What’s better than making comics? Helping other people make comics!

We’ve been busy running comics workshops (like, structured comics making) and drop-in activities (like, have a go and stay as long as you like). Here are some photos of comics-in-progress and some finished comics too.

From our Spineless half-term workshops at the Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle:

From our Creepy Crawly Comics workshops at Cramlington Library and Morpeth Library, as part of the Spellbound events series (thanks Spellbound for letting us share photos from your Facebook page):

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/spellboundworkshops

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/spellboundworkshops

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/spellboundworkshops

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/spellboundworkshops

Photo credit: https://www.facebook.com/spellboundworkshops

From our comics making and an exhibition of pages from our comic Asteroid Belter as part of Discover Science Through Comics, organised by the BritishScience Association West Yorkshire Branch, in Leeds:

 

Most comics creators were mysteriously anonymous and didn't put their names on their comics. If you spot your comic here, let us know and we'll gladly add your name to it. 

Mega thanks to our workshop co-facilitators Michael Jeffries and Emily Rose Lambert (for Spineless at GNM: Hancock), and Jack Fallows (in Leeds).

Yeah SCIENCE! Yeah COMICS! As always, we love to see your science comics – keep in touch!

Half-term family comics workshops

Attention all Spineless comic fans!

Join our FREE drop-in comics making workshops at Great North Museum Hancock this half term.

On Saturday 24th, Monday 26th, and Friday 30th October we'll have comics making activities from 11am-3pm.  Come and work with comics artists to draw your own comics, all with a Spineless invertebrates, minibeasts and bugs theme.

These drop-in activities are for children age 6-11, with their families. You're welcome to stay for as long or short a time as you'd like - just turn up on the day, there's no need to book.

Want to make a day of it? Here's a link to other Spineless activities at Great North Museum: Hancock https://greatnorthmuseum.org.uk/whats-on.

Well now that was informative.

Here’s a quick roundup after our infographics workshop at Newcastle City Library as part of the Comics Chaos festival on Saturday 9^th August 2014.

We used examples from digital and print media to identify exactly what what makes good, bad, and misleading infographics.  Our infographicers were great at spotting what it is that makes an infographic a infographic. 

Then we focussed on what comics can teach us about combining words and pictures.  Yes, panel grids are part of this, and there’s a heck of a lot more besides. 

By the time it came to making their own infographics our infographicers (if I keep writing it it’ll become a real word, right?) were rather too good at, umm, not exactly telling lies with information, but certainly being selective about what they chose to emphasise.

Thanks go to our anonymous evaluation form filler-inners for the positive and encouraging feedback.  This is a workshop we can adjust to fit different groups’ needs*, so your comments will help with the fine tuning. 

Thanks also go to our friends at Newcastle City Library for coordinating the Comics Chaos Festival.  There are other comics events for children and for adults throughout August – pick up a festival guide at the library for more information.

Thanks also also go to our friends at CCCCCCC (The Canny Comic Con Comic Chaos Creative Collaboration).  @CannyComicCon’s twitter feed has a rundown of cracking ideas for comics to read, as a good and true record of the Best Comic You’ve Never Read debate. 

*aye, that’s an advert.  You’re welcome to get in touch to to discuss the comics + science (or comics + scientists) workshops we could run for you.  We have many, we do bespoke workshops, and we'll have a web page all about them soon.

Infographics workshop + Comic Chaos

Well now here's some excitement.

Newcastle Science Comic have again teamed up with Newcastle Libraries as part of Comics Chaos, a programme of awesome summer activities linked to the British Library's Comics Unmasked exhibition.

Join us on Saturday 9th August from 11am-12.30pm at Newcastle City Library for a FREE hands-on workshop on infographics.

Newspapers, websites, and documentaries love using graphs, symbols, and pictures to present information.  Do these infographics help us understand complicated information?*  Are they a way of playing tricks with numbers?**  Is anything that combines numbers, words, and pictures an infographic?***

We will:

• understand what makes good, bad, and misleading infographics
• see what comics can teach us about combining words and pictures
• make infographics, choosing to use our skills for good or for evil.

This workshop is suggested for ages 14 to adult.  You don't have to be good at maths or art.  You do need to ask questions about information that is presented to you, and think about what information you want to present to other people.  

The workshop is FREE but places are limited - you can book your free ticket online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/canny-comic-con-comic-chaos-creative-collaboration-use-comics-workshop-tickets-12331699445

Get in touch if you have any questions about this workshop: newcastlesciencecomic [at] gmail [dot] com

*sometimes **often ***no


And that's not all!  The Canny Comic Con Comic Chaos Creative Collaboration will be running FREE drop-in activities all day for all ages, ending with a debate to finally answer the question 'What's the best comic that you probably haven't read?'  Head over to their website for the latest news on all things CCCCCCC.

Widcombe Junior School Comics Week

Year 5 students from Widcombe Junior School in Bath took part in a comics week with Hannah Sackett of Archaeological Oddities last month. With expert guidance from Hannah and the wonderful teachers Rebecca Cartwright and Jo Everritt they created some fantastic comics inspired by Asteroid Belter.

Year 5 have been working on the topic of space, so they took the Supernova Splashdown comics (by Paul Duffield) as a model and wrote their own comics on the same theme. As previous topic work they had all invented their own planet - describing plants and animals, geology, atmosphere, etc, so their brief was to have their spaceships land/crashland on these planets.

Click on the pictures to see larger versions. 

A Recap

A few things that we forgot to say while we were making our comic...

On the 27th and 28th August Team Newcastle Science Comic was at the BBC One Show Roadshow. The fantastic event organisers and fellow science tent folk AND all the lovely people that visited us made it such a great weekend. Lydia made some fantastic activity sheets for the weekend, all about the inventions of Newcastle. The most popular activity was inventing a new flavour of crisps. People could also design a new bridge to cross the River Tyne and drawing what you can see through a telescope.

Here are some of the wonderful drawings donated to our gallery during the weekend.

And Then We had some Exhibitions

To celebrate the launch of Asteroid Belter: The Newcastle Science Comic we had an exhibition in Newcastle City Library. We also had an exhibition in King's Gate building, Newcastle University. The photos below are from our King's Gate exhibition.

Phew. That was a quick catch up.
We also got a lovely mention in Newspaper Club's (our printers) blog.