Creatorspacepdx

The fifth and final day of the Spring Break camp!

The morning started with the teams working on their comic book concepts and developing a pitch for their ideas because we had a special guest today: Brian Bendis! Brian came and spoke with them about the joy of being a creator, all of the things he's worked on, and answered TONS of questions! The real treat for the kids was an opportunity to share their comic creations with Brian. They were incredibly inspired and thrilled to keep making their own comics and stories after the camp. Thank you so much for your time!

But that wasn't the end! We closed out the camp with a field trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Marvel Exhibit before it ends! Quite a few of the students hadn't been so it was awesome to see them thrilled about the history of Marvel Comics and some their favorite characters!

We provided each student with a certificate of participation and a gift card as an award for completing the camp! We loved having them for the week!

Again thank you to Wacom for the use of their Experience Center and their focus on enabling creativity. This camp literally would not be as rewarding or cool without you! Thank you to the Urban League of Portland for its partnership and support from its youth and education programs - you've helped us reach the students the CreatorSpace was founded to inspire and nurture. Last, but not least, thank you to NE STEAM Coalition for your sponsorship of the camp and your commitment to driving STEAM enrichment in NE Portland and beyond.

Special thanks to local eatery, Selena's Restaurant, for sponsoring our lunch today! Thank you so much for your support of the camp!

Day 4! Today we went through characterization exercises with Chris at Wacom! He took the key comic concepts we heard on Wednesday and used it as inspiration to do a class exercise where all the comic book teams had their characters illustrated. We also used this exercise during our Daily Doodle to educate the class on branding and having recognizable aspects of your character. You can tell who and are from a silhouette...why? Because their designs are distinct or have a recognizable quality! For it's his spikes, for Bugs it's the ears and carrot, and for Thor it's his hammer! One day left in the Spring Camp!

Day 3 of the 2023 Spring Break Comics Camp! Today was a treat because the kids gathered into their teams - or "comic companies" - and used the past two days of storytelling and character creation to make their own mini comics! And they even presented their short comics as creative teams! Some kids were artists, some colorists, writers, and even a few served as editor-in-chief and directed the work and kept the team on task!

We also introduced some technical drawing work into our "Wacom Daily Doodle" time! Megan Davis, Sr. Global Brand Manager, spent some time today teaching one and two-point perspective drawing and block lettering!

Day 2 of the Comics Camp relaunch! Today we focused on storytelling and backstories for our characters. The students gave incredible 1-2 minute synopses of their characters and played an awesome gaming of "comics jam" where they collaborated to create a story by passing a completed comic panel onto the next person.

Nichole Robinson visited the students as "Creator-in-Residence" to get us thinking about backstories and the traits of some of our favorite characters!

We're back! The CreatorSpace is relaunching and hosting our Spring Break Comics Camp! Monday featured a visit with artist Jose Valentine. This round we nearly doubled our camp size to 18! This is our re-pilot after having to stop due to the pandemic.

Thanks to Wacom and the Urban League of Portland for their continued partnership! And thank you to NE STEAM Coalition for their sponsorship and commitment to growing and developing this effort to inspire creativity with technology and other STEM/STEAM applications!

Throwback to when Michael Oeming taught storyboarding and page layouts (and more!) to the kids at the Wacom Experience Center during our camp! Looking forward to doing it again this Summer!