Super Mariah hears poor chicken's terrified cries... This program gave kids the opportunity to plan, illustrate, and star in their own comic panels. Using a green screen, iPads, and a couple of cool apps all of our participants were able to make a comic strip. However, the 6 and 7 year-olds who showed up with siblings needed more help.
I would recommend targeting an age range of 8-13 for this program.
Things you need:
- Green Screen
- iPad(s)
- Props (puppets and costumes are great)
- ComicLife 3 ($5.00)
- GreenScreen Wizard ($5.00)
- Optional - personal white boards and markers for storyboarding
My green screen came from amazon.com and cost about $40.00. However, you may be able to get away with just buying green fabric from a fabric store. Our green screen has been used countless times since I bought it. It's a great investment for a library.
Have the kids storyboard their comics first. This makes the picture taking process so much faster. Then have them snap all of their pictures in front of the green screen. Green Screen Wizard is so easy to use. All you do is choose a background photo to replace the green. I preloaded our iPads with pictures of oceans, space, cities, woods, meadows, forests, alleyways, volcanoes, and anything else I could think of so the kids would have a lot of options.
Next, the kids drag and drop their photos into Comic Life 3 which has built comic templates for them to use. You can change filters on photos to make them look like illustrations, and add speech bubbles, effects, and more. Comic Life 3 turns out a great product, but it takes practice to use. Practice before putting on this program! I had an entire comic made and printed out for them to look at so they could catch the vision.
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