Contra-corriente, Helena Sbeghen

Master in Illustration and Visual Narrative

The Master’s Degree in Illustration and Visual Narrative immerses you in contemporary visual languages, teaching you to express your creative personality as a professional in illustration, drawing and visual storytelling. Expand your skills alongside leading figures who will mentor your professional and personal growth.

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Presentation

Illustration and visual languages are in permanent mutation. The Master in Illustration and Visual Narrative, in its long history as a postgraduate programme —since 2016— is committed to a flexible and rabidly current approach, combined with a strengthening of the essential foundations of visual creation, such as conceptualisation, relationships with clients and publishers, or the ability to handle different languages.

The Master’s Degree in Illustration and Visual Narrative is designed as a pathway to professional and personal transformation. Throughout the course, you will work side by side with top professionals in the world of illustration who will accompany you on your learning journey.

The Master’s stands out from other programmes for its experiential nature, its academic quality and its versatility. The mentoring of editors and the accompaniment of professionals is combined with participation in festivals, field trips or visits to spaces dedicated to illustration. In parallel, you will be accompanied in a specific coaching process for illustrators from the beginning to the end of the course. You will enrich your training by adding perspectives from art, comics, cultural management or performance. We will culminate your learning by producing an illustrated album, a graphic novel or a customised format that will be your letter of introduction to the professional market.

The student profile is that of a person with imagination, creativity and motivation, who is passionate about representing an idea or story with meaning through illustration, comics and visual narrative languages.

Entry requirements: Official university degree or equivalent in Graphic Design, Fine Arts or other creative subjects. Portfolio and management of illustration software.

What is visual narrative?

Digital culture has brought with it new forms of communication and new types of visual narratives. If illustration is traditionally characterised by presenting an image at its maximum communicative potential, visual narrative links the image with text and time, and is a form of communication that is increasingly in demand. The formats in which visual narrative is expressed are very diverse (comics, graphic novels, graphic storytelling, moving drawings, gifs and memes, animation…) and are at the heart of what we understand today as Visual Communication. In this Master’s degree you will learn how to handle the basics of visual narrative to put your clients’ ideas or your own stories into circulation, communicating complex and effective messages.

Now is the time to dedicate yourself to illustration

The boom in illustration and visual narrative languages is evident. The publishing industry, video games, animation and digital communication are areas for which this Master’s degree can prepare you effectively. If you have always wanted to dedicate yourself to the visual expression of your ideas and you haven’t quite found your voice and your place, the Master’s Degree in Illustration and Visual Narrative can help you, providing you with top-quality personalised support, with a high level of student satisfaction, and in Barcelona, a dynamic and central city on the map of creativity in Europe.

Objectives

To understand the current panorama of illustration and graphic narrative, and to find a place as an illustrator, cartoonist and graphic creative.
Master the keys to visibility and relevance in the world of illustration, comics and graphic narrative.
To know and experience the phases of work and achievement of a commercial project and a personal project.
Be in direct and continuous contact with today’s top professionals.
Develop your personal values and your voice, breaking harmful mechanisms and fears.
Introduce and test yourself in different languages to enhance your own uniqueness.

Highlights

New graphic narratives

Storytelling in images is a form of visual communication that is increasingly in demand. In this Master you will learn the basics of sequential storytelling so that, through illustration, you can express your own stories and those of your clients.

Accompaniment and mentoring

Top professionals will accompany you in your learning as teachers and mentors, and you will have specialised coaching for illustrators to encourage your creative and personal growth.

Enrich your visual culture

Through sessions that deal with aesthetics in art, film or animation, and visits to exhibitions and creative spaces, you will broaden your vision and knowledge of creation, which will have an impact on your work as an illustrator.

Experiences and contacts

The Master’s offers you various experiences, such as working with real clients and active publishers, an enriching field trip and participation in events so that you can network and experience new situations.

Master in Illustration and Visual Narrative programme

1 Contemporary illustration

Knowledge, notions and strategies for carrying out an illustrated commission, from the conception of the idea to its materialisation in areas such as the press or the publishing sector. Contents:

Concept and representation. Representing from synthesis.
Press Illustration
Editorial illustration for covers
Keys to the illustrated book
Art direction and collective publication: Magazine
Illustration and product. Product photography for book and social media.

2 Visual narrative

Keys and processes in the field of visual narrative and comics with which you will be able to narrate complex plots in a sequential graphic manner. Contents:

Basics of comic language and sequential narrative.
Screenplay
Deconstructed comics: performance, memes, experimental visual narrative.
Self-publishing: Participation in a self-publishing festival and creation of your own publishing imprint.
Moving drawings and small digital animations for promotion.

3 Graphic languages

You will test yourself by experimenting with different graphic languages, techniques and procedures with the aim of incorporating them into your practice as a creator.

Visual poetics, seriality and symbology.
Character development and concept art
Lettering and calligraphy
Urban sketching and quick portrait
Muralism: Project for a real client

4 Visual culture

Knowledge of phenomenologies and historical currents related to illustration and visual narratives. You will reflect on current events and themes and enjoy visits to museums, studios and contemporary cultural spaces.

Visual culture: Connections with art, Outsider Art and other phenomenologies.
Phenomenologies of comics: East and West
Visits to exhibition and creative spaces

5 Publishing project

You will produce an illustrated album, a graphic novel or a hybrid narrative format that will serve as a business card to start or revitalise your professional career.

Final project of an illustrated book, graphic novel or visual narrative that will be mentored in a personalised way during the course by two editors specialised in illustration and graphic novels, respectively.
Professional projection: Coaching for illustrators personalised for each student throughout the course (legal issues, relationship with money, motivation, fears, strengths, career planning…).

If you want to know more about the Master in Illustration and Visual Narrative download the brochure here:

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Do you want to know more about the Masters’ School?

Each academic year, students with very diverse professional and cultural profiles of more than 80 nationalities from all over the world attend their master’s or postgraduate training at Elisava. We want to promote connections and networks among students beyond the context of each master’s degree to promote the exchange of knowledge through very diverse projects: we organize interdisciplinary workshops and conferences; transdisciplinary projects with students from several master’s degrees; collaborations with companies, institutions and NGOs…

Masters’ Scholarships

Do you want to study the Master in Illustration and Visual Narrative at Elisava? In this section you will be able to check all the information on the annual call for scholarships, which recognize, reward and disseminate the talent and excellence of future master’s students.