Category: Comics Challenges

Comics Challenge: Comic Narratives

This Comic Challenge comes to us from the Salford Comics Club.

The aim of this challenge is to use the narrative prompts on the sheets to help you tell your story. Narrative 3-panel-comic  Narrative 6-panel-comics

6-panel-page3-panel-page

If you need help getting started, Salford Comic Club suggest you try this:

First draw:

  • something you play with
  • something you wear and
  • something you eat

Then use one or more of these things as inspiration for characters.

Now create a story around these characters, using these blank comic templates with thought/narration bubbles on them to help guide your story and move the action forward.

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You can see some more of the Salford Comics Club members’ comics here.

Thanks so much to Joanne Wozencroft for sharing this challenge with us!

Comics Challenge: Group Comics

This challenge involves working together as a group to make a comic. Each club member draws a single panel, then they are put together in order to create a whole comic.

The challenge is to create a “Day in the Life” comic of a character or a place.

Day in the Life 01

Day in the Life 02

As a group you could (for example) decide to recreate a day in the life of Whiskers the cat, or a day in the life of a space station. Cut up the sheets (Group comic – sheet 01 and Group comic – sheet 02) into individual panels and share them out across the group. When the panels are finished, put them back together in order to discover the events of the day!

You could use post-it notes or index cards instead of these sheets, and you could tell the story of a journey over days or weeks, or the history of a country or planet over years, decades or centuries, rather than a day in the life.

Please get in touch to share pictures of your Comics Challenge comics!

 

Comic Challenge: Daily Diary

Keeping a diary is a common New Year’s resolution, but it can be hard to think of things to write in a diary every day.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry encourages students in her comics classes to keep a diary of the things they notice in the world around them. Keeping this kind of diary can help you as a cartoonist, writer and artist. It can also give you great ideas for comics, characters and dialogue.

You can use Lynda Barry’s diary format, or you can use this simplified version:

Diary Challenge

You can download a Diary Challenge double page printout.

Don’t worry if you don’t remember to keep a diary every day, just keep drawing and writing in it as often as you can.

Comic club members could keep a diary for at least seven days, then at the next comic club meeting they could use their favourite words, phrases and images from their diary to make a comic.

Comic club leaders, if you haven’t come across Lynda Barry’s Syllabus or What it is, they are full of brilliant ideas.

 

 

Comics Challenge: Comic Jam Scrabble!

For this version of a comic jam you will need post-it notes or squares of plain paper.

Someone starts the jam by drawing the start of a comic, with each post-it note as a panel. You can draw a well-known story or make one up.

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Now two more people can join the jam.

One continues to draw the original story, taking the story wherever they like.

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The other person chooses one of the panels to use as part of a new comic. For example:

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Now more and more people can join in, adding new comics, just as you would add new words in scrabble.

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Keep going until you run out of space!

Please do send us some photos if you take up this challenge.

Comics Challenge: Inktober Prompts

Jess Bradley’s Inktober drawing for the prompt ‘STRETCH’

Lots of cartoonists have been taking part in Inktober– an annual challenge that involves making an ink drawing every day of the month. Inktober may be coming to an end, but the drawing prompts provided on their website are useful all year round.

This comic challenge makes use of Inktober-style prompts to make a drawing game that is a perfect warm up activity for comic club.

You will need: Paper, pens, a small bag or box, scissors, timer/stopwatch (optional).

STEP 1: Print out and cut up the prompts provided here: Prompts 01 

Prompts 01

You can also use this blank sheet to create your own list of prompts: Prompts 02. Put the words in a small bag or box.

STEP TWO: Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it three times, then unfold, to create eight spaces for drawing in.Folded page

STEP THREE: One person picks a prompt word out of the bag or box and reads out the word. Draw the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word. If you want you can use a timer and have everyone draw a picture in one minute or thirty seconds.

STEP FOUR: Repeat until you have filled up your page (or several pages).

 

September Comics Challenge

The most popular warm-up drawing activity at Widcombe Comic Club is called “Draw yourself as a …” Each time the club meets, there is a new sheet to fill in. To begin with they were made by me, but now club members are making their own sheets too.

Draw yourself 01

What would you look like as a cake or a boot or an owl? You can share your drawings with us on @ComicsClubBLOG .

Download the sheets here:

Draw yourself 01

Draw yourself 02

Draw yourself 03

Draw yourself 02                 Draw yourself 03

 

 

July Comics Challenge

This month’s challenge has been devised by Stoneydown Park School Drawing Group.

The challenge is inspired by the comics made by the group for this year’s Comic Swap. 

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Can you invent a spray that does exciting things? 

Sprays examples

Spays close up

Use one of the templates below to invent you own magical spray and show how it works.

Spray template plain; Spray template colour; Spray template Black and white.

Thanks to Ben Thompson and the Stoneydown Park School Drawing Club for providing the challenge!

June Comics Challenge

This month’s challenge involves taking inspiration from the past.

Take a look at these animals and see if you can turn them into cartoon characters and make comics about them.

Hippopotamus ("William"), Faience

Ancient Egyptian hippo c. 1800 B,C.

 

Horse-Shaped Brooch, Bronze, Celtic

Iron Age horse from c,650 B,C.

 

This Owl of Athena is shown on a Greek silver coin from c. 450 B.C.

 

Brooch in the Form of a Dog, Champlevé enamel, bronze, Roman

Roman Dog 2nd Century AD.

 

Download the Ancient animals worksheet.

Ancient animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

May Comics Challenge

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This month’s comic challenge has been provided by the Drawing Comics Club at St Aubyn’s School.

Inspired by the Squid Bits Horoscopes in the Phoenix, the club have been making their own horoscopes. Take a look at some of them here.

File:Venice ast sm.jpg

Lots of newspapers and magazines publish horoscopes, claiming to tell you what kind of week you will have, based on your star sign. Your star sign is based on your date of birth:

  • Aries (March 21-April 19)
  • Taurus (April 20-May 20)
  • Gemini (May 21-June 20)
  • Cancer (June 21-July 22)
  • Leo (July 23-August 22)
  • Virgo (August 23-September 22)
  • Libra (September 23-October 22)
  • Scorpio (October 23-November 21)
  • Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)
  • Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
  • Aquarius (January 20 to February 18)
  • Pisces (February 19 to March 20)

Your challenge is to make your own Horoscope of the Week. You could also try making up your own star signs (see Jess Bradley’s example here: http://squid-bits.tumblr.com/post/152151280507/star-signs).

Horoscope of the Week

Thanks to librarian Rhiannon Cook and the members of the Drawing Comics Club for this month’s challenge!

 

Image: Astrological clock at Venice. Source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venice_ast_sm.jpg