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UM-ST. Louis' Dan Younger teaches college students the art of cartooningBY ALYSSA CHASE
"I'VE ALWAYS LOVED COMICS,"says University of Missouri-St. Louis (UM-St. Louis) student Hunter Brumfield. "In fifth grade, I made comics and got in lots of trouble for it." Now Brumfield is getting college credit for his cartoons, thanks to art instructor Dan Younger, who's also director of UM-ST. Louis' new B.F.A. program (see sidebar). Younger, a cartoonist himself, has taught courses in the art of comics at three other colleges, and when he offered "Cartoon Illustration and Publication" at UM-ST. Louis, a dedicated group of students flocked to it immediately. Nearly all the students - from Mike Wilkerson, who works a day job as a sign-language interpreter, to Jay Johnston, who had an earlier career in the military, to local musician Brumfield - have hopes of becoming professional cartoonists someday, and in Younger's classroom they've all found a supportive environment in which to pursue their work. Some students, like architecture major Jason Nasrallah, are glad to be learning techniques that could help them in their chosen field. Others, like Valerie Sanford, a ceramics and photography major and the only woman in the class, are content to experiment and develop their sense of humor. "Cartooning class gives you a chance to be goofy that you don't have in your other classes, she says.,While allowing freedom to experiment, the structure of Younger's class constantly draws on the students' creativity. "The assignment is production," Younger says. "You have to produce all the time. The assignments step up from simple stuff like drawing 50 different heads to taking five of those heads or one of the best heads and doing 30 different emotions." The students also work from a model and do assignments such as drawing 25 weird aliens and 25 inanimate objects come to life. Then they're asked to show the aliens and inanimate objects interacting in a wordless four panel comic strip. Perhaps the most challenging assignment the students face is bringing in four single -panel joke comics (ala The Far Side) each week, which they must complete on top of all their other assignments. When the students present their cartoons on their desktops for their classmates to critique, it quickly becomes clear which pieces are successful and which aren't. "I ran out of funny about two weeks ago," Sanford says of the joke-panel assignments. "I used to be cynical. Now I have more respect for standup comics. When you show a comic and nobody laughs, it' like, well, that was funny in Toledo but not here." In addition to developing their sense of humor and drawing skills (Younger's course information alone contains examples of an astonishing assortment of materials and techniques), the students are learning about the comic form, about printing, about materials - from quill pens to duotone paper to ink washes and, because the course style is modeled on independent comics, which focus on individual experiences, as the students create cartoons, they're learning a lot about themselves and their view of the world. Yet, despite comics, popularity with students, and the potential of the form to teach valuable drawing and illustration techniques, cartoon art is still something of a béte noire in most university art programs. If you'd like to study the art of comics at a St. Louis university or college, so far UM-ST. Louis is your only option. Telephone calls to several local institutions - including Fontbonne College, Lindenwood College, Maryville University, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, St. Louis University, Washington University, Webster U. and all the St. Louis Community Colleges- revealed that none of them currently offers a course in cartooning. It is rumored, however, that the St. Louis Community Colleges have a cartooning course on the books. Karen Byington of Fontbonne recalls taking a cartooning course at SLCC-Florissant Valley, and apparently SLCC-Meramec has offered cartooning courses in the past. SIU-E used to offer cartooning courses taught by John Richardson, who retired last year. Washington University suggested we try Craft Alliance, which offers cartooning classes for children only. St. Charles Community College's Continuing Education Department offers cartooning classes, also just for children, with instructor Bryan Loy (Dragon Studios, 993-1678), who conducts cartooning classes for students of all ages at various locations around town. According to Younger, this lack of cartooning instruction results in part because comics have always been considered a kids' thing, and also because they're humorous, and therefore taken less seriously. "There are fewer people doing comics than there are professional basketball players," Younger says, which indicates how few cartoonists actually 11 make it." Another problem is that comics are simply not considered fine art. "There's a tremendous amount of pomposity in art programs," Younger laments. He cites the example of former student Ed Flynn, whose graduate thesis at a Louisiana college might have been very different had Younger and cartooning not intervened. "Ed was a graduate student in painting, and all the painters in the program were telling him to work big, paint these big things in oil. So he'd paint these sort of comics, but they'd be huge. And he didn't want to work huge. He wanted to do small black-and-white line drawings." So Younger suggested that the student switch to printmaking, and "he did these beautiful intaglio prints that were basically just comics in intaglio. His graduate thesis was 20 of these prints in a little hand-bound book." After hearing that story, it's refreshing to see the enthusiasm of Younger's students, who seem to have found their niche in comics class. "It's my dream class," says graphic design major Jeremy Pratte. "I've been drawing comics since the late '80s on notebook paper. This class is helping me a lot. If there was a major in cartooning, I'd take it." David Penny would like to go to New York and get a job with super hero oriented comic publishers Marvel or DC, but,he says, "It's monster competition and the market has declined for superhero comics." He's invented a character called Afroman. Hunter Brumfield, a musician and graffiti artist, was disenchanted with UM-ST. Louis until he discovered the school's new fine-arts department and comics course. "I knew this class was going to be cool," he says, "because the first artist (Dan) f started talking about was Robert Crumb." (Underground comics star Crumb, creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, may be familiar to non-fans as the subject of a much-lauded documentary a few years ago.) Like many of the students, Brumfield seems to have thrived in Younger's class. "This class makes me discipline myself more in terms of my art," he says. "It's introduced me to different types of media. Before this class, I didn't know what tools comic-book artists used. My work has really developed using pen and ink and brushes." Jay Johnson, a slightly older student who would like to publish cartoons in military magazines like TAC ATTAC and Marine Gazette someday, enjoys combining his storywriting abilities with his drawing talent. "I was a short-story writer in grade school," he says. "I was drawing in the margins - it was an obsession." He got into comics when he was 21, when someone bet him that he couldn't combine his writing talents with his artistic skills, a combination that's essential for cartoonists. " One of the best talents artists have," Younger says, "is the ability to flip into right-half (of the brain)'processing, which is non symbolic processing." An artist, lie explains, might be content to draw every leaf on a tree, whereas a left-brain person would be bored silly at the prospect. Cartoons are symbols, but they involve more than just a symbolic representation: Images must expand and change, and that takes creativity, a right-side-of-the-brain activity. "Cartoonists have to live ill both worlds," Younger says. 'They have to make symbols and at the same time extend them - they can't do the same old symbol. So if there's anything really special about cartoonists, it I s mainly that they're very multi-brained." Younger's multibrained students, in addition to learning about the business from seasoned professionals like cartoonist and cartoon historian R.C. Harvey, who paid a visit to the class, will enjoy a budding cartoonist's ultimate high: publication. They pooled their lab fees in order to print their collaborative comic book, titled A Few Guys & A Chick, which should be available next week at Star Clipper (379 N. Big Bend, 72591 10) and Daily Planet News (243 N. Euclid, 367-1333). - To find out more about UM-ST. Louis' cartooning course, contact the university's art department at 314-516-6967 (Illustration
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