Dinosaurs, Vampires and Robots at Oxford Central Library

Hands up if you want to make awesome comics.

Regular readers of this blog will know I do a lot of comics workshops at schools, libraries, literary festivals and such, all over the place really. However, I almost never manage to get any pictures from such events, due to the fact that I always have my hands full of Sharpies and anyway am generally a bit busy drawing giant mutant Cornish pasties, or whatever it may be that day. Anyway, I recently did a session at Oxford Central Library, to help launch the Summer Reading Challenge there, and to celebrate The Pirates of Pangaea's inclusion in said scheme. A great fun time was had, and some of the library's marvellous staff managed to snap a few pics, so I thought I'd share them here!

Who wants to learn to draw T-Rexes?

That is me demonstrating Tyrannosaur's underdeveloped arms? I think?

Teaching important lessons to the youth.

Dinosaurs were drawn, records broken, and a good time had by all. (I hope?) Many thanks to Joanna Morris and all at the library for having me, and for passing on these photos!

Lots more events upcoming! Next weekend I'll be at Camp Bestival for three solid days of comics workshops with Gary Northfield and the Phoenix comic gang. And tomorrow I'll be spending the day in the Illustrator Zoo at the Story Museum, drawing comics while members of the public come along and watch the process and ask questions and possibly join in? Come along, it should be fun! And keep an eye on my Upcoming Events page for more! 

Summer Reading Challenge

I'm delighted to report that The Pirates of Pangaea has been included in the list of titles for this year's Summer Reading Challenge! Hot-foot it to your local library and spend your summer holiday in a hazy sun-drenched land of bloodthirsty pirates and magnificent prehistoric giants.  

To kick things off I'll be doing a free Piratey Dinosaury Comics Workshop at our local library, specifically:

Oxford Central Library 

Saturday 11th July

2-3pm

More info on the library's Facebook page.

It's a FREE event, so come along and sign up for the reading challenge, draw some dinosaurs, and help set a new world record for awesomeness!

Mega Robo Update

Last week's Phoenix saw the last episode in the current run of my series Mega Robo Bros and I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who's said such nice things about the series lately. You know who you are, and it means a lot, and I'm beyond delighted that my little robot dudes seem to have connected with people. Anyway, Alex and Freddy are going to be taking a short holiday now, but they will be BACK SOON. Soon, and often. We've been having some very exciting conversations about these little guys lately, and, basically, they're going to be around for a while, touch wood. I got me some plans for these guys.

Anyway! By way of something completely different, this week's Phoenix features a thing I'm very excited about; I had a chance to collaborate with one of my favourite cartoonists, James Turner of Star Cat fame, and I grabbed that chance and drew muscular barbarians all over it.

What else? Tamsin! Kate is currently putting together the Tamsin and the Deep collection, and oh my word it is looking glorious. So excited for this book, I can't begin to tell you. In the mean time, I'm starting to write the next volume, Tamsin and the Dark, which I'm afraid I really can't tell you anything about yet. Well I could, but then I'd have to push you down an abandoned mineshaft in rural Cornwall. And I don't think either of us want that.

Comics Club update: I've had a few enquiries asking if we're running the weeklong comics course at the Story Museum again this summer, and I'm afraid not - it's a huge amount of work, and I'm afraid I just couldn't fit it in with other commitments this year. I am doing a few one-off events here and there in Oxford over the summer - check out my Upcoming Events page for details. More to be announced there soon!

Okay, that's pretty much what I'm doing! I had better go and get on with it all.

Awesome Comics Makers: UNITE!

A couple of happy bits of follow-up to last week's series of posts on Comics and Literacy...

You remember how I said it would be great to try and build a network of comics clubs around the country, allowing educators and parents to share ideas and resources, and young comics makers to share their work? Well Hannah Sackett thought so too! And what's even better, she's actually doing something about it: she's begun by setting up Comics Clubs Unite! To quote Hannah:

I have set up this site to see if children’s comic clubs around the British Isles are interested in joining together to create a website where they can share ideas and comics made by children.
My current idea is to keep the site All Ages (I work with 7-11 year olds) and for comic clubs to take turns each month to post their comics (and reviews). There would also be space for worksheets, ideas for club activities, etc.

Which sounds fantastic, and I think could grow into a hugely marvellous thing. If you run a school or library comics club already - or if you're interested in starting one - please give Hannah a shout using the contact form on Comics Clubs Unite. And if you're a creator, or publisher who'd be up for helping out - perhaps contributing worksheets or ideas for activities - again, please get in touch! Hannah is @DrHComics on twitter, or by all means give me a shout and I'll pass it on.

