Graphic Novel and Cartooning Mini-Camp

Yesterday was the first day of the two-day “Graphic Novel and Cartooning Mini-Camp” I am conducting at the Tredyffrin Public Library. I have a great crop of enthusiastic and talented teens who love to draw. It was also a good mix of ages sexes. The taste seemed pretty even to with the reading habits split into thirds, 1/3 liking manga, 1/3 regular comic fare like X-men and Spidey, and the other third reading mostly newspaper strips.


The first day I gave some basics on how comics work ( the combination of words and pictures) and then got right into creating your character and some tips on cartooning by having them draw the other kids at their table, something I use with my college students, first using all straight lines, then all curved lines, then combining the two drawings so they learn that cartooning is about designing from reality.

Next they took this idea and ran with it designing their own characters which I had then pin-up so they could all see what each other had done.



Then I set about showing them how to break down their story buy using some layouts I made for them, and then to take that "blue print" and use it to draw their final pages in pencil using the blue pencils to rough out the work first before doing the final art. Friday I'll go over their work and then show them the inking stage. It was a lot of fun and all the kids were really nice, funny, polite and talented. Who knows, one of them may go on to become a real fulltime pro.