Developing Comics Through Featured Studio Card Collaborations
Welcome to the Made Collaborative Studio, a virtual collaborative platform we have created by combining established storytelling concepts like Carl Jung’s Character Archetypes and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey with common third -party digital applications like Google Slides, Google Forms and Wordpress. The goal of this virtual studio platform is to provide unique collaborative opportunities that are directly accessible by youth, any interested educational programs, and people like you at no cost.
We developed this basic virtual studio framework to facilitate a new set of featured collaborations with after school program youth and others, including whoever may be reading this now. And these virtual collaborations will be anchored around the development of Issue 3.of our Back of the Yards comic series.
And to help frame this next round of virtual collaborations, we have developed a set of “Featured Collaborations” which we have identified as part of an initial working manuscript for Issue 3. We will present you with these featured collaborations in Part IV of our initial Project Chronicles summary, along with the corresponding Studio Cards.
Of course, all of this is designed to facilitate actual content development, and in that regard, we will also be hosting virtual Zoom workshop sessions between participating artists and invited collaborators. And we will post regular updates of these ongoing collaborations on our “This & That” blog on the website.
And ultimately, we will highlight some of these collaborations in these Project Chronicles, leading up to the full publication of Issue 3 to complete this first volume of our Project Chronicles.
That’s the plan anyway, and you can obviously follow the ongoing development of these collaborations on our website, along with taking part in those collaborations at any time! And with this Collaborator’s handbook, we will present you with some further background on just how you can participate, including:
• Part I – An Overview of he Website & Studio Cards
• Part II – A Quick Word on Intellectual Property (the Creative Commons)
• Part III – Currently Featured Collaborations
• Appendix – Issue 1 of the Back of the Yards Comic Series
The Website & Virtual Studio Cards
It All Starts With Our Virtual Studio Cards
At the cores of this new collaborative model is the sharing of information . Perhaps even more simply point, context matters for any meaningful collaboration With that in mind, we have developed a basic “Studio Card” system that is designed to help organize contextual project information so that you can more strategically think of ideas for your own creative collaborations, whether on the Back of the Yards, or your own creative projects
We have created this basic Studio Card framework as a way of organizing source subject matter and concepts that serve as a foundation for this ongoing comic collaboration. And more to the point, all these topics are the foundation from which we have built this initial comic series, the Back of the Yards.
Examples of that subject range from established storytelling concepts and tools like Carl Jung’s Character Archetypes and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which we used as a framework as we organized some of the initial youth ideas into one common storyline narrative; to some of the initial fictional characters that we have created for the Back of the Yards comic series.
It is with these Studio Cards that will broadly provide foundational context information regarding some place, character (fictional or real), event, setting, or concept that may be helpful to other for our comic collaborations, or their own independent creative collaborations.
And it is also within these Studio Cards, immersed within this subject matter information, that we have incorporated opportunities for you to collaborate with us.
Which brings us to the digital tools that we have developed for this virtual platform.
The Website
At the core of this virtual studio platform is our project website, https://madecollaborative.com It is here that you will find access to most project content and access to other related digital tools collaborative opportunities through our virtual Studio Cards.
It is within our website that you will be able to access the Studio Cards in a variety of ways. And in that regard, this entire virtual platform can probably best be summarized by one single phrase…
“Pick a Card, Any Card!”
So, for example, if you want access to all our active Studio Cards at any given time, you can click to visit our “Explore the Studio” page where you will find a grid of all active Studio Cards.
You can also access some Studio Cards through the website’s main page (slide 3) and within other Studio Card pages.
And regardless of where you access the cards, they all operate the same way functionally.
Accessing Your Card’s Landing Page
Using Source Card #3 (Intro the Back of the Yards Comic Series!) as an example, you should first know that each card has a front and back side. The front is simply an image and title for the card, and the back side provides a summary of the subject matter covered by the dedicated landing page on the website for that card.
And to access that website landing page, all you must do is hover your cursor over the front side of the card on the website (or finger if you are accessing via a mobile device), which will then flip the card to the back side, and from there all you have to do is click “Read More” on the back of the card to access the full card’s website landing page.
