My students are never artists, are always timid and shy about their drawing abilities, and have very little or no experience with comics (most of my students say they have never even held a comic book before!). But the jam comic lets us jump right into sequential art in a way that promotes creativity and removes the academic pressure of what my students believe they ought to be doing in a college classroom. I like to think of the jam comic as a kind of secret weapon against the stuffiness of academia: I can pull it out at any moment, in any class, and the classroom instantly turns into a place of play and creativity.
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A great way to introduce people to the world of comics is to make a “jam comic” —an improvised collaborative comic. In addition to being a relaxed introduction to creating comics, jam comics are a great warm-up activity and icebreaker.
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Yesterday (Monday) after introductions, we plunged right into jam comics (the final work is on the class blog). Thirteen pages of comics in 45 minutes! Awesome! Now everyone is a cartoonist.
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Chapter 1 introduces the basic terminology of comics and starts you off with a few activities designed to get you thinking about how drawings can tell stories.
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Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a comics educational project with book and web components. Visit how to use for more ideas on content you might like, or send us an email to be put on our mailing list.
--Matt and Jessica
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Buy Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and the sequel, Mastering Comics, from us directly, or from your favorite vendor, via this link.
"A goldmine of essential information for every aspiring comics artist. Highly recommended."
-Scott McCloud
Drawing Words & Writing Pictures is a comics educational project with book and web components. Visit how to use for more ideas on content you might like, or send us an email to be put on our mailing list.
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