Story Boarding Multivariant Comics

Internet Facilitates Multivariance for Short Comic Strips

© Jo Murphy

Jan 6, 2007

In her article Creativity for your Students Dorit mentions graphic organisers. Here are some more links to those organisors: Eduplace and TeacherVision.

Her article immediately gave me an idea about story boarding multivariant comic strips for Art/Tech. This will compliment the articles How To Make A Comic Strip & Creative Character Creator and Cut Paper Collage Drawing Combo

The Internet is an ideal place for children to learn about multivariance.

• I have made a template for scripting exemplifing just one version of the multi variant strip.
• This is ideal for group work because each group chooses a direction for the story.
• They can be linked on the Internet or on CD as a part of Multi-media.
• The graphic organisers assist the children to map the story.

1. I create a template which can be used to plot variances of your story.

Here is the comic strip created with just one version of the variance. Please scroll down so that you can read it fully

1. The children could hook/hyperlink their comic strip to the opening picture.
2. This allows the short strip to have variant endings.
3. I suggest the children work in twos or threes.
4. In a group of thirty you would be able to have 10 variances.
5. Have the children devise their own graphic organiser on Photoshop at the beginning of the lesson as this becomes another skill they can transfer later.

These lesson can be a spring board for Literacy.

1. They could submit their idea so that a graphic artist can draw the strip.
2. Give the written script to another group who will now have to draw the strip and submit it to an editor for publication .
3. Act it out so that the class can guess which comic strip has been enacted

Develop acting skills such as swimming or beckoning when you are a fish . To do this use Questions such as

1. What would it look like for a fish to beckon?
2. Show me how the father would look when he first saw his new born babies
3. What would the mother look like after the birth?

In the article A Word About Scripting Comics I talk about keeping things simple when scripting. However within the context of class group activities I think this project is manageable. All feedback welcome.

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