The experience with him comic workshop It has been very satisfactory although I have to thank the organization because at no time did they show any problem to let my 8-year-old daughter attend a workshop prepared for attendees aged 16 and older. The fact is that William Goldsmith offered a graphic creation workshop at the ABC Museum within the program organized by The British Council, the ABC Museum and Ubik Europe. The program began on 16, 17 and continues on March 23 and 24 with more workshops and more presentation of works in the program entitled "a window to the panorama of the comic and graphic novel in the United Kingdom".
The image that illustrates the article is by Lance Tooks, a comic book professional who attended the workshop and who designed, based on the descriptions made by my daughter, the mascot on the left, a kind of raccoon or little fox with a blue T-shirt, mask , cape and a hairy tail. And in the workshop the first thing we had to do is describe a character through characteristics that he had to fulfill. Then those descriptions were exchanged around the room and each assistant had to draw the character that best suited those characteristics. Lance's creation exceeded my daughter's expectations and she was delighted with her creation. Although the creation process did not stay there and continued.
So the next thing to do is show, to all attendees, the creations made by each author and expose them on the wall. On those designs, of which all were barbaric, one had to be chosen while maintaining the one we had previously created. Many authors chose Lance's raccoon so my daughter's original idea was going to be the protagonist of a few more stories.
Because the next creation process was to write a story with those two chosen characters, although the workshop attendees still did not know. And William was giving us precise instructions for the workshop to progress properly.
William's indication was that we will draw our two characters in a relationship, in something that will connect them. So for example, Lance Tooks, took the raccoon and an elephant that someone described and another drew and Lance put it in the story. The first drawing is the one shown below where they are very close and happy:
Once we had both characters we had to develop a conflict, something for which they broke the relationship that existed between them. Here the imagination had to overflow and Lance chose the following drawing in which the friendship between the raccoon and the elephant is broken by something very large:
And the final point of the creativity workshop was going through solve the story with a reconciliation or with something that explains what happened after that breakdown of the relationship. In Lance's case it seems that it was clear that the elephants were going to be very happy so the raccoon approached a pretty girl who looks like Narcissa one of the protagonists of her work. In the image we can see the cute raccoon in action:
And after all this process of creation, which reminded me of the recently published interview with Creative Attitude in which it was mentioned that creativity decreased with age, it seems to me that the comic, like many other artistic disciplines, has the power to extract from people their talents, their illusions, their ideas and that they can be shared by others.
We give you the thanks to Lance Tooks for his generosity because in the end he gave us his drawings and the ABC Museum because he let us participate without any problem despite the age limitation, which I had not read anyway when joining the workshop.
And yes, my daughter made her drawings, participated in the creation process, drew and wrote her works and understood the creation process followed. He also had his fans and many were interested in what he had drawn in addition to congratulating him on his drawings. Here I leave the video with the work done and my words to facilitate the reading of the texts.
I recommend this exercise to do it, and improve or enrich it, in the classroom, at home, and especially if you perceive that your children have abilities or skills that you think can move forward stay tuned for the proposals that are in this regard and participate with them in their creative process. We had a great time. A great gift for Father's day.
Here the last photo of the workshop author William Goldsmith reviewing another of the works with the protagonist raccoon in a fun space adventure:
