![Spongebob Squarepants Lifting Weights](https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oriNZoNvn73MZaFYk/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47qx8zpyofhlvg5wevby1vd6nam2bzxxy7vvz9c9y4&rid=giphy.gif)

Get to know your fellow studio mates and jump into the fray by making some quick and dirty comics! 

We will go over the structure of this course, expectations, and the theory behind it.  The facilitator will explain how it will all come together in our publications.

**Agenda**
- We will begin with some fun drawing-based peer **introductions**, after which you will get the opportunity to identify your personal creative goals for the next 5 weeks.
- We will do some constraint-based comics-making **warm-ups** and will introduce modular comics-making during a 40-minute **mini-workshop**. _This approach to comics-making is a technique you will get to experiment with throughout the course of this course._
---
During this week there will be 2+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to 5 constraint-based prompts from the facilitator.


Week 1 - Skills Bootcamp

![Spongebob Squarepants Going With the FLow](https://media1.giphy.com/media/h8y265b9iKtzKT0pDj/giphy.gif)
We will explore what it means to *[be like water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ&ab_channel=TerryLeeMcBride)* when it comes to making comics-making.  Our work this week will pull from Kyna Leski's work, [The Storm of Creativity](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/storm-creativity).

**Agenda**
- We will begin with **discussing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- We will have a **conversation** on what we find to be the impediments that keep us from getting into a state of flow with our comics-making.
- We will do some **drawing warm-ups **that will allow us to explore what it means to study the work of others in comics.
- We will then do a series of **comics composition exercises **that will fold in bibliomancy and collage.

---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to 5 constraint-based prompts from the facilitator.

Week 2 - Daily Flow

![Spongebob Squarepants Bursting Out of His Shirt](https://media1.giphy.com/media/D7z8JfNANqahW/giphy.gif)
Dive headfirst into the world of [OuBaPo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oubapo)! With this new knowledge, you'll be hopping into the driver's seat! After two weeks of making comics in response to prompts generated by the facilitator, we will dig into creating structures of our own that we can respond to with our comics-making. 

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **discussing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- The facilitator will give a short **presentation** with slides as to the history of *OuBaPo* and its potential uses in personal art practices.
- We will collectively **write** a set of strange prompts in the form of specific creative constraints.
- We take up several of the generated constraints and will **make comics** in response to them as a group. The comics-making will be followed by sharing of individual work and discussion.

---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to constraint-based prompts generated by the group, along with 3 new potential prompts daily.

Week 3 - You're the Boss Now!

![Spongebob Squarepants Multi-tasking](https://media3.giphy.com/media/10zsjaH4g0GgmY/giphy.gif)
This week we will work on multipage sequences and will explore the unique challenges they present. Up to this point, all of our comics will have been single pages.

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **reviewing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- We will do some drawing and writing **warm-ups**.
- We will have a **discussion** that will invite you to reflect on the thought processes you use when creating comics. This will help us identify what kinds of workflows will be best for you when trying to tackle multi-page sequences.
- We will do an hour-long stream of consciousness comics-making **mini-workshop** that will introduce the use of composing comics using page spreads to your practice.
---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create a single 6-page sequence of comics.


Week 4 - Running the Marathon

![Spongebob Squarepants Lifting Weights](https://media1.giphy.com/media/X4M6homF66qFq/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47tpi7usmr5kk9olq4syizhce79a7bse3u4pp1j1s6&rid=giphy.gif)
Honor yourself and all the hard work you've done by learning how to share your comics both physically and digitally!

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **reviewing** the past week's comics and the conversations that occurred on the forum. 
- We will have a short **presentation** on core principles of publication design, scanning and photographing work, file management, pagination, and sharing to the web.
- There will be a **live demo** on the use of InDesign and Scribus to layout a simple zine from start to finish.
- We will take some time to quickly **draft ideas** for the front, back, and interior covers of our publications.
---
During this week there will be 4+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on creating your web and print-ready publications.

