A Sneak Peek At The Comic Book MOOC Get a Grasp
Get a Grasp! A Primer Course for Getting Your Comic Started, which starts March 23, is another example of a MOOC offered by an independent organization, in this case a nonprofit called Making Comics (dotcom) devoted to developing free teaching resources. Charlie Chung from from Class Central recently spoke with Patrick Yurick, CEO of Making Comics (dotCom) and one of the instructors of Get a Grasp, to get a preview, and he generously developed this article for MOOC News and Reviews. Below is a transcript of their conversation about the upcoming comic book MOOC. -Editor
What is your personal background and what is MakingComics (dotCom)?
I went to graphic design school and decided to become an art educator. For the last five years, I worked at High Tech High [in San Deigo, CA], and developed an after-school comic book project where kids in the 9-12th grade self-published comics. We went around the country presenting and selling at comic conventions. This really blew my mind, because I had kind of given up on making comic books at that point, but working with that group of kids made me want to do it. I also formed a studio in San Diego called Little Fish Comic Books Studio, which was an educational center for making comics with people of all ages.
I ended up leaving there and started Making Comics (dotCom), which creates all of its content for free, and we are in the process of registering as a nonprofit organization. I’ve been really inspired by the fact that art education can be up to par in a third-world country that has an internet connection, because of CK12, an offshoot of Wikipedia that provides high quality K-12 textbooks worldwide. At Making Comics (dotCom), we’re trying to improve education and the comic book industry by getting more people into making comics. I have a team of people that are working with me just to give away free stuff. The site is never going to have advertising on it, and we are never going to charge for content.
What inspired you while teaching kids how to make comics?
Just their passion toward learning. Also, working with kids is really cool because they don’t have a concept of what is and isn’t possible. It is so radically ridiculous what is possible and what is not possible. They will say something like “It’s impossible for me to get up before 7am!” But for them it’s not impossible to create a 40-page comic book — that’s easy. It was so amazing to be around that because every time I was telling them something, I also had to look within myself and ask, “Am I telling them something I know to be true or something I just believe to be true?” To stay ahead of where they were, I had to start living the advice that I was giving. And that was really energizing. I’ve done a lot of things in the last five years that I wouldn’t have done if I had not worked with a group of kids that were pushing me.
How have comics changed over the past 5-10 years?
When I was growing up, there was an industry that monopolized the way that a comic could be successful. With the internet, it is so much easier. Even though there were guys creating comics on the internet in 1995, it used to be harder because you had to figure out how to make a website, and you didn’t know how people were going to find your website . . . there were a lot of ifs. But now we have social media. I can make a website on Tumblr to dispense a comic in under 30 minutes. Because everybody’s having an equal playing field, we’re really having to look, for the first time in like 50 years, at what is quality and how does it rise to the top. And that’s really interesting to me, because success is no longer defined by who gets published and go through the big industry machine and are part of the distribution houses. Now it’s defined by a multitude of factors.
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