Diary Comics By Imaginary People

A Fun Activity That You Can Try At Home!

OH FREDDY.

I’ve been posting all these Freddy Diary Comics here lately (hey! Why not go back and read through some of the previous ones?) and it gave me an idea for an activity to try at Comics Club, the regular monthly session for young cartoonists I run at the Story Museum in Oxford. And, since it went great and was really fun, I thought I would share it with you here!

Like a lot of stuff we do at Comics Club, it’s a way of taking the basic idea of ‘draw some comics’ and turning it into a bit of a game. If you’re a teacher or similar you could try this with a whole group of kids, if you’re a parent you could just try it with your own kids, or if you’re just a Person Who Likes Drawing, you could just give it a try yourself! Anyway, I call it…

Diary Comics By Imaginary People!

You will need:

• a blank four-panel comics page (you can download done here and print it off! Or, you know, just draw some boxes?)

• Access to a photocopier! (If you’re doing this with a group / class. If there’s only a couple of you, don’t worry about it)

METHOD

Step One: Take your blank four-panel comic page!

Step Two: Draw a character in panel one!

What kind of character? That’s up to you! If you’re working with a group, take some suggestions! Get some discussion going! What kind of character would everyone like to see? A superhero? A vampire? A lazy panda with a crippling addiction to pot noodles?

Oh, and whatever kind of character you end up drawing, the key thing is: this is a character who wants to draw some COMICS.

Here’s one I prepared earlier!

The kids at comics club wanted me to draw a zombie, so that is what I did.

Step Three: make a bunch of photocopies of the page, with your panel one, but all the other panels still blank.

Step Four: everyone else now has a go at drawing a diary comic *by that character* in the remaining panels!

Some questions to think about:

1. How would this character draw themselves? Firstly, how good are they at drawing? Would they draw themselves in a super detailed, realistic style, or something much simpler? And also, how do they SEE themselves? Would they draw themselves as much cuter than they actually are? Or more buff and handsome? Or as a HORRIFYING MONSTER?

2. What will their comic be about? Maybe it could just be a straight up diary - what they did in the morning, what they had for lunch, then how their day ended? Or it could be them telling us about a particular part of their life - where they live, who their friends are, what kind of problems they have? Or it could just be an absolute pile of made-up nonsense!

Here is an example Zombie Alan Diary Comic to give you an idea! Created by our erstwhile comics club member / assistant:

As I say, this activity worked great at Comics Club. We had a fascinating range of styles and approaches; the kids really engaged with the central questions of ‘how WOULD a zombie draw?’ and ‘what would they want to SAY in their comics'?’ in all sorts of amazing and hilarious ways I would never have anticipated.

Give it a try yourselves! If you want to make your own Zombie Alan Diary Comic, here’s a copy of the sheet you can download and print off and draw on!

BONUS: here’s a Freddy one, if you want to have a go at drawing your own Freddy Diary Comics!

On The Subject Of Comics Club

…I just happened to notice that our monthly sessions through July 2023 have just become available to book on the Story Museum website, and as of right now are currently Not Sold Out Yet! This does not usually stay the case for very long, so if you have a kid who enjoys making comics and you think might enjoy doing so with a bunch of other like-minded kids and also me, why not book them in for a session?

ALSO: it’s only a couple of week’s until the Phoenix Comic Festival - in-person tickets are all sold out, but we’re going to be live streaming some of the sessions so wherever you are in the country you can join in and make some awesome comics with amazing creators like: Jamie Smart! Jess Bradley! Zak Simmonds-Hurn! Abby Bulmer! Gary Northfield! And me, with my brand new live event: DONUTS VS ROBOTS! Okay so I haven’t actually quite figured out what that actually means yet, but come on, I think we can all agree it is going to be pretty amazing. Book your tickets now!