Comic Books for Social Change Workshops

The Art of the Comic Zine (Toronto, Canada)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21 from 4-6 pm Toronto time— Free online workshop with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Workshop is in English. Completed.

A DIY workshop on making a one-page foldable comic zine which is a perfect for anyone interested in getting into independent comics. Learn how to write, design and print this democratic and underground style of comics that reflects your personality. 

Instructor: COLE PAULS is a Tahltan comic artist, illustrator and printmaker hailing from Haines Junction (Yukon Territory) with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University. Residing in Vancouver, Pauls focuses on his two comic series, the first being Pizza Punks: a self contained comic strip about punks eating pizza, the other being Dakwäkãda Warriors. In 2017, Pauls won Broken Pencil Magazine’s Best Comic and Best Zine of the Year Award for Dakwäkãda Warriors II. In 2020, Dakwäkãda Warriors won Best Work in an Indigenous Language from the Indigenous Voices Awards and was nominated for the Doug Wright Award categories, The Egghead & The Nipper.

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is an annual celebration of the world's best comics art and the cartoonists that create them. Each year, we welcome hundreds of artists and thousands of attendees to explore and promote this vast medium.

Comic Books Workshop at Baturu Festival (Beijing, China)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 20:00-21:30 Beijing Time— Free online workshop with Baturu Festival in Beijing, China. Workshop is in Chinese. During the on-line free sessions, the participants script their stories, create characters, inking, coloring, and create comics. Completed

Instructors: MIGO is a feminist comics artists and illustrator. From a gender perspective, her web comic Solo Theatre explores various social topics, such as women’s issues, environmental issues, and animal welfare. She also participates in many workshops and social events related to gender topics. In the past two years, Migo was invited by U-Motion to create a series of comic workshops that focus on the current social issues for young people.

Writing True Experiences into Fantastical Situations (Boston, MA)

SUNDAY DECEMBER 6, 2020 4:30pm-6:00pm EST — Free online workshop. Genre fiction in comics provides a rich toolset for expressing nonfictional ideas, from the literal allegory to the expansive, fine-tuned deep-dive. Focusing on the supernatural, sci-fi, and fantasy genres, we'll explore how to translate your own emotional experiences and journeys into fully formed synopses for genre fiction comics. Using character design, setting, and messing with genre tropes, we'll build a strong plot core to express your innermost loudest thought(s), then see what that might look like in three different genres, using world-building and character design to create three unique synopses -- hopefully untangling some of our own questions about our experiences along the way, too. Completed.

ANDI SANTAGATA is a cartoonist based in White River Junction, Vermont (by way of Los Angeles, by way of Las Vegas, by way of Singapore, by way of Hong Kong). I love to write/draw comics about teen angst, friendship, and supernatural phenomena, and mostly make comics in the YA and New Adult genres. I got my graduate degree from the Center for Cartoon studies, and am probably best known for my autobio comic Trans Man Walking, my webcomic American Spirits: Freelance Ghostbusters, as well as my work in anthologies such as Tabula Idem: A Queer Tarot Anthology and Wayward Kindred.

The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) – A virtual festival showcasing the best in new and local comics!

Graphic & Journalism + Tech (San Francisco, USA)

SUNDAY DECEMBER 6, 2020 11am-12:30pm PST — Free online workshop on creating graphic journalistic stories to address social issues and use virtual reality and augmented reality to allow readers to immersive themselves into the characters and environments from the stories. Completed.

DAN ARCHER has been working as a graphic journalist for over a decade. He chose the medium of comics reportage for its ability to allow readers to visualize his subjects without them needing to appear on camera, protecting their identities while preserving the power and impact of their stories. His work has been supported by the BBC, Vice, Associated Press, the Colombian government, Open Society, European Journalism Centre and he has a Maynard Institute Award for mental health reporting. He also founded Empathetic Media, a mixed reality production studio, in 2015 to expand his interactive journalism into the immersive space. Since then EM has produced dozens of virtual reality experiences from 360 videos to room-scale pieces for a wide range of clients, including the Washington Post, Pfizer Foundation, Gilead Life Sciences and the NHS. RAM DEVINENI is creator of the augmented reality social-activist comic books, “Priya’s Shakti,” featuring India’s first female superhero and named “gender equality champion” by UN Women.

ZERO1 is a nonprofit arts organization that aims to address complex social challenges by producing community-driven new media and digital art projects. We believe that artistic experimentation with emergent technologies inspires novel creative strategies and broadens our critical understanding of the world. Through a global network of partners, we bridge governmental, academic, corporate, and cultural worlds to build engaged and vibrant communities that drive social action. Gray Area is San Francisco's premier cultural hub applying creative action for social transformation. The organization operates the historic Grand Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, generating platforms that enable creators to transcend boundaries through anti-disciplinary collaboration.

Comic Books Creation Workshop (Colombia, MD)

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2020 4:00 pm-5:30 pm EST — Ever wonder how to make comic books? Do you love to tell stories and draw? During the on-line free sessions, the participants script their stories, create characters, and create the comics on paper. The session also shows how to integrate augmented reality into their comics. Co-organized with Merriweather Art District. Completed.

ASHLEY A. WOODS is a comic book artist, writer, and creator from Chicago known for her work on the Niobe, Ladycastle and Tomb Raider series. She got her start through self-publishing her action-fantasy comic series Millennia War which led to her career in comics and TV. Her most prominent work is Niobe: She is Life with actress Amandla Stenberg and Sebastian A. Jones of Stranger Comics. Her latest artwork can be seen with Marvel, Image Comics and VAULT Comics. RAM DEVINENI is creator of the interactive social-activist comic books, “Priya’s Shakti,” featuring India’s first female superhero and named “gender equality champion” by UN Women. Both Ram and Ashley are creating a new comic book series, Jupiter Invincible, with Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2020 12:00 pm-1:30 pm EST — When done effectively, four-panel comic strips have the ability to make witty and insightful commentary on today's social and political issues. They are a slight deviation from the traditional three-panel newspaper funnies, but they still follow a three-act structure. Co-organized with Merriweather Art District. Completed.

BIANCA XUNISE is an illustrator and cartoonist based out of Chicago, Illinois. Her work primarily focuses on the plight and daily struggles of a young black feminist weirdo in modern society. Her story-telling has the tender slice of life gaze but  is also capable of a more complex nuanced driven narrative of mental health awareness or police brutality that have garnered her an Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent. Bianca’s has been featured by a diverse group of clients including Vogue, Ford, Essence, NYLON, The Washington Post, The BBC, and The Nib. She is also a contributor to the book How We Fight Supremacy: A Field Guide to Black Resistance along with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tarana Burk, and Harry Belafonte.