Big Library Comics

I recently spent a week at Church Cowley St James school, just up the road here in Oxford, working on a project with all the kids in Years 4 and 5 to create a giant mural comic to adorn the wall of their library building. And look, we did it! 

We started out with a couple of days of workshops; getting the kids to come up with ideas for the story and create their own characters, and then we dived in with some giant comics-making! First, I pulled together a load of the ideas and themes into a script. A really, really detailed script:

And then we got the kids to work in groups, taking turns painting a character each on the boards we were using for the comic. For some, I'd sketched in some vague outlines for figure placement and layout, and then let the kids work on top of that:

And then for others I left it much more free form, letting the kids go nuts drawing their own characters, whatever size shape or craziness took their fancy:

And then it was my job to draw the framing sequence and characters, and generally attempt to tie it together into something resembling a story. Here's the finished thing, in place:

And here's the whole story, panel by panel!

I'm insanely delighted with how it all worked out. I had a lot of slightly worryingly unanswered questions in my mind going in, wasn't quite sure how some of it would work / if it would work at all. I had thought about maybe trying a less free form approach - kind of me drawing a strip and then getting the kids to colour it in with a kind of 'paint-by-numbers' approach. But, honestly, that just seemed way less fun. In the end I think the process worked really well; the way the story starts off as any old comic, and then gets weird and colourful, and then gets REALLY REALLY weird and colourful, before snapping back to relative sanity at the end.

Anyway, it was enormously fun to do. I was really impressed with the kids' imaginations and creativity - I mean, that's not really a surprise - but also with the sheer fearlessness of the way they dived straight in, working with these huge acrylic marker pens directly onto this giant canvas. 

Here are headmaster Steve Dew and school librarian Anita Bruce standing next to their new, 1000% MORE AWESOME library wall! Huge thanks to them both, and to all my co-creators, and indeed to everyone at Church Cowley St James who helped make it such a hugely fun thing to do for a week.

This Summer: Learn How To Make Awesome Comics!

Check it out, I made a book! It is called How To Make Awesome Comics and it is about - well, you should pretty much be able to tell what it's about from the title? 

So excited about this book! It's come out looking gorgeous, absolutely everything I'd hoped for. A helpful manual for kids on every aspect of the comics-making process! And also, fart jokes. Basically, every school comics workshop I've done in the last five years, every library event, every festival - THIS is the book I've wished I could give to people. And now it actually exists! Look here it is, actually existing:

And it is FULL of such highbrow discussions of creativity. It collects a load of the early Professor Panels and Art Monkey strips from the Phoenix but more - OH SO MUCH MORE. 

Out August 7th from David Fickling Books. Mark the date! 

Also, for anyone who really REALLY wants to learn How To Make Awesome Comics and JUST CAN'T WAIT (for one week longer): I'll be running a weeklong course during the summer holidays for kids aged 8-12 at The Story Museum in Oxford! A whole week, 28th July - 1st August, in which we will be doing all kinds of fun writing and drawing stuff, and maybe even, if we can find a spare wall, a bit of this sort of thing:

Featuring Guest Lecturer appearances from incomparable comics superdudes Kate Brown and Gary Northfield!  It's COMICS SUMMER CAMP! (Except without the camping. Obviously.) Details at the Story Museum website!

Tamsin and the Deep: Chapter Two

Tamsin and the Deep, the Cornwall-based fantasy mystery adventure series that Kate Brown and I make for the Phoenix, returns tomorrow! Check it out in issue 131, available all over the place, on iPads and by subscription! Look for Kate's *phenomenal* cover, above!