Day 9 - (Almost) Finished Comics

It was a great two weeks of comics discussions, reading, writing, and drawing. Our creators based their multi-page comics on ideas inspired by single-page illustrations from Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. While not all of us finished, we all have at least a full page of pencils that we can continue to work on as summer projects.

Thank you to University School of Milwaukee for providing the time and space for this year's creators to get Comics Crazy once again. Keep writing, editing, drawing, and coloring your stories.

Round-robin Challenge (Thursday)

One last round-robin challenge - we doubled the time we were allowed to spend on each panel. We think they turned out MUCH better than Tuesday's offering.

Day 7/8 - Pencils

We are working like crazy (between round-robin challenges, trying to find musical inspiration, telling jokes, and the occasional push pop) to finish up our pencils before Friday. We are all at various stages of completion, but our goals are firmly set on at least one inked, lettered, and colored page by tomorrow. Stay tuned...

 Ready to ink and color!

 Pencils complete!

 Already lettered!

 Splash page!

 Page two thumbnails - yes, he's going to add even more detail!

Still working on eye lines from panel to panel - the office turned out pretty good, though. 

Round-robin Challenge (Tuesday)

Each of us was given a noun as inspiration to create the first panel of a collaborative comic. After one minute and fifteen seconds, we passed our comics to the right so the next writer/artist could come up with the next panel. We repeated the process six more times. In ten minutes we created seven full-page comics (someone took his or her comic home, I think). Some of them are a little disjointed, some of them are a bit confusing, but it was ten minutes of creative chaos and fun. Perhaps we'll do it again with a little more time to see if we come up with even better results.

Day 5/6 - Writing and Thumbnailing

We've been writing scripts and sketching rough layouts for our comics. We've looked at scripts from prominent comic book writers and talked about their different styles. We've watched some videos about how to create thumbnail (small, quick, rough) drafts and edit our layouts before we commit to our final pages. The last two days have been the groundwork for the finished product we hope to have on Friday. We have three days to turn these ideas and words and pencil lines into full graphic stories.

Day 3/4 - Multi-panel Comics

We tried our hand at slightly longer storytelling on Thursday and Friday. We attempted to set up a problem, advance the conflict, and resolve it - all in three panels. Our guest teacher, Will, gave it the ol' college try, too.

Putting your panels together

Rough Layouts Tutorial (by Mark Crilley):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csbgkb1vhp0

More great writing and layout advice from Mark Crilley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JF0Y2Thbsw