Core Skills Analysis
Photography, Film and Digital Media 7–10 Syllabus (2025) — Image-making and visual communication
AK created a comic by drawing with black pen on paper, making deliberate choices about line and visual detail to communicate ideas through images. AK scanned the illustration, learning how a physical drawing could be digitised for further editing. In paint software, AK changed the images and added colour, exploring how digital editing and colour choices could affect a comic’s appearance. Printing the work as an A5 booklet brought the stages together in a finished, shareable visual publication.
Photography, Film and Digital Media 7–10 Syllabus (2025) — Digital production and publishing
AK moved through a practical media-making sequence: drawing on paper, scanning, editing in paint software, colouring and printing. This activity developed understanding of how analogue and digital processes could work together to produce a media text. By changing and colouring the scanned images, AK practised using digital tools to refine visual material. The final A5 booklet showed how page format and print production could present a comic as a complete publication.
Tips
Tips Extend AK’s learning by inviting the child to make a second version of one comic page using a different colour palette, then compare how the mood or emphasis changes. Plan a short comic sequence with a clear beginning, middle and end, and discuss how panel order guides a reader through the story. Explore how resizing or cropping a scanned drawing changes its placement on an A5 page, then test a printed draft before assembling a booklet. Finish with a small gallery share in which AK explains one artistic choice and receives constructive feedback from a reader.
Book Recommendations
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud: A widely read introduction to how comics use images, panels and visual sequencing to communicate.
- Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud: Explores practical choices involved in creating comics, including visual storytelling and page design.
Learning Standards
- AC9E10LA07: AK’s comic-making connected to evaluating how still images and visual choices affect representation; the activity specifically included drawing, editing and colouring images.
- AC9E10LY06: AK created and published a multimodal text by developing comic images, editing them digitally and printing them in booklet form.
- AC9E10LY07: The finished comic provided a visual text that could be shared with an audience, aligning with creating multimodal work for communication.
Try This Next
- Create a colour-choice worksheet: record three colours used on a page and the visual effect each one creates.
- Draw a four-panel comic sequence, scan it, add digital colour and print it as a mini booklet.
- Compare the original drawing and its edited version; write a short note about what changed visually.
- Make an A5 page-layout sketch showing where each comic panel will appear.