Battling Coronavirus With Comics - Katrina - 12th grade - California
[you can leave positive words of encouragement for Katrina by clicking the title of this post and scrolling down to add your comments.]
Katrina just completed our high school visual arts course series.
When Katrina started her second semester VAMCGS course she wrote:
When I was little, I loved to look at and read comic strips that came in every Sunday newspaper. I love to create characters and imagine what they do in a certain situations. I'm actually trying to make a comic, so I think this class will help me improve on how to make simple ones. One thing I hope to learn in this course is how to make smoother transitions between scenes.
One of her assignments was to design an advertising campaign for a theater or dance production, or any other event held at school, creating images that represent characters and major aspects of the event or production. Since all school events were closed due to coronavirus she decided to create a comic to help an Orange County California organization called Making Masks Central OC.
Katrina sent her comic to Making Masks Central OC and requested their feedback. Annie Cwieka from Making Masks Central OC posted Katrina's comic on their Facebook page, shared some powerful words from Mr. Rogers that all of us should keep in mind during this pandemic and praised Katrina:
Dear wonderful Face Mask Making Tribe! We are very proud to share the work of Katrina, daughter of our prolific seamstress, Kimiko. Katrina was asked to produce a "comic ad" for a class project. She choose our group as her inspiration.
Mr. Rogers once shared that his mother told him, "When times are scary, look for the helpers." These are scary times - particularly for our children. Know that they are watching. And what they see modeled by you is resilience, caring and strength. Thank you for being "the helpers."
And thank you Katrina!
Katrina said: "I am happy that other people are enjoying my comics. I loved their message too. Hearing their praises encourages me to do and post more online for others to see."
We're glad that Katrina experienced the positive impact her artwork can generate. We hope this launches Katrina into creating many more works and inspires other potential junior artists to follow in her footsteps.
Katrina far exceeded what she originally hoped to achieve in VAMCGS. She wrote:
Dear YDACS,
I have completed VAMCGS! Thank you so much for providing this course and helping me. I really enjoyed learning more about making comics. I learned the different techniques used in comics. I also loved making the comics for the various assignments. I really enjoyed this course!
You can learn about our high school visual arts course series in our course catalog. It's comprised of two courses in the first semester, Digital Manga 101 and either Digital Photo Painting 101 or Digital Drawing and Painting 101, and VAMCGS in the second semester. VAMCGS translates to Visual Arts - Manga, Comics, Graphic Novels and Storyboarding.