Practice Cartoon Coloring & Sketching Assignment Sheets

While some of these practice sheets have been posted before, I figured I would list together all of the bonus sketch pages we have made available for students to take home and practice their budding creative skills after completing their Holiday Card decorating activities in the after-school special classes.

Some photo reference material and templates for the Manga Cartooning class at the Boys & Girls Club (B&GC)

Normal straight on reference shot of Final Fnantasy VII Adevent Children Tifa Lockhart.
Worm's eye view of Final Fantasy VII Yuffie Kisaragi: reference shot was taken from a low angle.
Bird's eye view: reference shot was taken from above.
Just a few reference shots using these articulated Final Fantasy figures as art makinins.



Just a few 8.5" x 11" templates with digitally applied B&GC Art Lab backgrounds that can printed and used for thumbnail planning of a manga story set in a classroom.

A few more Comic Page Thumbnail Templates

This additional batch of thumbnail comic page templates features a few digitally applied screentones, so additional elements can be overlaid right on top of the patterns and backgrounds by drawing them on a sheet of tracing paper taped to the template. Once a pleasing result is achieved, the drawings could then be transferred to a thicker sheet of paper and then cut and pasted on top of the screentones.

A couple of reference backgrounds and panel templates for a School Manga story

Tweaked some photos of the school on Photoshop, so that they could be used as practical reference for creating the backgrounds on a Manga story taking place in an American school.
Courtyard.
School entrance.

Hallway leading into ESOL classroom.
Art Classroom reference 1.
Art Classroom reference 2.
This first template with a background establishing shot of the the bus loop could be further enhanced by pasting some characters and vehicles directly on top of it.

Blank version that can be use to draw your own wide-angle establishing shot for your story.
This last template could also be flipped over to have a wide angle establishing shot at the top and the two vertical panels on the bottom.Ditto.
The blank templates are letter size when printed on regular copy paper and can be used to quickly try out different comic story layouts and design ideas as oversize thumbnails. This preliminary stage can help you explore the structure of your story visually and plan your work flow more efficiently. If you were planning to draw a regular American size comic story, the originals typically are drawn on more expensive and heavier illustration supports (like 2-ply bristol board) that measure 10" X 15". Thus using the sketching templates to work out the early structure of the comic is both time and cost effective.