See a demo of a comics prompt: create an instructional comic that uses no symbols from a keyboard.
Pick a snack that you like to prepare, and show in your comic instructions for how to create that snack.
Several comics techniques such as point of view, the “foot rule,” panels, speech bubbles, spreads, and pages are explained and shown in order to communicate a narrative.
Drawing demo by Teaching Artists Cat Huang and Deepti Menon.
Video Walkthrough
- Prompt: create an instructional comic on how to prepare your favorite snack, using no keyboard symbols in your comic.
- No letters, no numbers, no punctuation in your comic.
- Use arrows to explain motions and direction in your comic.
- You can use color in your comic.
- Deepti’s comic is avocado toast, Cat will be making fried eggs on rice.
- Start by making a list of all the ingredients in your snack, similar to the way Ikea gives you all the parts!
- Cat recommends starting with smaller scale comics projects, rather than one that is very large.
- Digital drawing software options: Procreate, Krita, Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Paint Tool SAI, Adobe Fresco, MediBang Paint, Gimp
- Traditional comic drawing tools.
- Start by just drawing free hand, knowing that you will do several passes later.
- When scanned, lines from Non Photo Blue Pencil do not appear in the digital scan.
- Techniques for how to erase pencil lines after inking the image: micron pens and markers tend to smear, whereas India Ink will not.
- Sometimes it’s hard to gauge what your reader’s level of comprehension is.
- Showing hands in the instructional comic can help show the process more clearly.
- Save coloring for later in the process when you are still sketching.
- Consider the quantity of each of your ingredients and how to show that quantity visually.
Comics Resources
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