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I'll be teaching a 6-hour "intensive" called "Drawing Space Fantasy" on Sunday, October 7th, as part of RISD's continuing ed program. There's still room in the class for your teen! Registration link here.
The kids will be drawing/designing their own fantastic space heroes, sidekicks and villains; space vehicles and weapons (or communication devices); environments and homes for their characters; a robot/mutant/cyborg "double" for one of their main characters AND will be developing their characters' histories and storylines. It should be a really good time; I'm looking forward to it!
I'm teaching "Cartooning Critters" on Monday, October 8th, 2012, as part
of RISD's Continuing Education youth program. There's still time to
sign up -- here's a link to registration: Cartooning Critters!
SO, as promised, here are the teens' responses to this game.
I changed the game a bit for them, in that: EVERYBODY on a team drew the first character, passed it to the right, then EVERYBODY wrote that character's talk bubble, pass to the right, everybody draw, pass, everybody right. So the results were: tons more cartoon couplings.
Also for the teens, I changed up the cartoon pairings.
1. Teenage boy and girl.
2. 2 religious leaders.
3. President Obama and Mitt Romney for some political cartoon action.
4. Batman and Spider-Man, as those have been the 2 main topics of conversation for the entire class.
First up, teenage boy and girl (click on image to see it larger in a pop-up window):
2 religious leaders:
President Obama and Mitt Romney:
Batman and Spider-Man:
So ONE of the exercises I did with the younger kids (ages 9-12) the other day was this:
4 teams of 4 kids (TA was in one group).
1st kid would draw the first character.
2nd kid would write what that character was saying.
3rd kid would draw the second character.
4th kid would act as clean-up batter with the punchline for that character.
4 different pairings of characters.
My cousin Dale came up with this idea the other night as we chatted; I put it into practice the next day and the kids had a great time with it! (I changed up the "game" the next day for the teen class -- I'll show you those tomorrow!)
First up, Cat and Dog:
Alligator and Mouse:
Cop and Robber:
Here's another character, made in the same way I made her and them.
Don't know why a pig would have pimples if he's eating farm fresh produce, but maybe there's something else going on here that needs to be investigated?
This time, instead of using my FIRST name in cursive, I used my... wait for it... LAST name!
Who even KNOWS what name I'll be tempted to use next? My MIDDLE name?
The possibilities are limitless.
Wait. No they aren't. I only have 3 names.
As you can see, I raised the boundary line up a bit to get some descender-action in there, AND I cut out a shape that was on the fold. I'm a maverick, what can I say, and I will NOT be bound by ANYONE's rules, particularly those of my own design!
This time, RANDOM ENCLOSED SHAPES serve as the cartoon instigators! Maybe a little more challenging, because these will be shapes that your brain isn't used to seeing (it's familiar with numbers and letters, so it's already makes some associations), so there is a LOT of page turning with this challenge to try to figure out the "WHAT IS IT?" for yourself.
Below are the shapes I worked from and a template that you can use, BUT this is more fun:
Person A draws a shape; Person B cartoonizes it, then makes a shape for Person A.
We used to do this to pass the time during church sermons. SECRETS REVEALED.
So you don't have to keep turning the page to see what I drew, here are the individual images.
And just so you can see what kids can do with these cartoon instigators -- this is the page of doodle shapes I had sent to my cousin Amber a loooooong time ago -- she was 8 then, she's got a degree now. I edited a few of these shapes for the template above, but you should recognize a few. I really had to try hard to forget what Amber had done for her shapes when I was working on my page tonight, because what she did is just so great. (Love the Backstories: "Clown With Sword in His Head", "Alien Painting Nails"!)
Here's a second page of letters that got cartooned! Another thing that happens naturally as a part of this type of exercise, is the characters or things created can start to suggest a story or a joke, so it's a good idea to jot down those ideas alongside. Like the guy who's sad cuz one handlebar of his handlebar moustache is missing -- maybe the bike he rides only has the OPPOSITE handlebar as a way to compensate? I dunno! But fun to doodle and brainstorm.
Here's another clean sheet of letters for YOU to play around with! Have fun!
