Make Your Own Comic Book With Your Kids

Our oldest daughter just learned the word “selfie”. Oh happy day….

Going through my photos, I saw about 15 pictures in a row of her making different faces into the camera. I would make more fun of her but further down the photo role you can find about 15 pictures of me trying to get a good selfie pic for my Google profile. I guess we never grow out of narcissism.

If they are going to be playing with cameras anyway, let’s show them how to do some cool stuff that will allow them to be creative and perhaps practice some writing while they are at it. today, I want to talk about how you can make a comic book with your kids using their toys, a smart phone, and your normal old word processor.

Set up a scene:

What you need for any good story is a set. It can be nature, a house, a neighborhood, whatever you and your kids can think of to create a backdrop for your story.

This can be achieved by creating a LEGO scene like this.

You can use one of the Funfield mats we sell (shameless plug). Show your kids how to line up their LEGO creations with the design to get the proper perspective. Look up “isometric perspective” to teach the art concept. They can then take photos making them look like they were part of the original design (see photo).

Or you can simply use some rocks and sticks from outside to make a nature scene

2. Tell a story:

Set up your characters in the set and act out a scene with your kids.

Let them have fun with their imagination, tell them that they will be writing a comic book and that these are the characters for the book.

Write down the story and then break it up into scenes planning out your camera shots.

3. Photo shoot time:

Time for your kids to put their director’s hat on.

Break your story into scenes, try to act out the scenes with the characters, taking pictures from a few angles trying to “capture” the scene.

When you are satisfied you have enough photos to make your story, it’s time to become the editor.

4. Editing:

No need to be complex here. Just drop your photos in story order onto a word processing document. Arrange them to make a grid or stack them to create a chronological order for the story.

Most word processors have speech bubbles in the “insert” tab. they might be called “callouts” (MS Word) or they might be “quote bubbles” (Pages). Use these speech bubbles to create dialogue for the characters in each frame of the comic book. Comic book lego