way, leading business in a new direction that is hard to track or predict. It's certainly a very interesting time to be a comic book creator.

Comic books have generally been regarded by the art community as being somewhat of a low-brow form of art, along with their sister mediums like tattooing and graffiti. But that's changed with the sudden surge of entertainment that seems to point to the conclusion that comics are not only respectable, but are inspiring. Comic readers have known that all along, and few are surprised that mainstream culture in America is starting to catch on to this. Among those realizing the potential of sequential story-telling are colleges that are all clamouring to be ahead of the curve in offering programs tailored for comic book development. Among the leaders in these new curriculums is the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, whose  comic book industry-involved teachers and passionate students are making strides to make sure AAU is the top of the line in comic book education and unrivaled in its rich and engrossing community of creators. This weekend on Bleeding Cool you can read individual testimonies of what AAU has to offer to someone who dreams of creating comic books.

Piecing Together Figments.

Written by Matt Harding

One of the greatest achievements to come out of AAU's comic book program is produced by the students themselves, outside of class, with only their ambitions motivating the project. Figments is a student collaborative comprised of the best, hand-picked short stories produced in full by AAU students, with one issue premiering at the end of each school semester.

Many colleges have student anthologies, but Figments has just broken ground with the revolutionary development of issue number four of the series. With funding from AAU, "Figments" has been transformed into a motion comic, much like "Operation Ajax", by the Company Tall chair in collaboration with the founders of Figments, Sam Garland and Cody Hagman. A motion comic is an interactive experience, where the panels and dialogue jump and move around the screen of a tablet as you read them, creating a new and revolutionary experience for the reader. Figments is available through Apple's App Store, for free, to view on the IPad. This isn't your run-of-the-mill motion comic either, but one whose quality far surpasses anything that Marvel and DC comics is currently producing. Figments is helping blaze the trail for the entire comics industry.

Figments is the production of the AAU student-run club S.I.C. (the Sequential Imagery Consortium) which is run by graduate student, Sam Garland, a man whose ambitions is only matched by his will to carry them out. Sam created the Figments project, and literally built it out of nothing but personal sacrifice, sound leadership, and hundreds of hours of hard unpaid work. "I was told by a lot of people that I'd starve to death if I became an artist," remarks Sam on his history. "But the truth was, I was already an artist, even if it was just at heart. I followed a path of science, doing research fieldwork, consulting, and even some teaching for about 10 years. Fighting one's nature, though, is a never-ending battle, and I eventually gave in. AAU offered me education towards becoming a professional. No other school put it to me that way for what I wanted to study." Sam expects to graduate from the program in the fall, passing his project on to the comic book club president, Matt Harding.

"The name, Figments, made sense with what we were trying to make, that is, pieces of stories fit together to make a whole book – all of which were original "figments" of our imaginations," Sam remarked. The first three issues were almost completely student funded, along with help from fund venues like Kickstarter. The fourth issue was the first to become an interactive motion comic. "We are really proud of its completion in motion comic form," Sam commented. "Self-publishing has always been a perfect opportunity for exploring new technologies, means of distribution, and methods of production." Sam works with co-editor Cody Hagman at Tall Chair, a company on the forefront of motion comic production. "Chuck Pyle, the Director of Illustration, was very supportive of our efforts and essential in getting a license of the Active Reader software (Tall Chair's creation) and funding for production," Sam said, when talking about the massive amounts of support given by AAU's Chuck Pyle, an innovator at AAU when it comes to fueling the students to enrich their careers and experiences at the University. The Figments motion comic has been such a success that AAU plans on turning it into a class, with lessons, demonstrations, and exclusive technologies focused on how to create your own motion comics.

Figments issue four features artists Sam Garland, Cody Hagman, Matt Harding, Ashish Joshi, Leonardo Pertuzzatti, Jessika Hoard, Jonathan Aguillon, and Jesse Carson. It can be downloaded for free on the iPad through apples app store. The more support this comic receives, the more likely AAU will support further publications by the students. Figments can be researched at www.figmentscomics.com. Tall Chair's website is www.tallchair.com, and Sam Garland's blog is www.samgarlandillustrations.wordpress.com.

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