Panel Lottery

Jessica and I came up with a new collaborative comics-making activity for our signing at Rocketship last week. We were all pretty happy with how it turned out so here’s a description of how it worked. Feel free to use it or adapt it as you see fit. As I hinted earlier, the basic idea is that you are creating your own “deck” of comics panels to play 5-card Nancy with your original art.

Panel Lottery
An activity by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden

Materials:
3″ x 5″ index cards (large Post-It notes could work too)
pencils and pens
masking tape or push pins
a box with a slot in the top (you could also use a large envelope or bag)

Phase 1:
Draw a few random comics panels on index cards using the following guidelines. (They should not tell a story). Our goal is to produce a big pile of random, unrelated (except for the characters) comics panels.

1. Use any of the following characters:

(…or invent your own.)

2. Use either of the two following guidelines to come up with your panel content:

a) Take a comic off a shelf, close your eyes, open the book at random and put your finger on the page. Open your eyes and draw a new panel with our characters based on the panel you have randomly selected. (Don’t worry if it’s a boring panel, in fact that’s better.)

b) Choose any one or more of the following instructions and use them as the starting point for your panel:

Somebody asking a question (no answer).
Somebody answering a question (no question).
Somebody walking through a doorway.
Somebody looking out of the panel with a surprised expression.
A punch or kick.
Somebody looking for someone or something.
A panel with no people in it.
A landscape with a single building in it.
A panel full of sound effects and/or emanata

3. When you finish your panel put it in a closed box with a panel-sized slot in the top.

4. Have a beer.

Phase 2
1. Remove the panels from the box. Select one panel and stick it on the wall (or lay it on a large table). You can pick a random panel or choose one that seems like a good starting point.

2. Distribute the remaining cards in the box to everyone who wants to play along.

3. After reading the starter panel and consulting the panels they have, anyone who has a panel that would be a good second panel should raise their hand. Those people will put their panels up next to the starter panel. The group will then vote on which panel works the best. Discuss why certain panels work and others don’t or why you prefer one over another.

4. The group will proceed in this way until everyone has had a chance to post a panel. At that point, discuss as a group whether the strip is finished and, if not, ask for either an existing panel that might finish the strip OR a new panel someone might propose and draw on the spot. Also ask whether anyone has panels they think should be added (or taken away) to make the strip better.

5. Repeat as desired.

Alex Cox has posted the results of the activity from last week, as well as photos of the event, on the Rocketship blog.

If anyone out there does this activity or any variation on it, I would love to hear about it.