ALSO: remember how I was talking about great comics creators who do workshops in schools? And one of the names I mentioned was Laura Howell - brilliantly talented cartoonist, historic feminist icon (she should be, anyway - first female cartoonist to work on The Beano in its 70+ year history!) and creator of one of my favourite comics of 2013. Anyway, I was just notified about a very cool-sounding competition launched by Staedtler Teachers Club, whereby you can win the opportunity for Laura to come and teach some comics workshops at your school!

Laura Howell: so good at drawing comics she can do it WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING

Here are a few words from Laura:

 “If I could go back in time and tell my ten-year-old self that I would one day be a professional comic artist, I doubt she would have believed me. But I hope I can convince talented young artists that if they never let go of their dreams, one day they might achieve it – I'm proof!”

Find full details and learn how to enter the competition here!

ALSO, speaking of Laura Howell and comics workshops: I am going to be doing some comics workshops with Laura Howell? MAN that was a segue. We'll be teaming up with the fantastic Louie Stowell to run some Write And Draw Your Own Comics workshops at the Cartoon Museum in London on October 26th, to celebrate the release of Usborne's excellent new book by that name, which Louie wrote and Laura and I drew some bits and bobs for. Come along, we are planning some really quite ridiculously fun things.

More information and booking details here!

Comics and Literacy, part 3: Things You Can Do

Fig 1: artwork from The Awesomest Comic. Why not make your OWN comic? You can even put elephants in it if you want.

So! To recap: so far in this weeklong series of posts, we are all agreed that:

1) reading comics is an incredibly powerful tool for developing children’s literacy skills, and that
2) making comics is EVEN BETTER.

(If we are NOT agreed, please go back and read those posts again until we are agreed. It's okay, I can wait.)

So today I'd like to suggest some concrete proposals for Things You Can Do to help support those objectives, to get us nearer to my arbitrary but entirely achievable goal of 2 MILLION NEW COMICS CREATORS!*

*Seriously. Totally achievable.

Firstly, a disclaimer: in these attempts to answer the crucial question of "How Do We Get More Comics To More Children?" you'll notice that I'm focusing mostly on the roles that can be played by schools and libraries and parents, rather than suggesting anything specifically regarding the retail sector. This is not because I don't think there are great ideas for things to be done there - and again, I will be talking about that a bit in a supplemental post - it's just that I, personally, have no way of putting those ideas into action. For example: I would love to create a brand new weekly children's comic that was printed on newsprint and cost 50p a copy and was available by the tills in every branch of Tesco across the land. But there are so many issues there, so many things that are beyond my personal resources and abilities to do anything about right now. So I wanted to concentrate in these posts on what I can do - what we can do, right now: parents, educators, librarians, cartoonists; everyone who cares about these issues.

So, what can we do?

1) Start a Comics Club!

If you're a teacher, why not start a comics club at your school? If you're a librarian, why not start one in your library? If you're 11, why not just go ahead and start one yourself, who needs those dumb grown-ups anyway? Over the past couple of years I've met several people who've done this, and heard some amazingly positive stories. It's a way of encouraging library use, and of giving a constructive outlet to the energies of creative, imaginative kids. I don't think this takes much in terms of resources; just give the kids a time and a place where they can meet, and talk about comics, and read comics, and work on their own comics.

If you HAVE done this in your school already, I'd love to hear from you to compare notes - please get in touch either in the comments here, or give me a shout on twitter! I think there's an opportunity to do something really exciting here, using social media to build up a network-of-networks, sharing ideas and resources and best practice.

2) Organise your own Comics Festival!

This ties in with the last point really nicely; if you have started up a comics club, or if you've been using comics as part of a school project, why not give your young creators something to work towards by organising a festival, an event where they can swap and sell and share and celebrate their work? This gives you a chance to get them thinking about all kinds of other areas beyond the actual storytelling and making-of-the-thing: promotion, marketing, publishing and entrepeneurship! And, believe me, some kids will go NUTS for that side of things.  

And hey, you can make really big posters and splash lots of paint around and all that fun stuff!

Look, here are some pictures by Sarah McIntyre that make this point far more effectively than these thousand words I'm writing:

And seriously, do go and read Sarah's brilliant post on this subject, from which I nicked those pictures- it's full of enthusiasm and inspiration and really great ideas.

3) Comics Workshops

Photo from Maggies' Day comics workshops at the Story Museum, used with permission.

A great way of getting started with either of the above, or just generally as a way of introducing comics, is to invite a comics creator to come visit your school or library and work with the kids. 