The Studio Card Landing Page
What you will see on each landing page (again, regardless of card type) is front and back summary of the card, along with a “Let’s Collaborate” jump button (which we will cover later), a Google Slide presentation and a Sidebar. We will cover each of these in the next few pages.
The Sidebar
On each Studio Card landing you will generally find content relating to the Studio Card’s topic and/or themes, including short blogs, videos, illustrations and other media. And you can navigate this content with the Sidebar on the right side of each page, jumping (by clicking your curser) to any particular section may interest you
Google Slide Presentations, Issuu Flipbooks, Videos & Other Media Integrated
As mentioned, we will be using a variety of third-party applications to present this Studio Card content with you, and with, to facilitate collaborations. These applications include Google Slides, Google Forms, Youtube videos and Issuu Flipbooks. All these applications have been integrated into our Wordpress website, providing what we hope to be an immersive learning and collaborative experience.
Google Slide Presentations
We will often use Google Slide presentations for short overviews of a topic such as an overview introduction to a Studio Card. Navigating these Google Slides is easy. Just click on the arrows on the lower left side of any Google Slide presentation to turn the slides, and if you prefer to view a presentation with a full screen, you can just click on the three vertical dots and select the “enter full screen” option.
Issuu Flipbooks!
For more in-depth deep dives into a topic or story (like our comics), we will use the third-party Issue flipbook application. Navigating these Issuu flipbooks is just as easy as the Google Slide presentations. Again, it’s just a matter of clicking on the arrows to turn the pages (within the body of the flipbook itself), and if you’d like to access the flipbook in full screen, just click on the expand button on the lower right-hand side of the flipbook.
Videos!
And, of course, we have videos! You will have the opportunity to access videos throughout our Virtual Studio platform. These videos will relate to any given Studio Card topic and may be updated regularly in that regard. And accessing these videos could not be easier. Just click the play icon in the middle and voila, bring out the popcorn!
Let’s Collaborate!
And last but certainly not least, we have integrated the Google Forms application to help us facilitate your collaborations. You will find these opportunities tagged with a little blue “Let’s Collaborate” sticker. And if you’d like to collaborate with us on any given featured collaboration, all you must do is quite literally “click to collaborate” and from there, you will see a Google Form unfold.
Once you have accessed the Google Form, you can just scroll through that Form to review our collaborative prompts. And often, we will also provide a corresponding PDF worksheet that you can access via a link provided within the Google Form, which you can use to jot down notes as you consider our collaborative prompts.
And when you are then ready to make your submission to us, you can then input your collaborative notes to us within the form and press “Submit!” And from there, we will review all submission and highlight some on our “This & That” blog for further collaboration. And in some cases, your input may be incorporated into our Back of the Yards comic series!
And That’s the Virtual Studio Platform in a Nutshell!
And that is indeed the Virtual Studio framework in a nutshell. In short, we have created these virtual Studio Cards which are essentially portals into collaborative topics and related collaborative opportunities. And we have integrated various digital third-party applications to help create what we hope you find to be an immersive and fun collaborative experience.
So, with that, if you are ready to give a collaborative try, just remember this simple phrase above all…
“Pick a Card, Any Card!”
A Quick Word On Intellectual Property
A Quick Word on Intellectual Property & the Creative Commons
Having now provided an overview of our virtual studio framework and related digital tools, we are ready to present to you a set of Featured Collaborations relating to our next comic production, Issue 3. But before we do that, we wanted to take a quick moment to talk about intellectual property. Yes, intellectual property.
Look, we are going to try to keep this simple, but one of the things we struggled with as we were developing this new virtual framework was the whole notion of having to put some sort of copyright restrictions on the sharing of our comic, the characters and the storyline. That’s just not something we ever really thought about when developing the comic because profit and intellectual property was never the motivation –collaboration and promoting creative thought was the objective. This didn’t even start out as a comic-based project in that context, but rather, as a supplementary after school program that connected artists and youth.
But, of course, this project did evolve into a comic project and because of that, we realized we had to figure out how we wanted to handle the dreaded intellectual property piece. And that’s where the Creative Commons comes in. The Creative what?
What is the Creative Commons?
