Posts Tagged: Comic Books

The Story Behind the “How To Make A Comic Book MOOC”

Reposted from Medium.com

In November 2015 Coursera granted the High Tech High Graduate School of Education & Making Comics Worldwide $10,000 to create a project oriented massive open online course based on a proposal I submitted in October. This may sound like a lot of money, but it isn’t. Last year I created a course that was half of the size and had roughly five times the budget called the “Learning Mindsets & Skills MOOC”. To be fair, the LMS MOOC was one that had a more content specialist involvement and multimedia generated for it (videos, podcasts, etc.). For the comic MOOC I was able to draw on a multitude of great readings & podcasts from within MakingComics.com and from outside of it — as well as my own exptertise as a comic book educator.

(more…)

Help My Weak Shadows

Shadows have always been a weak spot of mine. I’ll be sitting there thinking, “Man…that’s definitely not enough shadow on his face,” and the next thing I know, my figure’s head has turned into a giant black blob of ink. It’s more than a little disheartening when you have to redraw entire frames because of something so seemingly simple, yet so damn tricky! To ensure that this stopped happening, I hopped on my pathetic excuse for a computer and surfed through the net, looking for some awesome shading tutorials.

  (more…)

What To Read? Touchstones For Comic Makers

Samuel Beckett hit the nail on the head when he said: “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading.” Indeed, it’s only after we’ve studied the work of masters that we are able to amass a foundation from which we can create our best material. However, if you’re new to the world of comics, you may find some of the “classic masterpieces,” such as Watchmen or Maus, a bit advanced as teaching aids or references. I know I’ll get some hate mail for excluding these classics from the list, but hear me out. Though they are definitely ranked among the more important comic books, it takes time to really appreciate exactly what it is that makes these comics so important that they’re studied even in ivy-league colleges. For this reason I think it’s probably a good idea for newer readers and writers to begin their journey by sampling the best of a diverse array of genres. The goal is, of course, to saturate yourself with quality content by deconstructing the the comics themselves and finding out what makes them “tick.”

(more…)