BD by Lucas

 

The works were done individually; some themes like Children's Rights were worked in group but the interpretation was then done individually. The creative process for comics' trips was as follows:  

1-Children first think about what they are going to tell; some choose Constellation's suggestion, others choose their own theme.

2-Based on some puppets shows about Children's Rights, students were made aware and realized for example that they should not be working on the street; some decided to work on this theme, other chose not to.

3- Training on how to compose vignettes (boxes) in the classic way: a big vignette for the beginning of the story, 2 or 3 vignettes below and, at the end, a small or a medium or a big one. You can see this approach in the work we sent you: the vignettes are drawn with a ruler, with generally 5 mm between each one and with a 1 cm margin. 

4-Drawings are made with a black pencil, with very light lines, to be able to correct them if needed. We draw with simple perspective techniques like the horizon line, big size foreground elements and small size background elements. These techniques were explained prior to start drawing. For the difficult elements, we work on drafts versions with pencil.

5-a) The first vignette is an overview of the place where the story takes place. Then, we zoom on characters or on part of the initial overview. It is important to alternate complete angles, medium angles, foreground and "American" angle; it is important to present characters full-face and in profile and to "cut" images, for example showing a face in the foreground which is only partly visible etc. Try to give every vignette its own composition, with a certain point of view, different from others, according to your own story. Just imagine we are looking at the story through a window.

b) Every vignette tells part of the story that was either written in paper or - if easier for the child - that was imagined for every vignette. Everyone should choose the method he/she feels more comfortable to work with; what is crucial is that when composing the image the child knows what he/she wants to express in the image.

6- After the pencil step, we draw the lines and the vignettes again with black ink and a micro point.

7- Before coloring it, we train the children on primary, secondary and complementary colors for them to be able to adequately combine colors and improve their color management. We color with color pencils type watercolor.

8- In some cases, we made some collages using the drawings made on separate sheets on a black or white hard card sheet following the structure of the page. 

9- The text can be written directly on the sheet or –for the text to be very visible-we paste carton sheet bubble shapes with the text. We draw lines with a ruler and we write caps letters of consistent size. Then use ink to rewrite the text and erase the lines.

10 – Properly cut the images ad the bubbles with the text and paste them on another sheet. This can help composing the page better. In case there are some spelling mistakes in the text written with ink, you can always paste on top of it another carton page in shape bubble to hide and replace it.