The Final Month: May

May is going to be the last month of the CCP. Fortunately, it'll be going out with a bang. The 5/2 session will be based on "To Kill a Mockingbird" to coincide with the national America Reads events. Later in the month, I hope to have a special guest speaker from the area give the kids some art tips. For the final lesson on 5/30, I plan to base a lesson on an adaptation of "Shine or Die," a massive story arc I wrote with Erin Ptah for And Shine Heaven Now.

In addition to the main session at the New Haven Public Library, I'll be adding a series of 4 additional "CCP Workshops" at the Dixwell-Yale Community Learning Center (DYCLC). These 4 workshops will be presented twice a day to two classes of 20-25 students at the DYCLC. I'll be condensing the material I presented at the library and using new and old templates.

Also attending the workshops at the DYCLC will be a small group of students from the High Meadow School of Hamden. The High Meadow School is a special school for troubled youths. The instructors there see the CCP as something that can help tap the creativity of these children to help inspire them to improve.

I'm also going to look at doing a special one-shot CCP presentation at the Yale Bookstore for local schools, but that'll depend largely on how much time I have left.

And, of course, looming on the horizon is the Comic Making Tournament, the grand conclusion to all things CCP here in New Haven. That's scheduled for June 2 from 11 - 2 PM. May is going to be when the preparations for the CMT start moving with added momentum. I'll also be finding out if the grant application for prize money I sent back in March gets approved or not.

This looks to be a great month!

A Milestone and The Numbers Game 2

With the last session of April done, it's time to look at the numbers again.

Thanks to the last two sessions, the CCP has now generated over 1000 comics! This is an amazing milestone. I'd only predicted 700-800 when I first started, so the kids have exceeded all my expectations. Going at an average rate of 5 comics a week, I have almost enough comics to last 4 years. And I still have the month of May left.

Other numbers that have changed:

Top Five:

1. 129, 4/18/07
2. 112, 4/11/07
3. 90, 4/4/07
4. 80, 12/6/06
5. 68, 4/25/07

Average number of comics produced per session: 50.8

This is the highest the average has been since December, which had a high of 54.5 after the first two sessions, then 50.7 and 50.75 before dropping down into the 40's in the last week.

Average number of comics produced per student: 5
Average number of comics produced per template: 2.5

April's been an excellent month for me. I'm looking forward to May!

4/25/07 Session

The 4/25/07 Session went well despite my bad wrist, though bad weather kept numbers low. Still, the kids produced an admirable 68 comics, putting it in the top 5.

The theme was based on a 6 page arc around some Avatar: The Last Airbender fanart. All the kids love Avatar, so it went over well.

Inactivity

Sorry for the lack of updates. I recently hurt my wrist (tendonitis), so I need to minimize typing for a bit. Summaries of the 4/25 session and other CCP news will come after I recover.

Yale Sponsors the CMT

The Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs has agreed to help sponsor the Comic Making Tournament. This means the CMT is, in addition to a community event, now a Yale event. I was honestly not expecting to get such an enormous endorsement!

This should help convince the Yale Bookstore to sponsor the CMT, as they reserve most of their charity budget for Yale events.

4/18/07 CCP Pictures

New pictures have been added to the CCP's Gallery: 14 pictures from the 4/18 session. As you can see, it was a very diverse group, which is normal. Several regular students were there, as well as some new students.

I'm still editing the video clips into a reasonable size for posting and will host it on YouTube later.

4/18/07 Session

The 4/18 session has come and gone. This was a very good session, with 12 kids and 5 adults. The theme was "Dr. McNinja," with the main goal being to reword the first installment of McNinja's adventures. All the kids really loved it, because ninjas are awesome. As with all large multi-page comics, I had them write out what they were going to write ahead of time using an outline worksheet.

I got three complete remixes of the chapter and several partial ones. A few took their comics home to finish; hopefully I get them back next week.

This session continued the trend of past ones by setting a new record in terms of number of templates made: 129 in all, a good half of them being Dr. McNinja related.

I also brought my digital camera with me. Lots of pictures and videos to share. I shall be posting them later.