Cartoons and Comics

 Cartoons and Comics

Comic books and comic strips have always been formats of literature that appeal to children.  Their bright colors and use of illustrations to tell a story draws children in.  Now, with the ever-increasing popularity of graphic novels, this format is consistently sought after by students.  It then makes perfect sense that comic strips should be utilized in the classroom.  Not only are they engaging, but students are likely to be successful in demonstrating their knowledge since comics are a format they are so familiar with.  Likewise, comics help build reading skills such as decoding, context clues, and inferencing.  They teach satire, humor, and points of view to name a few.  Comics are fantastic for ELL students or in multilingual classrooms, because the reduced text makes reading manageable.  There are many apps and websites that allow users to create their own comic strips, but I wanted to evaluate three well known options.  I plan on hosting a professional development session for my teachers on the benefits of using comics in the classroom.      

Fotojet

At first, I thought I would love Fotojet the most.  Its layout and editing menu reminds me of Canva, which is a graphic design site I utilize often and highly recommend.  However, upon further exploration of the site, I would 100% NOT recommend Fotojet for anyone unless they could afford the paid version.  The free version offers essentially nothing, and you cannot even save your work.  This is a bummer to me, because the unique comic templates on Fotojet remind me more of those you would actually see in a graphic novel, but it’s not worth the headache. 

• PRO: Easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature for backgrounds.  You can even drag-and-drop photos for the background.

• PRO: It offers unique layouts for comic strips, meaning it’s not just squares or rectangles for panels but varied in shape like a real comic book would be. 

• PRO: The editing menu is easy to locate, understand, and utilize. 

• PRO: It is easy to download your designs.  It allows you to download them as either a JPG or PNG file and choose small or large. 

• PRO: You can upload content into your comic. 

• CON: You cannot save your designs on a free account. 

• CON: The free account barely gives access to anything. 

• CON: Fotojet’s website is incredibly difficult to navigate.  When I logged in, it took me a while to find the comic strip templates again.  

• CON: The drag-and-drop for backgrounds automatically scales the photo to fit the frame, but this can sometimes mean it scales it incorrectly and you can’t fix it. 

Pixton

Pixton is a tool I’ve used in my classroom on multiple occasions.  It meshes easily with Google applications, which is what my district uses, so it holds out as my top pick of the three applications I evaluated.  However, this is not the only reason it would be my top pick.  Of the three applications, Pixton offers the most content for free accounts.  It allows the user to choose from a wide variety of characters, poses, backgrounds, and more.  For the most part, it is easy to use, but there are a few features that can be difficult to navigate.  One of the best features of Pixton is the ability to sign up for an educator account and create classes.  Then, all you have to do is give students a join code to have their work housed in their assigned class.  For this reason, Pixton is the most practical application for classroom use and the one I would recommend overall.     

• PRO: The free account offers a wide variety of content. 

• PRO: It allows an educator sign up. 

• PRO: Educators can create classes and add students. 

• PRO: It allows the change of a character’s pose and facial expression. 

• PRO: There is a plethora of background sets that use the same setting but from different points of view.  

• PRO: It’s easy to save and download your comics.  

• CON: You cannot upload any content. 

• CON: You cannot move the text bubbles or choose their style.

• CON: It does not allow you to add objects or animals; it only allows people to be added to a scene. 

• CON: It can be difficult to find certain features in the editor, such as how to delete characters. 

Make Beliefs Comix

Overall, I like Make Belief Comix.  It offers a good deal of content for free and is eye-catching.  The backgrounds are detailed and unique, but there are not many to choose from.  It does offer a few poses for each of the characters.  It allows the user to add objects and animals, which isn’t the case for other options.  With that being said, the website is vastly outdated.  It looks like a website from the early 2000s and would be impractical for classroom use.   

• PRO: It offers a wide variety of content for free accounts. 

• PRO: The background and content is likely to be popular with students. 

• PRO: It allows you to add up to 18 panels per comic. 

• CON: The website is quite outdated. 

• CON: You cannot upload any content into your comic. 

• CON: The webpage is too “busy” and would be hard for students to use. 

• CON: It is slow.  Any operation, whether you add or delete something, takes a while to process. 

• CON: You cannot adjust the size of text boxes or text, so you have to limit what you type.  

• CON: The location of the editing tools is not ideal.  You have to scroll down everytime you need to select something to add/change.