Inspiring Your Students With Virtual Visits

If possible, 2020 is simultaneously the fastest and slowest year of my life. I can't believe we are already halfway through the 2nd quarter. Due to a snowstorm and covid precautions, our district went fully remote for the next month. Concerned to lose the momentum we've been gaining in my cartooning class, I scheduled a local comic book company to join our zoom this week and speak to the kids.

Students submitted questions in advance using padlet and the session was more Q&A tailored to their questions, which was awesome. Having Joe and Ralph from Echo City Capers  engage with them really lit a fire for many of my students. Some even turned on their cameras and shared work with the artists, which was huge for my camera-shy crew.

I'm hoping to see my classes transfer this excitement into their current assignment to create a comic book page layout. We're using the original character from their model sheet to save time. By breaking this larger assignment into smaller pieces I'm hoping they will stay successful even during this fully remote period. This student's rough layout looks promising:

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that our artist's visit sparked a little something in me as well. This week I've enjoyed spending some time in the evenings adding even more illustrated examples to my narrated video and presentation for the students. 

Does anyone else teach a cartooning class? What are some of your students' favorite assignments? I'm adding every assignment after it's been classroom tested to my growing cartooning class bundle. It even includes the final exam.

Have you done any "virtual visits" or field trips with your art class this year? How did it go? 

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All images in this post are (C) Echo City Capers and (c) The Speckled Sink. If you'd like to host Ralph and Joe, they are a super fun team to work with. There is a contact form on their website linked above.