Now look, I do workshops, so it's hard for me to wax lyrical about the benefits of these without sounding horribly self-aggrandising. But I do think they can be a fantastic way of getting kids energised about writing and drawing, and I've had some really lovely feedback from places I've visited confirming that yes, it really does seem to work. So in this case I'm going to attempt to suck up my natural self-deprecation and say, yes, this is a totally awesome thing that you should definitely do. So that it does not entirely just seem like an advert for myself, though, I'll give you a List of Awesome Comics Creators Who Do Workshops (and are Not Me). sound fair? Excellent. Refer to further down this post for just that.

4) Set up a Comics Library

(Photos by Richard Bruton, courtesy of the Forbidden Planet blog)

The best way to get kids fired up and excited about reading and writing and drawing comics, of course, is to give them a bunch of awesome comics to read. Lots of school libraries will have a comics section, of course, but it can be very hard for teachers and librarians who are not themselves avid comics nuts to know where to start, or to know what material is appropriate for what age range. It is possible, though, and we can all look to the amazing library Richard Bruton set up in his school in Yorkshire as an example of what can be achieved - and if you have any doubts, go and ask Richard about what engagement and borrowing levels have been like with that library. It's really inspiring stuff, and frankly I dream of every school having access to such wonders.

You could even make comics ON your library, too, if you like. That seems to work pretty well.

There's a few ideas to get us started, anyway. And now, some Resources To Help You Do Those Things!

BOOKS

There are lots of great books on writing and drawing and making comics, of course, and lots of great resources available for free online, too. (I've collated links to a few such things in this always-handy blog post, for example). A lot of those resources tend to be suitable for slightly older kids, though. Happily, books for younger readers offering help and advice on How To Make Your Own Comics turn out to be very much like buses, in that you wait ages for one and then three come along all at once. To wit:

How To Make Awesome Comics

by me

(David Fickling Books)

Clearly the best book in the history of the universe, and one that every right-thinking human should read. I won't give you the hard-sell here, please refer to previous posts for that.

(One thing I'd just like to just be clear about, here: I'm not banging on about all this stuff in an attempt to sell my book, although I can appreciate how it may totally look like that. It's actually more that I made the book because I think this stuff is so important.)

Available from: The Phoenix | Amazon | Page 45

Write and Draw Your Own Comics

by Louie Stowell and various 

(Usborne)

A fantastic manual on all aspects of comics-making by Louie Stowell and various amazing artists including Jess Bradley, Laura Howell and, um, me again. SORRY. Includes stickers! (I'd be more specific but I haven't actually seen a copy yet. But going by this fantastic review from Read It Daddy, it sounds PRETTY GREAT.)


Available from: Amazon | Lots of other places I'm sure!

Let's Make Comics!

By Robin Etherington and Zak Simmonds-Hurn

(Oxford University Press)

One for even slightly younger kids, I believe, from the powerhouse team of one-half-of-the-Etherington-Brothers and the amazingly talented Zak Simmonds-Hurn.

Available from: Amazon

There you go, that should get you started!


WORKSHOPS

Here is a quick, and no doubt highly incomplete, list of creators I know who visit schools and libraries and provide comics workshops. I've indicated where people are based, but of course people are able to travel; it's just as an indicator. Please contact each creator to enquire as to availability and rates.

Gary Northfield, shaping the minds of the nation's youth at the Cartoon Museum

LONDON & SOUTH EAST

Sarah McIntyre (Cakes in Space, Oliver and the Seawigs, Vern & Lettuce)
http://www.jabberworks.co.uk/events/
(please note, Sarah is booked up through the rest of 2014, at the very least)

Gary Northfield (Teenytinysaurs, Gary's Garden, Derek the Sheep)
http://www.garynorthfield.com/workshops/

Karen Rubins (The Phoenix)
http://karenrubins.com/workshops/

SOUTH WEST

The Etherington Brothers (Monkey Nuts, Long Gone Don, Baggage)
http://thecomicclub.blogspot.co.uk/

SCOTLAND

Adam Murphy (Corpse Talk, The Phoenix)
http://adammurphy.com/

MIDLANDS

Laura Howell (The Beano, The DFC)
http://www.laurahowell.co.uk/

NORTH-EAST 

Daniel Clifford & Lee Robinson (Art Heroes)
http://artheroes.co.uk/

...as I say, that's just a few names - there's loads more great creators out there doing workshops, I just had to start somewhere. I'd like to try and maintain a fuller version of this list somewhere. I'm going to come back to that in Friday's post, in fact.

