Comic Strips!
First lets look at some comics for inspiration...
Before we plan our comic strip, here are some ideas for your story...
1. School Day: Create a comic about your best/worst day at school.
2. Travel Comic: Create a travel comic about a recent trip or holiday you went on.
3. Friendship: Write a comic about your best friend or a friend and give it to them as a gift.
4. Fairy Tales: Recreate your favourite fairy-tale as a comic strip
5. Superhero: Design your own superhero and write a comic strip about their adventures
6. Family: Write a comic strip about a family member and give it to them as a present.
7. Music: Write a comic strip based on your favourite song, singer or band.
8. The Future: Create a comic strip based on how you will be like in 10 years time.
9. Anti-bullying: Write a comic about bullying to help anyone who is being bullied.
10. Endangered Species: Raise awareness of an endangered species through creating a comic strip.
Now let's make a plan...
Here is an example.. you can make your own one and fill in your character drawings in the next step.
Comic Strip Plan
Title: The Adversity Avengers
Setting: Dublin City Centre
Theme: Overcoming Adversity
Character 1 (The Superhero) : Frontline Florry – A nurse working on the frontlines in St James’s Hospital
Character 2 (The Villain) : King Corona – An evil King who is attempting to take down the city with his coughing spray in order to keep everyone indoors and under his control.
Character 3 : Scientist Michael D. Shmiggins - has developed a lethal vaccine to stop King Corona in his tracks.
Summary: King Corona is on a mission to keep Dublin's residents indoors so he can have the city to himself. He sprays residents who come within 2m distance of him with his fatal coughing spray, residents can also become infected from other carriers of the virus. Frontline Florry is a nurse in St. James’s hospital who has had enough of King Corona’s nonsense and will stop at nothing in order to stop him. She has her eye on a lethal vaccine that she plans to inject in to King Corona and get rid of him once and for all. First Florry must overcome adversities such as seeing patients very sick and families suffering in order to find the strength to travel to see the Scientist Michael D. Shmiggins and get the vaccine.
Drawing your characters
Step 1 Draw a circle for the head and lightly with your pencil below this draw a smaller oval shape for the body.
Step 2 Lightly with your pencil, draw lines for the arms and legs and small circles where the arms and feet will go. Think about what position your character is in. Are they flying? Are they holding something in their hand?
Step 3 If your character is wearing a cape, you can lightly sketch the shape of this now. Is it blowing behind them or waving in the wind?
Step 4 Draw in the hands. How will they look if they are holding something?
Step 5 Now you can draw your characters clothes and give them some hair. Will they have any accessories like a hat or a mask? Will they have a moustache or a beard?
Step 6 You can rub out any lines that you don’t want in your drawing. And add in any more details like movement lines or shadows.
Drawing Your Comic Strip
Step 1: Draw your (3-6) panels leaving space for some text at the bottom of each.
You can mark out lines on top of your page with your ruler for your Title.
Step 2: Draw in the outlines of your characters using the lines and shapes as before in each panel. We will fill in more details at a later point. Sketch out the title in the top section of your page. You can add more detail to this later too.
Step 3: Add in your speech bubbles and text. You could include some movement lines like in panel 3 or an action word like “Zooom!” You can also add in a sentence or two about what is happening in each panel in the bottom section.
Step 4: Add in more detail to your characters such as their clothes, hair, facial features and accessories.
Step 5: You can add more detail to your title. Turn it in to bubble writing or whatever you want!
Step 6: Use a black marker, pen or felt-tip to outline your characters and go over your text.
Step 7: You can add colour to your comic. Primary colours such as red, yellow and blue can look very effective.
Some useful words for your story...
Add in speech bubbles and some onomatopoeia!!!
