Jessica Badeaux

Fun Activities with Single Dads and Their Kids Creating a Comic Book Getting creative with kids is always fun. Making a comic book with them is a great way to be creative and it is actually educational too, but they won’t even realize it. This is a great activity for Dad’s to work on with their kids and once it is complete, there will be a finished comic book to serve as a reminder of the great time had together. Comic books have come a long way and are now being used in schools to help reluctant readers develop their language skills. Creating a comic book requires one to think of a story, formulating a beginning, middle, and end. Perfect practice for all of those essays kids have to write throughout their school years. Drawing and coloring characters they have created will give them a sense of accomplishment and is something even adults use for stress relief. Here is everything you need to know in order to get started creating a comic book with your kids. You only need a few supplies and first up is paper. You can choose to go very basic and use simple blank copy paper or if you want a more traditionally formed comic book, complete with panels, you can pick up packs of blank comic book pages. There are even some packs of paper available that have comic book pages with word balloons already on the pages for you, so they will help to guide the story along. Pencils are the next most important supply, make sure you have a pencil sharpener handy too. You and your kids will be using pencils to draw the comic and mistakes will happen, that’s why they invented erasers! Depending on your kids age and whether or not permanent markers are a good idea in your home, you will either want a black pen or an Ultra Fine Sharpie marker in order to outline the drawings after penciling them in. To color the comic book you can choose to use colored pencils, crayons, or markers. There are even watercolor markers available, but these do take some practice, so this might be something to try out after a few comic books have been successfully created. There are some other things you can gather together that are also useful for creating a comic. A stapler is great to staple pages together once complete. A ruler is needed if you are drawing your own panels or simply need a straight line. If you want to make it super easy, there are comic book creating kits available. My Comic Book Making Kit includes everything your kids need to get started. If your kids are already fans of comics, Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics is a great book to have on hand for them as well. Once all the supplies have been gathered, you and your kids will need to brainstorm to come up with an idea for the comic. What type of story do you want to make? It can be anything your kids can dream up, there are no limits! For some inspiration, take a look at some of the comic book collections popular with kids of all ages. Maybe your kids want to create a Sunday morning newspaper type of comic strip. Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip that is always funny and often thoughtful. Reading a few pages of it is sure to spark their imagination. Are superheroes popular with you kids? Maybe Wonder Woman or Batman will pique their interest. Do your kids love watching cartoons and are looking for something filled with action and laughs? Teen Titans is a great pick for them Let the sketching begin! Give your kids some pencils and blank sheets of paper to start with. Ask them to start drawing the characters they are imagining. They can use colored pencils, crayons, or markers to fully design what the characters look like. Encourage them to be as wacky and wild with their drawings as they would like. There are no rules when it comes to character design, but having a sheet for each character in the story will be very helpful later. Next, focus on the story. What do your kids imagine is happening in this characters life? Are they fighting crime like Superman? Maybe their characters are animals living in the wild. Whatever their imagination decides, have them write a story that they would like to create in comic book form. This should be complete with what the characters say to one another and what they are doing. This can be broken down into panels so they can write up exactly what they want shown in each panel. When the story is complete, they can begin lettering. This is simply placing the story onto the comic book pages. They can write the words in ellipses form so that word balloons can be created afterwards, or if you are using a comic book page with pre-drawn word balloons, let them write the words in each balloon. They should draw their characters and their scenery onto the comic page next. Make sure they are using their pencils for this. They can draw as little or as much as they want, this is totally up to the individual kid. There are plenty of comic books out there that feature simple drawings and a lot that are very elaborate. Once they have all of their drawings complete, it’s time for inking! You can choose to let your kid do this, or maybe this is where you step in to provide some “Inking by Dad” credits to your repertoire. After the inking comes coloring! Your kids should refer to their original character sheets in order to keep the characters in the same color hair and clothes, unless there is a costume change happening. Pro-artists use character sheets to make sure they keep consistent throughout comic books and so that you know who you are reading about just by quickly glancing at the page. So now the comic has been written, the characters have been drawn, and the panels have been colored. Congratulate your kids on a job well done and see what they would like to do with their finished product. Maybe they want to scan it and share it. You can use a camera or a color scanner to upload it and share it with friends and family. Do they want to keep it for themselves? Staple the pages together or bind it together with tape for easy reading. Whatever the kids decide to do with their comic book, you will always have this amazing memory of creating something together. The kids also learned to see a project all the way through, which is an invaluable lesson in itself. This is something they should be proud of and you can keep and enjoy for years to come!