OTHER RESOURCES

• Here's an interview on GoodComics4Kids about running your own graphic novel reading group - US-based but obviously a lot applies: http://blogs.slj.com/goodcomicsforkids/2014/09/29/interview-jessica-lee-on-running-a-graphic-novel-book-club/

• The Phoenix have lots of resources on their website for schools and libraries, including some specific lesson plans for KS2: http://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/schools-libraries/

• You can download lots of activity sheets and exercises from the How To Make Awesome Comics archive, here: http://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/awesome-archive/

• Here are direct links to some template comics pages, which can come in very handy when getting kids started:

   

   

   

Anyway. As I think I mentioned earlier, the very best way to get kids excited about reading and writing and making comics is to give them some awesome comics to read. Which brings us to...


TOMORROW: SOME AWESOME COMICS TO READ 

How To Make (Awesome) Comics: LIVE!

Hello! After a long stint of being chained to the drawing board I've managed to loose my bonds a little and am planning to escape and take my whole 'teaching kids how to make awesome comics' schtick on the road again at a couple of upcoming events. They are...

22 Sept, Old Marston Library, Oxford - I'll be doing a quick comics workshop as part of a full day of family fun and events, celebrating the library's 50th anniversary and raising funds to help it continue. I'm on at 11am, it should be lots of fun, and I gather there will be cake, so any local Oxfordians with young comics fans in the family - do pop along!

30th October - Luton library - How To Make (Awesome) Comics workshops at 11am and 2pm. Had lots of fun at Luton last year, looking forward to a return engagement. Full details and booking information here!

31st October - extra-spooky MONSTERIFIC Halloween comics workshops at Leatherhead Library (10:30am) and Dorking library (2pm). Full details and booking information here! 

Come along for... oh, you know, this sort of thing.

 And then in November... it's Thought Bubble! for which all manner of fun and exciting Phoenixy good times are currently being concocted. Of which more anon...

On the subject of The Phoenix, and events - you can now listen to a recording of the Phoenix panel discussion from August's Caption comics convention in Oxford, available as a podcast from the excellent Panel Borders. I really enjoyed the panel; it's in large part where a lot of the ideas got rolling that led to my recent posts about Girls' / YA comics, and that prompted a lot of discussion, and that may end up... well, who knows where. Anyway, there's lots of erudite and thought-provoking discussion on the art and craft of making comics for children, with Phoenix creators Adam Murphy, Patrice Aggs, Robin Etherington and Daniel Hartwell, chaired by the brilliant David O'Connell. there is also me, mumbling in the opposite direction from the microphone. Enjoy!

Comics in the Classroom

Me, teaching comics, in a classroom. A classroom at the brilliant Teddington School, to be specific. I look a bit confused, don't I? Don't worry, I totally knew what I was talking about. Probably.

 I did a Q&A interview with Dr Matt Finch recently which ended up turning into a guest post over on his excellent blog Books and Adventures, where he's been recently running a series of great posts on Comics and Education. (I particularly enjoyed a couple of recent posts on engaging female students with comics.) I talk a bit about some what I see as the fantastic and diverse benefits of using comics in schools; both as a powerful way of getting kids reading but also as a spur to creativity, and visual literacy, and all kinds of fun things. (And it's not just me, by any means: other posts today on the potential of using comics in schools from such luminaries as Michael Rosen and comics artist and educator par excellence Kev F Sutherland!) 

Anyway, you can read my thoughts over here.

I'll reproduce here for posterity one bit, which was a brief recommended reading list I came up with of Graphic Novels For Children:

The DFC Library is a great collection of new original graphic novels for children (and discerning grown-ups)

• MeZolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank
• Good Dog, Bad Dog by Dave Shelton
• The Spider Moon by Kate Brown
• Monkey Nuts by The Etherington Brothers
• Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre
• Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner
• The Boss by John & Patrice Aggs
• Baggage by The Etherington Brothers

and of course, last but not least…

• Mo-Bot High by Neill Cameron

Beyond that, here a few further suggestions: this is a subjective list of both obvious, all-time classic series and a few personal favourites:

• Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
• Asterix by René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo
• Tintin by Hergé
• Bone by Jeff Smith
• The Rainbow Orchid by Garen Ewing
• Gum Girl by Andi Watson

And for the slightly older kids…

• Spider-Man (hearts) Mary Jane by Sean McKeever & Takeshi Miyazawa
• Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan & Adrian Alphona
• Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Get those in, and there's any school library off to a great start. I'm aware how partial and incomplete that list is, of course, and I'd really welcome any further suggestions - it's something I get asked about a lot by teachers and librarians, and I'd like to have a good comprehensive reading list I can pass on to people in future. Please pass on your own suggestion for things I've missed, either in comments here or fire 'em at me on twitter - I'm @neillcameron.

