Students combine their drawing and storytelling skills to create fun and interesting characters for comic books and graphic novels. They learn to storyboard, pencil and ink as they design pages that engage the reader, propel the story and bring characters to life. The focus is composition, expression and lettering. Full-color characters taken from sketches to line art become ready to star in cartoons, animations, graphic novels or an original comic book complete with characters, dialogue and action.
Matthew Ocasio holds degrees in psychology and Western American history, and is a self-published editor of numerous collaborative comic anthologies as well as the Portland State Vangaurd. As a professional comics writer, he teaches workshops on "writing for illustration" to comic conventions nationwide, and taught comics at The American School in Switzerland.