Comics workshop with cartoonist Cédric Ghorbani

CéDRIC GHORBANI a recognised professional

A former student at the highly reputed École Saint-Luc in Brussels, he came to prominence by following in the footsteps of his mentor AndréFranquin, who needs no introduction, in the magazine Spirou (Jehan le géant). He excels at comic humour. With Laurent Panetier, he is responsible for the series Les Cyclistes and Télé Réalité, as well as several volumes of Guides en BD (with Christian Godard) and the Encyclopédie des Prénoms (with Gégé and Belom). A regular contributor to Vent d’Ouest, Jungle and Hachette as a cartoonist, he has also produced an album for which he is also the scriptwriter : Enfin Parents ! 

Students from Montpelleir wzere lucky enough to benefit from the advice of this renowned professional during two workshops for second and third year students on the Illustration Concept Art Professional Cycle.

In the shoes of a cartoonist under real-life conditions

Cédric Ghorbani began by leading a joint workshop for the two classes. “Frist of all, i got the students (2nd and 3rd year) to work on a comic strip page based on a real professional script page that I had the opportunity to work on myslef some time ago” explains the artist adding : “This is a page from an album in the series Le collège Invisible, written by the scriptwriting duo Ange and published by Editions Soleil. I was lucky enough to be recruited a few years ago to continue drawing this series (graphically created by Régis Donsimoni) from volume 9 to the end (volume 15). This page of the script is page 02 of album 11 and tells the story of how Guillaume and Thomas (the main characters) meet a rather moody character (called Jean-Luc) and at the same time find a fabulous sword in the dustbins.”

The students had to put themselves in the shoes of a comic strip artist in real-life conditions. “The difficulty for the students was to stage this relatively complex page (several characters to be drawn, various camera shots, etc.) and put them into boxes. The placement of the speech bubbles and dialogue made it even more difficult. Then I asked them to choose their favourite of the 9 boxes on the page and try to draw it, with the characters, the setting and, for some of them, the final inking. The graphic style for this exercise was completely free… the idée being not to put them in too much difficulty by imposing on them an already existing design. So they could create the characters as they wished”. It was a great learning exercise ! 

specific EXERCIs second year : tell a story of your life

The second exercise for the 2nd year students was to create a comic page telling the story of a significant event in their lives, “making it interesting to read and with a short story on a single page (trying to include a “punch line” (a funny or memorable ending) in the last frame of the page). The idea was to put them in the shoes of an author who  had been asked to write a one-page account of a life experience for a magazine, for example…”.

Specific EXERCIsE third year : continuation of the first page

For their part, the year 3 students were asked to invent the continuation of the first page they had drawn from the Collège Invisible script. “We imagined that we had just drawn the first page of the script and that when the scriptwriters couldn’t make it, we absolutely had to invent the rest of the story… An exercise that allowed them to give free reign to their imagination while remaining within the framework of the tone of the first page”.

All in all, these workshops gave the students 48 hours to develop their ideas, put their technical skills into practice and give free rein to their budding talent under the supervision of a renowned professional.