>*Homework*: You will design and lay out a zine of the work you've made in this course that you will be able to share physically with friends and family and online with the world! (You will continue to have access to assistance from the facilitator after the end of this course.)

Week 5 - Sharing is Caring

Create your own comics in great company in this virtual bootcamp. Using tools and concepts from comics and visual language theory, you'll develop a comics-making practice that suits your unique needs.

Comics Making for Life

Your personal comics-making boot camp! Learn to design and implement effective and sustainable comics-making workflows that harness the ideas and life that flow around you.

This is a template for collecting the artifact resulting from this cohort — a final, publicly viewable summary of what participants learned or created during the course.

❗️**Important:** The contents of this post will appear on the cohort page, visible to everyone. Don't post anything you don't want to be publicly shared.

Please edit this topic with an artifact that makes sense for your course.

## [Artifact Title]

Replace with: summary description of what the cohort created or learned together.

This may be a final writeup, a summary of each participant's project, a link roundup to externally hosted  assignments — whatever makes sense for your course.

Note that participants can reply to this post, but only this initial post of the topic will be published to the cohort page as its public artifact.

Artifact

This is a template for an assignment you want to give participants in this cohort.

Please edit this topic with description, instructions, or anything else that makes sense for the assignment you'd like to share. The text below is just a starting point.

## [Assignment Title]

Replace with: summary description of the assignment. What are participants creating? What's the learning goal in the context of this course?

## Instructions

Replace with: details on the expected format or process for completing the assignment.

Example (for a final writeup):

- Please post a link to a Google Doc with 500 words on what you learned
- Make sure that sharing is turned on so others can comment

Example (for a photography workshop)

- Select your three favorite photos from the week's theme
- Upload them to a post here, each preceded with a one-paragraph description

Assignment

This is a template for details / discussion related to a specific event in your cohort.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the elements listed below!

❗️**Important:** Please schedule each event from the main cohort page. This template is not the main way to create an event, but may be useful as a reminder, a way to share related details, or collaborate on event notes.

## [Event Title]

Replace with: short description of the event; any additional info beyond what you included in the event description on the cohort page.

## Details / Instructions

Replace with: further details about the event, if needed. How to join, anything participants need to do to prepare; etc.

Event

This is a template for outlining a few simple steps for how participants in this cohort should get started.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the following elements — or anything else you like!

## Introductions

Replace with: brief note encouraging participants to introduce themselves in this topic. Something like:

Please post a brief intro below! Let everyone know who you are, why you signed up, and what you hope to learn. And say hello to other participants; let's get to know each other!

## Logistics

Replace with: notes about any logistical details participants need to know. 

Any other tools / services participants will need to sign up for or download (e.g. Google Drive, Zoom, etc.)? Materials to prepare? Be sure to let everyone know any preliminary action items.

This topic contains details for this particular cohort. Right now you're in our private forum just for members of this cohort.

## Start Learning!

Replace with: any day-one action items that participants should complete prior to your first meeting. First reading(s) or assignment(s)? Share those here.

Getting Started

This is a template for adding additional information specific to this particular cohort of the course. 

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the elements listed below!

❗️**Important:** The contents of this post will automatically get published on the cohort page. That means it'll be publicly available for ANYONE, not just learners in this cohort, to see. Don't post anything you wouldn't want everyone to know (like links to video conference calls).

All *other* posts in this forum category are private to participants in this cohort. Note that each course also has its own forum space, parent to this one, that is publicly visible.

## Schedule

Replace with: brief outline of your schedule for this particular cohort, with any important meetings or deadlines.

If your meetings are regularly scheduled (for example, every Monday for six weeks), be sure to list any days when the course will deviate from the norm (rescheduling around holidays, for example).

**Note:** You'll create a detailed schedule of all events on the cohort page, so this is best as a summary.

## Amendments

Replace with: anything changes to the curriculum specific to this cohort, that deviate from or override the main course description.

## Anything Else…

Replace with: anything else about this cohort that you think is essential for participants to know! For example any particular thematic focus or learning experiments you want to explore…

Feel free to rename this section or add additional ones as needed. Or if nothing comes to mind, simply remove this section.

