Dalston Comic Club

Dalston Comic (creators) Club, is a free monthly meetup for adults who make comics, or are interested in starting, hosted on the last Monday of every month at Dalston CLR James Library. (Excluding Bank Holidays)

The mission of the Dalston Comic (creators) Club, is to provide an environment that fosters creativity and an open community, where every session can be someone first, where attendees learn from each other, in order to develop their sequential narrative skills.

We've built a collective through the regular meet up and after most sessions we carry on the banter in the local.

There’s been loads of amazing stuff happening at Dalston Comic (creators) Club over the last four years, but in the mix of just doing it, we haven’t been very good about shouting from the rooftops to let people know who we are or what we do, but we're working on it and hopefully this will help you a bit.

Here are some of the things we have explored in our sessions so:

1: Four panel challenge - Introduction / Situation / Reaction / Conclusion.
2: Mise en scène - Object / Character / Environment / Era / Genre / Transition.
3: Audio translation - Explore an excerpt from a radio short story via sequential images.
4: Character development - Beginning to build a shared universe.
5: Micro publishing special - (part one) with Library Press.
6: Elevator pitch - Refining your idea down to a succinct mouthful.
7: Quality of line - Getting the best out of your drawing - Scanning & Photoshop.
8: Lettering 101 - Captions, Thought bubbles, Word balloons and sound effects.
9: Plotting the page - Panels layout & framing.
10: Full Colour - Drama, Mood & Emotion.
11: Indie Publishing Special - (part two) Small Press Day.
12: Four panel session #2 - Introduction / Situation / Action / Diversion / Reaction / Conclusion.
13: From thought to story - Organising / translating an idea into coherent plan.
14: Intro to Manga - Creating a Yonkoma.
15: Halloween / Horror - Character design.
16: Sound effects - Making the onomatopoeia sing.
17: Putting Word to Pictures - Comic from found Images.
18: Wordless / Silent (but not quite speechless) Comics - Challenging the narrative form.
19: Collage Comics - Different approaches to making comics using Collage.
20: Random Panels - Gameplay in comic development.
21: Body Language - Acting on the page through drawing.
22: Inking Technique - Tool & material exploration.
23: Romance comics - How the magic happens.
24: Metamorphosis - Fantasy character exploration.
25: Interpreting Violence - What to reveal, or not!
26: Comic-cubes - Challenging the physical form of comics.
27: Breaking Wally Wood’s 22 - Exploring how to build on the fundamentals.
28: Time in 'the gutter' #1 & 2 - Navigating the impact of time between panels.
29: Judging Covers (Art Direction & Production Values) - How to make your cover more appealing.
30: Post Comic completion - What next?

In addition to all of the above:

We have also hosted three (one day special to coincide with) 24 Hour Comics Day, had a day out drawing for Hourly Comic Day, establishing collective meets outside of DC(c)C, Printed three anthology and tabled at numerous Comic, Zine & Small Press fairs.