ABOUT

THE PANELS & ME PROJECT

PANELS & ME HOME ABOUT NEWS & EVENTS PAM IN SAIGON

HOW IT WORKS

The project partners with organizations from diverse locations around the world.  Together, we select a core team of local young people to strategize and implement a comics storytelling workshop for kids in the community.  Partnerships with locals are essential to the success of the project, because it ensures a respectful and culturally-sensitive approach to the work.  PAM is a community-driven project because it gives young people to empower younger people with comics storytelling.  Every location-based project is unique, because not every community is the same.  By using comics storytelling to #DiscoverUnspokenStories of youth from different communities, we can start to understand the diversity of each other, and in full circle, understand ourselves a little better.  In other words?  Our stories may be diverse, but the act of storytelling is universal.  Panels & Me aims to tell their stories and your stories.

DAWN LE – PAM’s Founder, Director, & Instructor 

Dawn is the founder of the Panels & Me project and the content creator of The Inkformant blog.  She is passionate about empowering youth voices, youth leadership development, and community engagement. Comics storytelling, of course, is her favorite way to combine all these passions together.

The PAM Model

Dawn’s curriculum for PAM results from years of teaching comics to elementary and middle school youth from diverse backgrounds, consultation from comics artists and educators, as well as her own research about the comics medium.  Below is a sample outline of a Typical PAM Curriculum and a Testimonial from Jennifer Shiman, a comics artist and animator of the 30-Second Bunnies Theatre.  For more reference and student testimonials about PAM, please view the full report from the PAM in Saigon project here.

Typical PAM Curriculum*

Weekly Outline

Week 1 Framework
Monday Introduction to comics, storytelling, & the course overview
Tuesday Workshop Discussion: Characters in your favorite stories
Wednesday Workshop Discussion: Setting in your favorite stories
Thursday Workshop Discussion: Plot in your favorite stories
Week 2 Story Development
Monday Characters: Inner conflict, character archetypes, design
Tuesday Setting: Mood, style
Wednesday Plot: Story arc, themes, morals
Thursday Review of the week’s concepts

DUE: Story Arc
Week 3 Storyboard
Monday Dialogue: Narration boxes and speech bubbles
Tuesday Panels: Effects, close-ups, perspectives
Wednesday Cohesion: Bringing characters, setting, plot, dialogue, & panels together to create your story
Thursday Review of the week’s concepts

DUE: Rough Draft
Week 4 Finishing Touches
Monday Lettering: Techniques & tips
Tuesday Drawing: Techniques & tips
Wednesday Presentation: Tips for set-up and how to present stories to an audience
Thursday Reflection & preparation for showcase event

DUE: Final Comics Story

Sample Day Lesson Plan

Time Activity Details & Approaches Notes
9:00am – 9:10am Warm-up Soulbuddies

  1. Each student has the name of a comics or animation character attached to their backs (i.e. Doraemon).
  2. There is another student in the room who also has that same character stuck to their back too. This person is their “soulbuddy.”
  3. Students must find their soulbuddies by asking a series of questions about themselves with each other (i.e. Am I an animal? Am I a good guy?)
9:10am – 9:15am Transition
9:15am – 10:00am Lesson & Discussion: Characters

  1. Types of Characters: Round, Flat, & Static
  2. Character Archetypes*
  3. Main Character (s): Inner Conflict/Outer Conflict
  4. Character Design: Look, costumes, etc.
 *5 minute break between 2 & 3
10:00am – 10:45am Student Production Time Character Development Board

  • Using the characters notes, students journal/brainstorm the characters in their stories
  
10:45am – 11:00am Closing Create a Facebook profile page* of your main character

  • 1 or 2 students share their character’s Facebook profile page to group

Clean-up: Students put handouts in folders, turn everything in, and wait for dismissal.

 *Facebook profile pages will be posted on the classroom walls, so that students can learn from each other’s creative processes.
Materials Needed
  • Handouts of notes for Characters Lesson
  • Handouts of the Facebook profile page activity
  • Students Portfolio
    • Folder
    • Journal
    • Writing Utensil

*Comics and storytelling resources used to design curriculum:

  1. Animating Life: The Art, Science, & Wonder of LAIKA Activity Book by LAIKA Studios for the Portland Art Museum
  2. The Art of Comic Book Writing: The Definitive Guide to Outline, Scripting, and Pitching your Sequential Art Stories by Mark Kneece
  3. Long Story Short by Margot Leitman
  4. Making Comics by Scott McCloud
  5. The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gotschall
  6. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
  7. Wired for Story by Lisa Kron

Testimonial from Jennifer Shiman

Testimonial from Jennifer Shiman: “As an animation professional and comics teacher/advocate, I believe that using comics as a storytelling medium can open avenues of creative communication and expression, transforming a student’s view of the world and themselves.  Using comics for storytelling gives students powerful tools to reveal their inner worlds in ways that we as adults and educators would not be privy to otherwise.  I saw these results first-hand when Dawn and I had the opportunity to work together this past summer, co-developing and implementing a comics curriculum for her IRCO [Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization] students during their SUN [Schools Uniting Neighborhoods] summer school session.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with Dawn and appreciated the care she took to respect her students, helping them feel more comfortable as a group.  She encouraged participation and presented information in a playful way.  They clearly felt safe and respected, and their subsequent creative comic projects reflected their intake of knowledge and development of personal insight.  Dawn made it a point to make informed choices about how the curriculum material was presented and how students could best connect with the lessons and information offered.  She was very conscientious and sensitive about taking a global approach to introducing diverse comic stories to the students, as well as showing them ways to use the medium of comics to express their inner lives.  I feel that Dawn’s gracious demeanor, dedication to research and ability to adapt course materials to align with student interests and knowledge will fit perfectly with the comics storytelling project she proposes.  I have big excitement for Dawn’s vision.  The prospect of reading and experiencing another narrative of Vietnam’s culture, through students’ inner journey on the path of storytelling through comics, is refreshing and innovative, both for the student creators and us, the global audience.  I am thrilled to recommend Dawn as the leader of such a ground-breaking project as this.” – Jennifer Shiman

For any inquires regarding the Panels & Me project, please contact Dawn directly via dawn@theinkformant.com