Friday, March 20, 2015

Cartooning Workshop at Alliance Française

Here are some photos of the cartooning workshop I conducted at Alliance Française de Bangalore on 17th March, as a part of Francophonie week. I started off with a short history of French cartooning: this was, after all, a part of the Francophonie celebrations. After that, an insight into what it takes to create a comic strip, how to come up with gag ideas, taking care of layout and pacing, creating interest using different views, perspectives, lighting, shading and coloring. Finally, a quick tutorial on drawing cartoon figures (just enough for the group project). I used some of my favorite cartoonists works as samples to illustrate the points (mostly Charles Schulz, J.C. Duffy and Jim Unger) - as well as, naturally, my own work. This was, after all, an opportunity to indulge in shameless self-promotion, and I did not let that go.
We did a short exercise on coming up with gags (in French) based on the dix-mots - the ten words that had been chosen as the focus words for this years Francophonie.
After that we had the project work. The participants formed groups and drew their own comic strips using the gags they had earlier come up with.

Here are some of the participants, listening intently to my perorations, and a pic of me, perorating.


 The project work. Me admiring their work, the comics they produced, and me with the proud creators...





Photos courtesy Prutha of Alliance Française