Comics Challenges – Page 3

April Comics Challenge

This month we are challenging you to swap a comic!

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Mini-comics are great for comic swaps – find Sarah McIntyre’s instructions for making them here.

If you make comics as part of a comics club, at school, in a group or with your friends, you can also take part in this year’s children’s Comic Swap.

Groups from across the country can swap their comics with one another. Last year groups from Bath, Dundee, Gateshead, Gloucester, Newcastle, and North Yorkshire took part. Want to find out more? Head over to the Comic Swap website now! The deadline for this year’s swap is Friday 25th May.

March Comics Challenge

This month’s comic challenge comes from the amazing Jess Bradley!

Do get in touch if your group has taken up the challenge, and share some of your comics with us!

You can download the worksheet as a PDF here: Jess Bradley worksheet

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You might know Jess Bradley from her Squid Bits comic in The Phoenix.

She has published loads of brilliant, funny comics and also works as an illustrator and a writer.

Thanks to Jess for providing this month’s challenge!

February Comics Challenge

This month’s comic challenge come from the brilliant Viviane Schwarz!

Your challenge is to turn these blobs into a series of strange beasts. Then, choose your favourite beast and make a comic about it.

strange-beasts Viviane Schwarz

Download the strange-beasts worksheet.

You might know Viviane Schwarz from her picture books – including There are Cats in this Book. She has also written and illustrated the dream-like graphic novel The Sleepwalkers.

Thanks to Viviane for providing this month’s challenge!

Don’t forget to let us know if your comic club has completed any of our challenges – we’d love to see pictures of your work!

January Comics Challenge

January’s Comics Challenge comes from cartoonist, illustrator and archaeologist John Swogger.

Heritage Comic 01 Heritage Comic 02

You can download the worksheet or find PDFs of the instructions and the worksheet here.

Thanks to John for providing this month’s challenge!

You can read and download some of John’s archaeology comics for free on the Cadw website.

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December Comics Challenge: Start in the Middle!

This month’s brilliant comic challenges come from Lydia Wysocki of Applied Comics Etc.

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If you want, you can download a 3×4 grid and a 2×5 grid for drawing your comics, or you can download the worksheets here.

Thanks again to Lydia for providing this month’s challenge!

You can read the excellent Newcastle Science Comics – Asteroid Belter and Spineless (both edited by Lydia) by going here and clicking on the images at the right of the page: http://newcastlesciencecomic.blogspot.co.uk/

November Comics Challenge: Weird and Unusual Creatures!

This month’s comic challenge has been devised for us by Damon Herd of Dundee Comics Creative Space. Thanks Damon!

Damon writes:
This month our Comics Clubbers here in Dundee have been working on comics inspired by Gulliver’s Travels as DCCS is part of the Being Human Festival and we are celebrating the 350th anniversary of author Jonathan Swift’s birth. In the book Lemuel Gulliver travels to lots of strange places such as Lilliput, where the people are all around 6 inches tall. Later he visits the flying island of Laputa, and then Land of the Houyhnhnms, where talking horses rule over the Yahoos, who are deformed and savage humanoids.

This comics challenge is to invent a weird and unusual creature (maybe one that Gulliver might meet!) and then create a one page comic starring that creature. To help you we have supplied a list of inspirations. The best way to invent your creature is to print out the sheet and then cut out all the suggestions. Put the ‘creatures’, ‘sizes’, and ‘locations’ in separate cups and then pick one from each. So for example, you might pick an octopus that is the size of Australia who lives in a Haunted House! You should have enough information to inspire a design and story. We have included a 6 panel grid to print out to create your story on but feel free to design your own page and panels. Also, you can mix up the categories and add new ones if you want to! Happy drawing!

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6 panel grid

October Comics Challenge: CREEPY COMICS!

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This month we’ve got a special SPOOOOKY Comics Challenge for you, courtesy of the amazing Louie Stowell and Freya Harrison, who are here to give you some tips on FACING YOUR FEARS and BUILDING TENSION to make blood-curdlingly, spine-chillingly CREEPY COMICS!

A4_Halloween Activity Sheet (3)

Download as a PDF!

That’s just one of the fun activities in Louie and Freya’s new book / activity pad Make Your Own Comics, out now from Usborne!

Here’s some more info:

This awesome activity pad is jam-packed with everything children need to design their very own comic strips. Create comics about swashbuckling pirates, a space adventure, a rogue robot rampage and many more. With lots of hints and tips on drawing characters, showing emotions, setting the scene and adding speech bubbles and sound effects.

