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[Detail] Krazy Kat goes a-wooing. 1916.

Personification | Morality Tales | Representation in Animation | Creating Comic Strips and Flip Books

Creating Comic Strips and Flip Books

Select an animated film in this collection that originated on the comics page (for example, the "Katzenjammer," "Phable," and "Keeping Up With the Joneses" series). Break down the plot of the cartoon and recreate it in a five-to-six panel comic strip, making sure that it stays true to the original premise. (This is similar to "reverse engineering" a machine by taking it apart to see how it works.)

  • What is the tone of the story (humorous, dramatic, etc.)?
  • How do you think that the tone of the story is reflected in the illustrations?
  • What do you think are the essential actions of the story that should appear within the panels of the comic strip? (In other words, how do you get from point A to point B in five steps or less?)

Create a five-to-six-panel comic strip, featuring original characters and a unique storyline. Select one major action or scene from this comic strip to try some original animation in a flip book. A flip book can be a book of sketch pages or a stack of paper on which a single image is slightly altered to convey a sense of motion when presented, or "flipped," in order. Keep the following questions in mind throughout this project.

  • How does the story of a comic strip change when additional images are added to animate it?
  • What does the extra time that is added through this process allow for the story that would not otherwise be possible?
  • What are the differences between turning a comic strip into an animated film and into a live-action film?
  • How do these films compare to comic strips or comic books that are adapted from films?
  • What do you think are the differences in these media and how should these differences be accounted for in the development of a story?