Anyone from kindergarten to high school can be a comic book maker with these tools that help students create sequential art. Use these great creation tools to help students learn the basics of cartoons and sequencing, or just express themselves and learn to demonstrate. Teachers can also create comics to create a fun, accessible twist on content, whether it’s a set of visual rules in the classroom or a cheeky hook to start a lesson. A recommendation from experienced cartoonists is to establish a consistent illustration style that is feasible and efficient for the scope of your project.
Templates in the top set of designs are open and allow students to create their own comics from start to finish. Each template in the bottom set contains custom wood keychains a permanent image at the beginning or end of the strip. Students can use this to build a story to show what comes before or after the permanent image.
These new communication channels seem to support endless innovations in video development, interactive questionnaires and direct feedback. However, they also provide a platform for rebirth of one of the simplest and most effective methods of communicating ideas: comics. Few scientists have ever heard of Randall Munroe, the artist behind the “xkcd” web strip, who provides surprising graphical explanations of everything from climate change to data storage . These comics are very attractive to a diverse audience and are published on walls in laboratories and pubs. The ideas they explain are complicated, but by simplifying them in the core messages and by providing simple visual analogies, the comics lead and involve groups that other media cannot always reach.
After planning the organization of your comics, let students go to the online activity and choose the selected design from the bottom set of templates and start making. Remind students that their design options consist of three, five and six frame strips. Before students start the activity, check each of the sample pages. Discuss the signs, settings and sequence of events in each example. Ask students to identify the main idea for each comic and tell if it is related to the story and how.
This is a good way to keep your workflow flexible by working with trim masks. Here I will guide you on how clipping masks work in Adobe Illustrator and how they can be used in comic strip making. Having a circular, star-shaped or wavy panel can give a different feel or give the reader information. For example, the wavy panel is often used as a way of saying that what happens in the panel is a fantasy, a dream or a memory, and is not part of the current story. In this tutorial we will see the process behind creating a strip page.
The artistic style of a comic is often attributed to one artist, although most comics are produced by a team of artists and writers who work together. The name bande dessinée is derived from the original description of the art form as drawn strips (the expression literally translates as “the drawn strip”), analogous to the order of images on a film strip. As in the English equivalent, the word “band” can be applied to both films and comics. Significantly, the French term does not contain a theme indication, unlike the American terms “strips” and “funny”, which means that an art form should not be taken seriously.
As tempting as it is to jump in and start drawing for your strip, try not to be ahead of yourself. You know from reading your favorite comics that creating a solid story is crucial. The text stimulates visual action and completes the most important details of the plot and character traits. 1 While most people view a comic strip as a series of images, it is the written plot that directs the story. The writer and artist discuss the proposed story and exchange ideas. At this stage, they can use a range of formal or informal techniques to develop ideas.