Imagination Playground - Drawing Games to Exercise Your Creativity Muscles!
While learning a series of cartoon-illustration strategies, students develop their own visual vocabulary of simple shapes and patterns. They then practice manipulating this visual shorthand to express story ideas and animations.
Randy James, MEd
Average rating:
4.9
Number of reviews:(346)
What's included
1 live meeting
45 mins in-class hours per weekHomework
1 hour per week. There is no specific homework or outside reading required for this class. However, there are often group suggestions of cartoons, movies, games, and books, and outside investigation of these is encouraged.Class Experience
This is an introductory activities workshop. Students will learn and practice fundamentals of creativity through basic cartooning exercises and narrative development games. Younger kids (with no previous training) can follow the direction of the teacher to create original cartoon art and characters. In each class we find inspiration in fun Dadaist doodling exercises (i.e. "exquisite corpse") to spontaneously generate surprising artwork. With the teacher’s guidance, students practice using "yes/and" improvisational techniques to incorporate imaginative suggestions. They also collaborate with others using phrasal template word-games (i.e. "mad-libs") to create new story ideas, and translate these into sequential storyboards or multi-panel cartoon strips. Class Activities -What you can do with a "Circle and a U" -"Scribble Face" warmup exercises -"So Emotional!" cartoon expressions -Shape is movement -Backgrounds with V's, B's, and Z's -"The Noun Verb Over the Noun" -Word association roundtable -"Story Tag, You're What?" -20 second scenarios -Name is character -WHO (are they)? WHERE (are they)? WHAT (do they do)? -1, 2, and 3 square stories
Learning Goals
- Students create their own cartoon illustrations using rudimentary techniques demonstrated by the teacher
- Students provide verbal responses to questions from the teacher which form the basis of new characters, names, and story plots
- In collaboration with others, students contribute plot suggestions and character ideas to inspire the creations of their teammates.
Other Details
Supply List
Required Materials: -Lots of white paper or whiteboard -Thick black pens, sharpies, or dry-erase markers
External Resources
Learners will not need to use any apps or websites beyond the standard Outschool tools.
Joined December, 2021
4.9
346reviews
Teacher expertise and credentials
Master's Degree in Education from San Francisco State University
Randy James, MEd
Creativity Coach, Cartoonist, Animator, Word-Nerd
Hi, please call me Randy! As a college professor of game design and animation I mentored the artistically gifted for over 20 years. I have a Master's Degree in education and recently taught over 5,000 ESL classes to more than 1000 VIPKids. Parents routinely praise me for my humorous and creative classes and I love to keep things lively!
Much of my creative arts curriculum stems from experiences as an award-winning cartoon animator and educational game producer in San Francisco. I rely on these professional skills and instincts in the classroom to identify your child's artistic potential, and it's always a joy to nurture their creative abilities.
As a kid myself I always enjoyed language games that reward clever wordplay like "telephone" and "madlibs", and have designed a series of word games and activities that really spice-up vocabulary and grammar classes. Students who may think vocabulary is "booooring!" can abruptly devour their nomenclature (eat their words) as they learn how the English language is alive and composed of fragments from world history!Reviews
Live Group Class
$14
weekly1x per week
45 min
Completed by 703 learners
Live video meetings
Ages: 6-10
1-8 learners per class
