8/5/08 Session Videos

There were five videos from the 8/5 session. Three from the first one with 10-12 year olds and one each from the 5-6 and 7-9 year old sessions.

8/5 Session 1



8/5 Session 2



8/5 Session 3



8/5 Session 4



8/5 Session 5

Create a Comic Project at Otakon 2008

I'll be attending Otakon 2008! If there's anyone going who wants to meet me, the official CCP meetup will be Saturday 12:30 - 1:30 PM at the front lobby.

Also there will be Erin Ptah of And Shine Heaven Now, who's the main artist for the Create a Comic Project #2 and a few other comics.

For obvious reasons, updates to this blog will be sparse from August 6 through August 11.

8/5/08 Sessions

The 8/5 YMCA sessions were actually the 8/4 sessions, but delayed a day. The lesson theme was symbolia: the use of symbols in place of words.

There were three sessions; I'd been told there'd be four, but they changed it at the last minute. As a result my list of templates used is a bit off. The first session was 10-12 year olds and had 21 kids, the second had 5-6 year olds and had 14 kids, and the third session was with 7-9 year olds and had 16 kids. Exact numbers of comics will come later.

10-12 Session templates used:

And Shine Heaven Now
Copper
Dreamland Chronicles
Dr. McNinja
Fans
Goats
Hate Song
Kastle Comics
Lil' Formers
Lil' Mell
Mac Hall
Narbonic
My Stupid Life
Nothing Nice to Say
Phineus
Phoenix
Questionable Content
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Seasons of Constancy
Skin Horse
Tea Club
Unshelved
You'll Have That

5-6 Session templates used:

Awkward Zombie
Ice
Krakow
Lil' Formers
Little Dee
Okashina Okashi
Penny & Aggie
Planet Karen
Questionable Content
Shortpacked
Tracy and Tristan
Weirdlings

7-9 Session templates used:

8-Bit Theater
Applegeeks
Chugworth Academy
Coolcat Studio
Daisy is Dead
Demonology 101
Dicebox
Flipside
Freshman 15
Ghost Hunters
Girl Genius
I Come From Mars
Jellaby
Kastle Comics
Lil' Formers
Lil' Mell
No Rest for the Wicked
Nothing Nice to Say
Okashina Okashi
Penny Arcade
Punks & Nerds
Rob and Elliot
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Saturnalia
Seasons of Constancy
Sketchies
Sluggy Freelance
Something Like Life
Sorcerers & Secretaries
Stubble
Venus Envy
Zombies Calling

Videos and pictures will be posted later.

8/4/08 Session Canceled

The 8/4 sessions were canceled due to personal reasons. The 8/5 sessions are still planned for tomorrow. As a result, I'll push back the planned lesson for 8/4 onto 8/5.

Site Updates

The About page has been updated. It now has links to a recent Daisy is Dead CCP guest comic that was posted and a three page guest comic posted to the Scienteers.

The other update is to the main page. The CCP now has a Twitter account. The flash widget for it is now below the blog window. I'm still figuring out what I'll use it for - most likely little project updates not worth a blog post or to post summaries before explaining them in full in the blog.

From the Classroom to Print: Create a Comic Project #1

The Create a Comic Project has taken its first foray into publishing teaching material with Create a Comic Project #1, aimed at both children and educators. The 26-page comic is written by John Baird, the Create a Comic Project’s founder, and illustrated by a bevy of comic artists, including Ryan Estrada, Emily Snodgrass, and Erin Ptah. It’s published not-for-profit through Lulu.com.

The first issue is written as an introduction to the series, touching on a range of topics, such as captions, bubble types, and symbolia. These subjects will be developed deeper in later issues. As an added bonus, textless versions of every page are included along with bonus textless art pages. An instructor can use these pages to run their own comic making activity.

“The Create a Comic Project is a superlative children's activity, combining youth literacy education with fun visual elements that delight the students,” said Xia Feng, Coordinator of Children and Youth Services at the New Haven Public Library, the Create a Comic Project’s first home.

Create a Comic Project #1 is the first of many planned comics that will serve a dual role: to equip educators with materials they can use in the classroom or after school programs; and, to make comics children would find interesting to read.

The comics seek to fill a gap in current how-to comic literature, which mainly targets teens and adults, by attracting 8-12 year olds to the craft. As the percentage of kids who are Internet savvy increases and computer literacy spreads to more diverse populations, youth oriented comic education could help train the next generation of online comic makers.

The comic is available for purchase at the Create a Comic Project Lulu storefront.

7/28/08 Session Report

For 7/28, the two sessions gave mixed results. Both ran into some problems with timing.

The lesson part for the first session with 9-12 year olds ran over time. After going over the different word bubble types, I had them try drawing their own. This took longer than I expected, so the kids couldn't finish the activity portion, though they did get through the main lecture.

With the 7-8 year olds, they arrived late, so they only had time to finish the warm-up with no time for the lecture component.

These delays, plus lower attendance, caused the 7/28 sessions to have fewer comics. The overall numbers:

Attendance: 36
Comics collected: 231
Student efficiency: 6.42
Maximum possible produced: 305
Lesson efficiency: 0.76

For the sake of simplicity, I'm only going to break them down into separate sessions when there's a significant difference in their content. For example, 5-6 year olds are taught different things from the older kids, so they would be counted separate.

Based on the timing issues here, I realized I needed to shorten the warm-up period for the 7-8 year olds. For the 9-12 year olds, I'm going to skip having them do practice drawing runs and instead go straight from warm-up to lecture to activity. These modifications will help with time management.