Notes

This is a template for a prompt — a question or discussion topic you'd like participants to discuss or respond to.

Please edit this topic to include any details necessary to spark this discussion!

## [Prompt Title]

Replace with: the prompt itself, with as much detail as you need, and how you'd like participants to respond below.

Prompt

This is a template for your cohort to run a retrospective — collecting valuable feedback from participants that will help the course improve over time.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the following elements — or anything else you like!

## Questions

Replace with: particular questions you'd like students to answer at the end of the cohort, aimed at helping your course improve.

The questions below are just examples. You'll get better feedback if you ask targeted questions about specific aspects of your course. Tweak these questions, or write your own!

- What did you expect to get out of this course? Were those expectations met? If not, how do you feel about the progress you made in this course (if any)?
- What specific things (moments, techniques, conversations) did you feel were most useful to learning in this course?
- What do you wish we'd spent more time on? Anything you felt we should add?
- What's one thing you'd suggest we change or remove?
- Please share anything else you'd like us to know!

Participants: you can quote some or all of these questions to structure your replies below.

## Sharing the Retro

Replace with: how the info from this retrospective will be used to improve the course. For example:

The maintainers of this course will review all feedback collected in this retrospective process. We'll think hard about how we can improve the course structure, specific processes, even particular assignments, questions, or readings.

We may follow up if we want to get more detail on anything mentioned below. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to help us improve this course — we really appreciate it!

Retrospective

Comics Making for Life is a course that facilitates the creation of unique comics! We learn to design and implement effective comics-making workflows to harness the ideas and life that flow around us.

It's a great way to participate in a community of people who care about creating personal comics that push the boundaries of their personal practices.

- - - - 
## 💬 Description

In this class, we’ll explore constraint-based comics-making. 

We'll focus on using the same comics grid, the 6-panel grid, throughout the course. This will allow us to work quickly and intuitively in a way that will allow you to focus on the intricacies of this fertile and flexible compositional structure.

Each week there will be 5 daily prompts that will invite you to make new comics that you will share in a private forum. You will be able to workshop your ideas iteratively in this small peer cohort. Prompts will initially come from the instructor but will eventually be generated collectively.

This course places an emphasis on quantity over quality. The aim of this will be to help you find the comics-making practices that are best suited to you as an individual. So that you can truly keep making comics for life.

## 🏆 Objectives

* Create a 16+ page print and web-friendly zine of your own comics.
* Learn how to develop a robust, yet flexible + sustainable personal creative practice.

## 📖 Artifacts

* Each participant will get to put together a 16+ page print and web-friendly zine of your their newly created comics.
* We will collect highlights of the work made during this cohort to make a collaborative zine that all participants will receive print copies of.


## 🤔 Who is this class for?

This is **not** a class for careerist comics makers. We will not focus on professional practices. We're not going to get into the entrepreneurial aspects of comics-making. We will not talk much about publishing or the comics industry. There are plenty of communities on the web focused on that already. This club is for people to get personal with their comics. 😇

Are you looking to develop your own personal comics practice? Do you want to spend time learning how to braid images and words together to communicate thoughts and emotions?"

Are you looking for a fun group with which you can make comics on the regular?

Are you in search of a community of makers that are interested in reading and discussing zines, Instagram comics, webcomics, graphic novels, memes, and more?

**This class is for you.** ✨

## 👀 Length / Commitment

The course is 5 weeks long and meets once a week for 2 hours. **This class requires work outside of our weekly meetings.**  Each week you'll need to dedicate an additional 6-12 hours to make  5 pages of comics in response to the prompts that we will work from.


## 🏗️ Structure

* 6-12 students
* 2-hour lesson sessions for 5 weeks
* 6-12 hours of extra work outside of our sessions
* Multiple weekly open-studio style co-working sessions for completing work.


