Hey welcome back everybody! So fun to see our friends again! Last week we did a few warm-up exercises to get back in the mood for making comics. Everyone had an assignment to draw a character from different perspectives- facing forward, from underneath, above, extreme close-ups and more. I've enclosed a number of examples- We'll be doing lots more exercises like this- I picked up a copy of Scott McCloud's Making Comics today and plan on using it as a source book for a number of the activities we'll be doing after school. If you'd like to really stretch your skills as an artist and comics creator I'd also recommend reading Drawing Words and Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. Both books have a number of comic assignments as well as on-line components and activities.

The Center For Cartoon Studies has also put out a new how-to comic book for kids which is very unconventional- Adventures in Cartooning: How to Turn Your Doodles into Comics The book teaches by example, rather than walking you through specific steps of comic creation. It could be read purely for the story, but a true comic adventurer will look at each page and panel and ask themselves, "why does this page work, what are they trying to teach me, how can I use this in my own comics?" Speaking of the Center for Cartoon Studies, did you know our buddy Kevin is taking classes there? Looks like he's been very busy and has been keeping a blog of his work there. You can check out his site here, it's mostly OK for kids with a couple brief PG13 moments...

Another book we've just started digging into is James Gurney's Imaginative Realism . It is a beautiful book and James gives lots of looks behind the scenes of how he comes up with images for his work like in the Dinotopia series. If you order the book from him rather than the store he'll inscribe a note to you, which we thought was pretty darn cool! Gurney also keeps a blog which is packed with great drawing tips and resources for artists, also very fun to read!