Sequential art is a term that is frequently used interchangeably with the term “comic,” but it also refers to other types of art. Animation, storyboarding, children’s book illustration, and game design are some of the other areas of art that fall under the umbrella of sequential art.
Sequential art coursework, including undergraduate and graduate degrees, is available at a few Art & Design colleges. Students learn how to draw comics and other forms of sequential art, as well as how to develop and create a storyline, at these colleges. Classes in inking, penciling, color separation, and scriptwriting are all included. Students can also meet with successful artists and participate in sequential art conferences.
Images with text displayed at the bottom of the image, called image captions, or near the characters’ heads, called speech balloons, make up comic books. This form of sequential art began as a form of entertainment, but has since grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, with fans buying and trading comic books and Hollywood movies based on their stories.
Comic strips can also be used to publish sequential art. Newspapers and magazines are the most common venues for this type of sequential art. Comic strips are similar to comic books in that they are usually made up of four panels with images and text. Some comic strips, on the other hand, have far more than four panels, while others have just one.
From one strip to the next, comic strips can sometimes blend together. As a result, a person who reads comic strips in the newspaper may receive the next episode within a story every day until the story is completed. After being published in newspapers or magazines, popular comic strips are sometimes collected in a book.
Storyboarding and animation are two forms of sequential art that frequently go hand in hand. Drawing out simple representations of a scene within an animated piece is known as storyboarding. The animators use the storyboard as a guide to create animation cells, which bring the scene to life. When planning illustrations for children’s books, storyboards are frequently used.