6-8yrs. Week 2: Katharine

Sketch Books:

White paper, hole punch, poster board or construction paper for cover, yarn

Students will use sketch books on a daily basis to focus on developing drawing skills and generating ideas for their final comic creation.

Life-size cartoon group exercise:
Craft paper, colored construction paper, yarn, brads, markers, scissors, glue, Velcro tape and masking tape

Students will work together to create a life-size cartoon character with moving appendages and removable features. This character will function as a sample case for how to create interesting personalities and unique forms that can hold a story together. It will also serve as a testing ground for different poses, expressions and movements so that students can learn how to better express a range of motions and E-motions.

Main Character Bio:
Drawing paper, colored pencils

After brainstorming and sketching out ideas, students will draw their main character and give him/her/it a background story with interests, activities, quirks or any other information. This page can serve as a sort of comic “table of contents” or “meet the character” introduction page to their final book.

Character wheel:
Cardboard, poster board, brads, scissors, markers

Students will receive a wheel made of one cardboard circle and three small poster board circles that they will then decorate with different eyes, noses and mouths. By turning the different wheels, students will be able to create different combinations and thereby see the diverse characters they can make. This tool will help them throughout the week as they create their characters for their stories.

I’m thinking about making some of these smaller activity art projects optional for any student who would prefer to work on their final comic book creation…

Storyboarding activity:
Colored construction paper, glue, scissors

After discussing how to break up a page with different sized and shaped boxes and looking at examples from comic books, students will create a sort of abstract image showing a variety of bubbles and boxes. This exercise will illustrate the range of shapes and colors they have to work with and also help them to think about the formal aspects of comic book art.

Jerzy-inspired storyboarding lesson:
White paper, colored pencils/markers/crayons

Class will come up with two characters, a scene, a location and an activity together. We’ll go through a short scene of about 6 images and then once it is completed, students will decide which scene is the most “important” or should be the “biggest” moment and they will then illustrate that moment.

Jerzy-inspired sound/dialogue lesson:
Large poster board or heavy weight paper, spray paint (red, blue, black—optional), colored construction paper, scissors, glue, letter stencils

Class will discuss different sounds and how they might be spelled and how the way they are written changes the way they sound. After short lesson, students will create their own sound and phonetic spelling and then create a Roy Lichtenstein inspired poster with this speech balloon. This exercise will also include a discussion about graphic design, simplification, and punctuation.

Cover page exercise:
Medium to heavy weight paper, oil pastels or watercolor or markers or crayons

Talk about how to summarize a story in one image using a popular story as an example. Students will then plan out and draw the cover page for their comic book.

Comic books:
Colored construction paper, drawing paper, pencils, erasers, colored pencils, felt tip pens for outlining, glue, scissors, brads for binding or yarn and hole punch, for special effects: googly eyes, glitter, yarn, foam stickers, etc.

Throughout the week students will be working on their own comic books, focusing on using some of the strategies we will discuss. Students will plan out their stories and draw each frame on separate pieces of paper and then attach them to the larger pages as they are completed so as to avoid ruining an entire page because a mistake in one frame.