Thanks to Rachel Pan for the photo!

I gave a ‘How-To-Cartoon’ talk and class at the Orlando Public Library Wednesday. I did a very different event, actually producing a short comic story with my drawing and the audience coming up with the story. The crowd was mostly made up of teens who were interested in manga (Asian influenced or produced cartoon material), comic books and animation. So, I crafted the talk to cover visual storytelling: How to create a character, a story and think it out in graphic form. It was a bit tough. I was to keep it at an hour and added an extra half hour to it.

The drawing is of an audience member, whose name I didn’t get. Though I recall him being a huge fan of Warner Brothers cartoons.

I thought folks here might be interested in the story that I drew in front of the audience based on ideas coming from audience members. The idea of a wolf came up along with the wolf having two children. It was decided the wolf was an artist. The asked the folks there what story we could create. Ideas bopped back and forth to finally and with the children going shopping for shoes. The conflict, or gag, was that in the end each child ended up with the wrong shoes. It was a great session with an enthusiastic audience.

 I’m interested in any and all comments if we, and particularly if I, succeeded in creating a coherent story.