Adam, Kevin, and the distant voice of Patrick take a break from interviews and writing articles to talk about all the good things Making Comics (dotCom) is currently feeding your beautiful and creative souls.
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I recently finished Habibi by Craig Thompson. It’s an amazing piece of literature to say the least. The degree of experimentation, intricacy, and precision with which Thompson approaches his art is on display with each page. It blew me away! Reading Habibi has led me to start thinking about the nature of what makes a “great comic,” so that I can pass that knowledge along to my students.
Image from Craig Thompson’s Habibi
The qualities of great comics are important to discern, especially when learning how to make comics. The following five qualities are the standards around which we at Making Comics (dotCom) are constructing our MOOC (massively open online course). Follow these principles when creating your own MOOC project.
Adam sits down with Patrick Yurick to discuss what to do when comic inspiration strikes.
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Casual consumers of comic books around the world often have no idea of the work involved in producing the entertainment they enjoy. Effort and workload aside, merely the size of the team required for an idea to manifest can boggle the mind. Dozens of people handle specialized roles from writer to penciller, inker, colorist, letterer, and editor. Printers are needed to produce the physical copies and a distribution network is required for those comics to end up in your local comic shop.
Or maybe the comic in question is of a new breed — a webcomic — and most of the jobs are handled by one person.
This article is intended to be a quick reference for the most common methods of comic creation, both from the professional side of things as well as how those methods scale when applied to smaller projects.
Read the article, then grab the activity sheet! It provides guided examples that students can use to establish good warm-up techniques.
Warm-up exercises are a critical component of the art process. In sports, professional athletes know that in order to achieve peak performance from their muscles it’s necessary to gradually work up to the demands that are placed on them. Art is no different, save in one respect. Muscle control is certainly a factor but the real benefit of warm-up drawing exercises is the way they engage your mind.
Confused? You may have heard of the famous Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It theorizes that the two hemispheres of the brain control separate thoughts processes. In most people, the left brain is active much of the time, allowing you to verbally and logically navigate through the world around you. But the right brain is where visual and creative processes reside and it’s that part of the mind we are trying to engage when we draw. These warm-up exercises will help you to work up to thinking visually and should be used daily.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and if you’re interested in drawing this is it.
So you want to write a story?
It’s no exaggeration when I say that stories are the lifeblood of civilization. In a world full of uncertainty and insecurity, we turn to stories for understanding and guidance. Religions use creation myths to help society embrace its purpose and identity, while politicians exploit their personal narratives for political gain. In both instances these stories affect our understanding of history. In essence, stories facilitate learning, growth, and empathy. They transport us to worlds we’ll never see and allow us to speak to people who never existed. The greatest stories have toppled empires, and even the meekest have managed to touch hearts. Any story (even yours!) holds within it the power to affect a change in ways you’d never have thought possible. All you need to do is tell it.
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