One thing that list brings me onto is this great point, raised by Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet blog. US Publisher Scholastic have a fantastic line of children's graphic novels, including the colour collections of the aforementioned Bone by Jeff Smith and the hugely-acclaimed Smile by Raina Telgemeier, which for some reason Scholastic UK seem to have no intention of publishing UK editions for. In their response to Richard's enquiry they mention that at present there is not a huge market for children's graphic novels in the UK. Whilst I'm not about to dispute that - believe me, I'm not about to dispute that - I'd argue that there is an enormous potential market, and it's exactly by publishing brilliant works like Bone and Smile that you go about converting that potential market into an actual one. If like Richard (and me) you'd love to see these great books launched in the UK, why not drop Scolastic a line - enquiries@scholastic.co.uk, or on twitter at @Scholasticuk using the hashtag #GraphixForScholasticUK?

While I'm on the subject, another thing that I think would go rather nicely in any school library would be a school subscription (or two or three) to the Beano, the Dandy and of course The Phoenix! 

(I just renewed my son's subscription to the Phoenix for another six months. Admittedly I may be slightly biased here but I really do think it's just an absolutely brilliant comic. The latest issue (cover prictured above) - which I'm barely in, so feel I'm morally okay to enthuse about here - really was just a fantastic read all round; I mean, it's always good, but this issue I felt was stand-out fantastic; in part due to the return of James Turner's hilarious Star Cat, in part due to a very funny and genuinely beautiful instalment of Gary's Garden from Gary Northfield, and in part because Adam Murphy's Corpse Talk this week featured the reanimated corpse of Jane Austen, one of my favourite humans to have ever walked the planet.)

Kids need great comics! That is all.

How To Draw Comics REAL GOOD LIKE

 

Sample page from The Pirates of Pangaea, (c) 2012 by Daniel Hartwell & Neill Cameron.

Published in The Phoenix issue 11 - www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk 

I've done a few comics workshops lately for older students (GCSE-level) in which I've tried to focus a bit more on the specifics and mechanics of drawing than my usual "Hey Let's All Just Make Up Some Silly Nonsense and Have Fun" approach. (Not that there's anything wrong with Making Up Some Silly Nonsense and Having Fun, I hasten to add.) Anyway, I've also recently had a mini-spate of people asking for advice on drawing comics. There are some really great resources out there which I talk about in my workshops, so I thought for ease and convenience I'd link to them all here. Prepare yourselves... for the DROPPING of KNOWLEDGE.

Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work: a sort of 'cheat sheet' of effective panel layouts from the legendary EC Cartoonist. I highly recommend studying these and indeed just nicking them and using them in your comics for exciting and effective compositions. These are available all over the internet, here's a page that gives background on it and has several hi-res versions of the file:
 http://joeljohnson.com/archives/2006/08/wally_woods_22.html

The Disney Comics Artist's Toolkit: another cheat sheet of sorts; this one's a seven-page long kind of complete comics artists training manual created as an internal presentation at Disney in the 1970's by comic artist Carson Van Osten. It's invaluable, and remarkable, and covers everything from perspective and staging to panel layout and figure construction - here's a link that gives some background and has good-quality scans:
http://sevencamels.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/comic-strip-artists-kit-redux.html

Figure Drawing For All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis. Probably the best work on drawing the human figure I've ever encountered, an absolute gold-mine of a resource. Available from all good bookshops (and indeed Amazon) or as a free PDF download here:
http://escapefromillustrationisland.com/2010/01/07/free-andrew-loomis-art-intstruction-downloads/

Those three links are literally the things I have printed out and taped up over my drawing board. Can't recommend them highly enough. FURTHER READING: some (highly) recommended books on the subject of making comics. Again, available from all good bookshops.

• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
• Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner
• How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way by Stan Lee & John Romita
• Writing for Comics by Alan Moore

...and of course, last but not least there's my own How To Make (Awesome) Comics, appearing every week in the Phoenix! And don't forget, we put all the drawing exercises up as downloadable worksheets at www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/awesome every week, too. For FREE! Yes I know, it is incredibly generous of us.

Anyway, hope all that is of some use to someone. Putting these links together was prompted by a recent visit to Teddington School, where I had a brilliant day doing workshops. One session was with a couple of Graphics classes who seemed weirdly knowledgeable about me and my work; check out what they had been doing a project on...

Which was rather hilarious, and did my ego no end of good, frankly. Huge thanks to Rachel Bide, Rachel Bannister and all the other teachers who made it such a smoothly-run and enjoyable day!