Taking Silliness Seriously with Fionn McCabe
Expand your autobiographical comics practice and understanding of visual storytelling through two weeks of guided comics play and experimentation.
Taking Silliness Seriously - Course Description
Each workshop will explore visual storytelling principles through written and visual experimentation and hands on comics making. Each student will engage with many short story experiments over the course of the four sessions, resulting in 10-15 rough comic experiments. At the end of those two weeks, students are encouraged to pick one of those experiments and refine and finish before sharing their work at the fifth and final class.
Session 01 focuses on the importance of play, text and image relationships and the power of small moments.
Session 02 focuses on how to create meaning and interest in autobiographical comics by exploring visual and narrative patterns, building reader expectations, and the importance of complexity.
Session 03 explores the value of non-literal image making through a series of abstract comic exercises before moving on to establishing and using visual association.
Session 04 is all about taking advantage of taste by learning to informally analyse and explore the ideas and techniques of our comic idols, promoting a flexible comics practice that is always leaning into the learning curve.
optional Session 05 (if applicable) is the final class in which students bring in a (minimum of one) finished comic and receive feedback before virtual high fives and tearful goodbyes.
Meeting Times
4 Sessions on zoom Starting December 8, 2025
2 hour sessions, Mondays and Thursdays
7 - 9 PM Eastern / 4 - 6 PM Pacific
Monday, December 8th 7-9pm - EASTERN TIME / 4-6 PACIFIC
Thursday, December 11th 7-9pm - EASTERN TIME / 4-6 PACIFIC
Monday, December 15th 7-9pm - EASTERN TIME / 4-6 PACIFIC
Thursday, December 18, 7 - 9 pm - EASTERN TIME / 4-6 PACIFIC
optional post holiday sharing session to be determined…
About the Instructor
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![Fionn McCabe]()
Fionn McCabe
Fionn (pronounced Finn) McCabe is a print maker, comics maker and comics educator living in Sydney, Australia on Gadigal and Wangal land. Fionn teaches in the Animation and Visual Communications degrees at the University of Technology Sydney and has run comic workshops for City of Sydney, The Sydney Opera House, the Sequential Artists Workshop, California College of the Arts, and many other organisations.
He is a co-founder and co-producer of Read To Me, a live visual storytelling event that has been running since 2017, and has showcased the work of hundreds of cartoonists, animators, photographers, illustrators, and other visual storytellers both in Australia and internationally. In 2024, he co-directed the Comic Art Workshop, an immersive, two week comics residency for creators working on long form comics. Fionn has a face and arms and is often physically compared to Brad Pitt, though never favourably.