Comic Making Tournament Part 3: Beginning

This is the third part in a series on the CMT. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.

The day of the event, I went in an hour early to start setting things up. Two library volunteers had agreed to be judges: Brad and Lydia (you can see pictures of them in the Tournament Gallery). I gave them the judging forms so they could read up on scoring procedures.

Next, I organized the prizes. The Yale Bookstore dropped off their donations in the morning, so I added them to the pile. Prizes were split into large, medium, and small. Small prizes would be given to everyone, large prizes for the first place winners, and mediums for those who came in 2nd and 3rd.

I also ran some last minute photocopying, printing out template copies for the Speed event, and getting the themes ready in the Can of Inspiration. I then went into the Program Room, setting up the tables and chairs as needed, as well as my camera.

Warm-up

At 11 AM, when the tournament was supposed to start, only a few kids were there. So I handed out a few warm-up comics for them to work on as I waited for more people. This also gave a chance for the new kids to get used to using pre-drawn templates.

Introduction

For the opening intro to the Comic Making Tournament, you can view the video here. The tournament started with four kids, with more joining later on.

Short-form Pre-drawn

The first event had the lightest participation, with only four kids. One of the three was Jordan, a regular at the Dixwell-Yale Community Learning Center workshops. The other two - Sabir and Stephen - were new. The fourth, Michelle, bowed out after her mom realized she was too young and hadn't learned enough about sentences to compete.

I used Krakow, Penny Arcade, Rob and Elliot, SGVY, Shortpacked, and Something Like Life for templates.

In the end, Stephen came in first, earning a major prize, with Jordan second and Sabir third.

Short-form Original

This event had the highest level of participation, with six kids in all. Three more kids joined the remaining three at this point: Zenon, who had been with the CCP's main session since its beginning; Junee, who had come to the last DYCLC workshop; and Esther, Junee's younger sister.

Junee came in first, with Jordan and Zenon tied for second, and everyone else tied for third.