Sessions 1-3: Cartoon Creation

Cartoon Creation invites campers to explore the world of cartooning—from developing memorable characters and drawing expressive action to creating comic books, graphic stories, and hand-drawn animations. The program welcomes beginners and experienced artists alike, giving every camper opportunities to strengthen their skills and develop an individual artistic style and voice.

Campers will learn how cartoonists create memorable characters and tell entertaining stories through images. They will experiment with shapes, proportions, facial expressions, poses, clothing, and accessories before developing an original cast of characters. Campers will then bring their characters into original comics while exploring dialogue, visual humor, comedic timing, panel layouts, and punchlines. They will learn how to tell a complete story in just a few panels.

Campers may register for one session, several sessions, or the full seven-week experience. Skills and projects will not repeat across the first three sessions, allowing campers who attend all summer to build a diverse portfolio of original artwork. Instruction will be differentiated to accommodate campers’ abilities, knowledge and interests.

Featured projects and content may include:

• Character expression and pose sheets
• Original hero, villain, or sidekick
• Character profile and backstory
• Single-panel cartoon
• Multi-panel comic strip
• Polished comic-strip collection
• Manga-inspired expression studies
• Original protagonist and antagonist
• Superhero costume, insignia, and title logo
• Dynamic action sequence
• Manga or comic-book story pages
• Original story concept and script
• Thumbnail sketches and page layouts
• Completed graphic-novel pages
• Hand-bound mini-comic
• Animation and movement exercises
• Original illustrated flip book

Session 4: Cartoon Creator Mash-Up

One-Week Program | Five Full Days | Grades 5-10

Cartoon Creator Mash-Up brings together favorite elements from the first three sessions in one fast-paced week. Campers will explore character design, comic strips, manga, superheroes, graphic storytelling, and flip-book animation through a new series of projects and creative challenges.

Designed as both a stand-alone experience and an extension for returning campers, this session uses new prompts and projects so campers can continue developing their skills without repeating earlier work. By the end of the week, each camper will have created an original cartoon world and featured it in several finished pieces. Some featured projects and content may include:

• Build a Cartoon World: Invent an original setting and create the heroes, villains, sidekicks, creatures, and other characters who live there. Develop character profiles, expression sheets, and sketches.
• Comics and Visual Humor: Use characters to create single-panel cartoons and short comic strips. Explore dialogue, punchlines, reaction shots, visual jokes, and comedic timing.
• Manga, Superheroes, and Action: Experiment with manga-inspired expressions, dynamic poses, dramatic angles, motion lines, and comic-book sound effects. Create an action sequence and an original comic-book cover.
• Mini Graphic Novel: Transform ideas into a short graphic story. Develop a simple script, sketch page layouts, and create illustrated pages using penciling, inking, lettering, and coloring techniques.
• Flip-Book Animation and Showcase: Learn how frame-by-frame drawings create the illusion of movement and design and assemble an original flip-book animation.