## 🛠️ Tools

* Paper and square Post-It Notes
* Pencils, Pens, and Markers (Nothing too fancy!)
* Scanner and/or a Phone with a Camera
* Laptop or Desktop computer for publication design in week 5

## 🗓️ Schedule

---
### Ongoing: Open Studio Sessions
Every week there will be multiple work sessions where cohort members can hang out! These sessions will be there to help you make time for doing your weekly work in the company of others.

The idea for these *open studio sessions* is to replicate the solidarity and serendipity that emerges from being able to work in parallel with others on separate projects.


### Week 1: Skills Bootcamp | *Getting the blood flowing*

Get to know your fellow studio mates and jump into the fray by making some quick and dirty comics! 

On our first video call we will go over the structure of this course, expectations, and the theory behind it.  The facilitator will explain how it will all come together in our publications.

**Agenda**
- We will begin with some fun drawing-based peer **introductions**, after which you will get the opportunity to identify your personal creative goals for the next 5 weeks.
- We will do some constraint-based comics-making **warm-ups** and will introduce modular comics-making during a 40-minute **mini-workshop**. _This approach to comics-making is a technique you will get to experiment with throughout the course of this course._
---
During this week there will be 2+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to 5 constraint-based prompts from the facilitator.

### Week 2: The Daily Flow | *Constraint-Based Creativity*
We will explore what it means to *[be like water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ&ab_channel=TerryLeeMcBride)* when it comes to making comics-making.  Our work this week will pull from Kyna Leski's work, [The Storm of Creativity](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/storm-creativity).

**Agenda**
- We will begin with **discussing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- We will have a **conversation** on what we find to be the impediments that keep us from getting into a state of flow with our comics-making.
- We will do some **drawing warm-ups **that will allow us to explore what it means to study the work of others in comics.
- We will then do a series of **comics composition exercises **that will fold in bibliomancy and collage.

---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to 5 constraint-based prompts from the facilitator.

### Week 3: You Make the Rules | *The world of OuBaPo*
Dive headfirst into the world of [OuBaPo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oubapo)! With this new knowledge, you'll be hopping into the driver's seat! After two weeks of making comics in response to prompts generated by the facilitator, we will dig into creating structures of our own that we can respond to with our comics-making. 

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **discussing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- The facilitator will give a short **presentation** with slides as to the history of *OuBaPo* and its potential uses in personal art practices.
- We will collectively **write** a set of strange prompts in the form of specific creative constraints.
- We take up several of the generated constraints and will **make comics** in response to them as a group. The comics-making will be followed by sharing of individual work and discussion.

---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create 5 pages of comics in response to constraint-based prompts generated by the group, along with 3 new potential prompts daily.

### Week 4: Running the Marathon | Multipage Sequences
This week we will work on multipage sequences and will explore the unique challenges they present. Up to this point, all of our comics will have been single pages.

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **reviewing** the past week's work and the conversations that occurred on the forum.
- We will do some drawing and writing **warm-ups**.
- We will have a **discussion** that will invite you to reflect on the thought processes you use when creating comics. This will help us identify what kinds of workflows will be best for you when trying to tackle multi-page sequences.
- We will do an hour-long stream of consciousness comics-making **mini-workshop** that will introduce the use of composing comics using page spreads to your practice.
---
During this week there will be 3+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on your homework together.

>*Homework*: You will create a single 6-page sequence of comics.


### Week 5: Sharing is Caring | *Print and Digital Publishing*
Honor yourself and all the hard work you've done by learning how to share your comics both physically and digitally!

**Agenda**
- We will begin by **reviewing** the past week's comics and the conversations that occurred on the forum. 
- We will have a short **presentation** on core principles of publication design, scanning and photographing work, file management, pagination, and sharing to the web.
- There will be a **live demo** on the use of InDesign and Scribus to layout a simple zine from start to finish.
- We will take some time to quickly **draft ideas** for the front, back, and interior covers of our publications.
---
During this week there will be 4+ open studio sessions where you will be able to get together outside of class and work on creating your web and print-ready publications.

>*Homework*: You will design and lay out a zine of the work you've made in this course that you will be able to share physically with friends and family and online with the world! (You will continue to have access to assistance from the facilitator after the end of this course.)