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Archive for the ‘Drawing Comics’ Category

Teaching Comics to teens week 2 day 5: Yellow Fever

Derek Mainhart lays down the comics history for his students, and gets them to draw their own, updated Yellow Kids!

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Guest post: Dan Berry’s guide to making 24-hour comics

In anticipation of the upcoming 24-Hour Comics event in Angoulême, France, cartoonist and teacher Dan Berry shares his pointers on how best to prepare yourself for this rewarding challenge.

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Teaching Comics to teens week 2 day 4: Basic Character Design

Now that your students are approaching the final version of their Gag Cartoon, it’s time for some more drawing lessons. Nothing terribly complex, but these simple concepts can make all the difference in the work of a neophyte cartoonist, both in visual appeal and readability.

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Teaching Comics to Teens week 2 day 3: How Not To Be Funny

So after spending yesterday helping my students struggle with their nascent, shaky ideas, revising, reworking and shaping them according to the fundamentals that make gag cartoons work, what do I do? Introduce Anti-Gag Cartoons of course! Keep ‘em off balance, that’s what I say!

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Teaching comics to teens week 2 day 2: “The Horror!”

Early in Mastering Comics, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden discuss ‘the Horror of the Blank Page’ (Chapter 2). Every artist who has ever put pen to paper has felt it, and likely some of your students will be feeling it now.

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Teaching Comics to Teens Week 2 Day 1: Gag me with a ‘toon

In DWWP, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden begin with this basic unit of comic art—the single panel cartoon. This approach only makes sense, and I utilize it as well.

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Matt’s Comics Process II: The Inking Stage

This is the second of a two-part post where we walk you through the method Matt uses to make a typical comics page.

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The anatomy of doors

This is one of several features we had to drop from Mastering Comics for length, and will be posting here. For more like this, and better, check out the book! (For another sample of the kind of stuff that we just couldn’t shoehorn into our giant book, check out our guide to laying out bleeds.) Read More

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What’s in Mastering Comics?

Wondering what’s coming in our upcoming new textbook Mastering Comics? We’ve posted our table of contents in the Resources section, and will link items in it to posts here as we make them. Can’t wait to share this with you!

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Guest post: Chinese calligraphy—Shu fa

Our editor on Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is the multi-talented Mark Siegel. He’s the creator of Sailor Twain, and often posts interesting observations on art and craft. A few months back he posted a couple of times on the art of Chinese calligraphy, and as Matt and I were recently thinking about sumi ink Read More

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