Available now from all good workshops, and also Amazon!

We had a a great time using this activity with Neill’s Comic Club group at the Story Museum. First we created Creepy Creatures based on our own greatest fears – here are some of the results!

Have a go yourselves, we’d love to see what you come up with! IF… WE DARE.

BONUS ACTIVITY! If you need some help getting started drawing monsters, here are some Halloween-themed activity sheets from Neill’s How To Make Awesome Comics, courtesy of The Phoenix!

Art Monkey 21a - VAMPIRE Activity Sheet Art Monkey 21b - WEREWOLF Activity Sheet Art Monkey 21c - ZOMBIE Activity Sheet Art Monkey 21d - MUMMY Activity Sheet

Download all 4 designs as a PDF!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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September Comics Challenge: Collage Comics!

Drawing is just one way of making comics. Why not have a go at using collage to make a comic? Collect scraps of coloured paper, left-over packaging and wrapping paper, pictures from old magazines or newspapers, and get cutting and sticking.

With Autumn here, you could also use fallen leaves and seeds to create your characters.

Use the sheets below, or design your own collage comic!

Collage Comics 01

Collage Comics 02

August Comics Challenge: Drawing Emotions!

Our Comics challenge this month comes from special Guest Contributor Karen Rubins! Karen is an award-winning cartoonist and a contributor to The Phoenix, and also regularly teaches cartooning and manga workshops for children and young people.

Karen’s Comics Challenge is based around EMOTION, and it’s pretty self-explanatory. Here we go…

Karen Comics Challenge 1 - Emotions

If you’re working with a group, it can be fun to get the kids to shout out as many ideas as they can for different emotions, and then try drawing them. You can get kids to act out the emotions – take turns pulling faces for their neighbours to draw!

The next step is to have a go at drawing a comic, using some of these emotions! And if you need some ideas to get started, here’s a Bonus Extra Activity from Kaz, that you can use as a starting point:

Karen Comics Challenge 2 - Interview

Just pick a SUPERLATIVE and a NOUN, and away you go!

Huge thanks to Kaz for letting us share these. We’d love to see whatever drawings and comics your groups come up with – you can leave comments here, or tweet us at @ComicsClubBLOG.

You can find out more about Karen’s work at her website, at karenrubins.com, and find out more about her upcoming classes and workshops here: http://karenrubins.com/workshops/

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July Comics Challenge: Make Your Own Superhero!

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Superheroes are fun, right? Everyone loves superheroes? Well they are the focus of this month’s COMICS CHALLENGE, where we’re all going to be having a go at making our own. That’s the challenge, nice and simple: Make Up A New Superhero. And here are some handy Templates We Prepared Earlier, to help you do just that!

SuperHero Challenge 1 SuperHero Challenge 2

Download the templates as a PDF!

Here’s a suggested ‘lesson plan’ / way to use these templates as the basis of a session with your group! This is based on the assumption that you have a whiteboard / flipchart / other flat and writeable-on surface to hand…

Start by thinking about Famous Superheroes. How many Superheroes can the group name? Try writing all the answers up on the board as you go. Bonus Discussion Points: Who is the coolest? Who would win in a fight?
Pick a couple of the suggested characters and see how much the group know about them. What is their secret identity? What superpowers do they have? Do they have any weaknesses? Who is their best friend? Who is their arch-nemesis?
Using the suggested characters as a basis, make a list on the board of superhero THEMES (e.g. Bats, Spiders, Cats – lots of animal-themed ones) and SUPERPOWERS (e.g. flight, super strength, stretchiness – see how many you can think of).
Get the group to come up with ideas for either the THEME or SUPERPOWER for a new hero. Try and get as many suggestions as possible on the board.
Pick one and have a go at creating a new Superhero! Have a go at drawing them on the board! Don’t worry if you think you’re not good at drawing, try and give it a go anyway. If it really *is* rubbish, it just works as an encouragement to the kids to try and do better!
Okay, now everyone have a go! Confident artists can just dive straight in and start drawing; younger or less confident artists might want to use one of the worksheets provided above; just start designing a costume straight onto the template!
Once everyone’s had long enough to draw, take a look at everyone’s new heroes. Get each artist to tell you about their character!
FINAL STEP: everyone draw a comic about their superhero! You can use some of our handy comics page templates, to help you get started!