Give creative kids a little professional guidance with these new guides to making your own comics and film.
Draw Out the Story, by Brian McLachlan
OwlKids, ISBN: 978 1 77147 003 2
Comic artist Brian McLachlan takes kids on a thorough tour of how to build a comic, including the things to think about in creating your story, an in-depth look at comic “grammar,” genres, and styles, and plenty of advice on how to choose from the various types of images and tools at your disposal. He tops it off with advice on the extras – showing your personality, trying new things, and pushing your creativity a little further.
This is a top-notch teaching tool, with lots of things to consider, plenty of detail and examples to illustrate his points, and some great exercises to get kids trying out what he’s talking about. It’s accessible enough for a younger kid just trying their hand at a first comic, but detailed enough for teens with a few comics under their bely to get a lot out of it as well. This is very well done – I’m impressed enough that my daughter is getting a copy of this one!
Learn To Speak Film, by Michael Glassbourg
OwlKids, ISBN: 978 1 92697 385 2
A new entry in this series on learning how to get started in creative fields joins music, dance, and fashion. These are well-researched, written by people in the field, and presented in a fun, accessible style that breaks down the big topic into chunks. The book walks through telling stories, how to tell those tales with pictures, creating a script, the filming process, postproduction, and how to get a film out to an audience.
Glassbourg paints the broad strokes, but also looks at some of the many people and jobs that make a film truly come together, including a lot of things a would-be film maker might not think of until the needed it – all the better to plan ahead! This solid advise and breakdown from a veteran who also teaches film is a pretty thorough look at what is really involved, and a good place to start for young people interested in the business.
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