Your character is going for a gentle stroll at the bottom of the ocean, when suddenly they see a GIANT SEA CREATURE looming above them!
Month: April 2020
Digital Comics Club: Week 7
Let’s Make a Mini-Zine!
What is a zine, you might ask? The word “zine” comes from magazine, and they started to get popular in the 1960s. They’re also known as fanzines, minis, minicomics, and many other names.
The ‘rules’ for making a zine are as follows:
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- You can make it using simple methods – drawing, painting, collage, or whatever other materials you can get your hands on!
- You can photocopy as many copies as you want!
- You can then sell/trade/gift them! (or build your own fortress of zines)
- There are no rules!
Zines can be about literally anything. Maybe you would make a zine about objects that begin with the letter B, or how much you love Clippy, or how many times you’ve seen a yellow car drive past your window. Zines can also be sketchbooks, journals, or, most importantly – comics!
At DCCS, we most often make our zines using a single sheet of A4 paper and a pair of scissors. Following the steps below, we can turn it into an 8-page book!
You can also use different sizes of paper! An A3 sheet will give you more space to draw (but will be harder to photocopy), while an A5 sheet would give you less space to draw (but you could make more copies).
Below are a couple of templates for you to use – one with the folding instructions, and another with some drawing prompts. Go make some zines!
How-To-Zine illustrations by Norrie Millar.
Weekly Prompt #6
Do you wish you could have a cat with psychic powers, or your own Pegasus to ride through the skies?
Do you want to just curl up on the couch with a good book/phone/tablet and cuddle a dragon?
Make a comic about your dream pet!
Digital Comics Club: Week 6
Strike a Pose
Got your characters worked out? Know what style you’re drawing them in? Excellent!
In your comics, your characters are going to be doing all sorts of actions. Maybe they’ll be eating a delicious sandwich, or diving into a pool, or relaxing on a beanbag playing some video games. But wait – how do we know how to draw them doing those things?!
We build up the drawing step-by-step!
Step 1: Gesture
With any action, it helps to start with a stick figure (or gesture) of that pose. Not sure how a pose looks? Get someone around you to pose for you and take a photo of them! You can also look up reference videos on Youtube if you’re not sure how to draw a certain movement (such as diving into a pool).
Remember: When you’re drawing your gesture, make sure to draw lightly so that you can erase it easily later on (or if you’re drawing digitally, draw on a different layer with lower opacity!).
Step 2: Structure
Once you have your gesture, it’s time to add the structure. These are the proportions of your character around the stick figure! How this looks will depend on your character design.
Again, you will want to draw this lightly, so that if you need to change anything you can do so easily.
BONUS TIP!
When designing your character, try drawing them from different angles. You can then use that as a reference when you’re adding structure to your gestures!
Step 3: It’s Alive!
Once you’re happy with your gesture and structure, you can finish off your drawing! Ink it, colour it, live your life, be free.
This may sound like a lot of work for just one drawing, and it is! Well done for going through all of these steps. As with most things, the more you practice, the easier it will get. We promise.
The above images (unless otherwise stated) are by Rebecca Horner.
Weekly Prompt #5
Your character’s spaceship has landed on an alien planet!
What is this planet like? Does anyone live there? How do they react to your arrival?
Make a comic about your cosmic adventure!
Digital Comics Club: Week 5
The time has come for you to get your characters onto PAPER (or tablet!), using our Character Profile and Facial Expression sheets! What is your character’s ultimate goal? How does your character look when they’re sleepy? These sheets can help you work that out!
Don’t worry if you don’t have answers to all of the questions. They’re just there to help you think about your characters in a different way!
Weekly Prompt #4
There’s been an accident at the Easter Egg factory! Chocolate eggs are falling from the sky! HELP!!
Make a comic about what happens next!
OR
Make a comic about what caused this terrible disaster!
Digital Comics Club: Week 4
Drawing… With Style!
If you’ve been following along, you’ll have lots and lots of ideas for characters by now. The next thing to consider is the style you’ll draw them in!
Think of some ways that you could draw an eye:
Is one better than another? No! They’re just different styles of drawing.
Now think of a really well known character – we’ll use Wonder Woman as an example. Most people can imagine a version of her in their heads, but what is it about her that makes her distinctly Wonder Woman?
The answer is her character design!
She has recogniseable features – her tiara, her gauntlets, the lasso of truth, the stars that adorn her outfit, as well as a colour scheme of red, blue, and gold. The drawings above (by Darwyn Cooke, Bilquis Evely, and Marguerite Sauvage) show us that she can be drawn in completely different styles, but we can still tell that she’s Wonder Woman.
How can we tell? The trick is to balance detail with shapes and colours. Bilquis Evely’s drawing has no colour but lots of detail. Marguerite Sauvage and Darwyn Cooke’s drawings have less detail, but distinct colours and shapes (while still being totally different from each other). Style is a magical thing!
What details can you add or take away from your characters, while still making sure they look like that character?
The above images (unless otherwise stated) are by Rebecca Horner.
Weekly Prompt #3
Once a crime-fighting superfood team named Cauliflower Cheese, a horrible betrayal led to the Gruyère Goddess and Count Cauliflower becoming SWORN ENEMIES! And so, this week your task is:
Create a hero and a villain character inspired by food!