The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of expanding the range of options that artists and others share their creative works. Per Wikipedia, the organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they want to waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators
Under the Creative Commons framework, content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, that are necessary under the “all rights reserved” framework for more traditional copyright protection. In other words, Creative Commons provides more options to share information as compared to the standard copyright system. And perhaps largely because of this additional optionality, as of 2019, there were nearly 2 billion works licensed under the various Creative Commons licenses.
The Creative Commons License for the Back of the Yards Comic
So, as we dug a little deeper into the Creative Commons licensing options, it quickly became apparent that we wanted to adopt some of the least “restrictive” options when it came to the sharing of this creative content. And one Creative Commons license model in particular that jumped out at us was the Attribution-Non-CommercialShare-Alike license (CC BY-NCSA). What that basically means is that we will provide digital copies of our Back of the Yards comics for free on the project website, and in addition to downloading or copying the comic, anyone can create new versions of the comic or characters if they make it available under the same noncommercial terms.
This means after-school programs, for example, can download the comics for free and use these same characters, themes and storylines to facilitate their own independent collaborative projects or workshops. And, with that, anyone can create new characters and storylines relating to these original Back of the Yards comic collaborations and characters so long as they are done so under the same CC BY-NC-SA license.
Ultimately, the goal for us was and is to make it as easy for others to access these comics, characters and related concepts in support of our central mission of promoting collaboration and creative thought. And our hope is that this Creative Commons license will help to further enable that collaboration and creative thought, along with the free access to our digital comics and related collaborative content and tools.
That’s the hope anyway, and you can learn more about this Creative Commons license by linking here.
Now, enough with the legal mumbo jumbo and on to the featured collaborations.
Current Featured Collaborations
Featured Collaboration
Let’s Create a New Character(s)!
Studio Card #1!
We will do this by providing you with a digital template in the form of Studio Card # 1 that walks you through a basic character development process . Within that digital template, you will be presented with the following related collaborations :
1. We will present a digital template that will help you develop your own new characters, and
2. We will provide you with an option to submit any new characters you may develop to us to include in the Back of the Yards comic series
Within our digital template, we start with the basics – name, age, birthplace, current residence, etc. We then build upon those basic characteristics to develop the new character’s personality and physical traits
It is at that point that we dig deeper to develop the character’s core values and with that, we will present you with an overview of Carl Jung’s Character Archetypes, which, as you will learn, are universal, symbolic patterns that exist within the collective unconscious, shaping human behavior and experiences of all of us – your new character included!
Finally, to bring all together, we help you create your character’s biographical history, i.e., the character’s back story. And with that, you should have the makings of a new character, which you can continue to use and build on your own as part of your independent creative projects. Or…
If you’d like, completely at your option , we will provide you with an opportunity to submit your newly developed character to us . We will then select some of your submissions for further develop with you, along with concept illustrations by our participating artists . And, ultimately, again at your option, we will include a few of your new characters in our Back of the Yards comic series , starting with Issue 3 !
You can learn more about this featured collaboration in the Worksheet provided in Chapter 12 But before you do, make sure to turn the page here to check out the next featured collaboration which is a natural collaborative bookend to this one – Creating a Hero’s Journey!
Featured Collaboration
Building the ”Ordinary World” of Our Fictional Back of the Yards Neighborhood
Studio Card #8!
And you can learn more about the real Back of the Yards neighborhood by visiting Studio Card # 8 , where we will also present you with an overview of Chicago’s early origins and and parallels to other urban centers and neighborhoods .
With this quick featured collaboration, we’re further developing the “Ordinary World” of our Back of the Yards Fictional Comic Neighborhood … and you can be a part of that collaborative process
As described in our Studio Card # 3 Introduction to the Back of the Yards comic series, the fictional "Back of the Yards" neighborhood is inspired by the real historical Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois . The real Back of the Yards neighborhood extends from 39 th to 55 th Streets between Halsted and the railroad tracks along Leavitt Street in Chicago and was until the 1950 ’s the largest livestock yards and meatpacking center in the country.
And with this featured collaboration, you can help us to further create and develop our fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood by submitting places from your own neighborhood . These places can be stores, churches, parks, restaurants literally any place from your neighborhood The collaborative key will be that when you make your submission, explain to us why this place is important to you? As with everything relating to this collaborative project, context matters
So, if you’d like to have any such place from your own past included in our fictional Back of the Yards comic, just take a little time to more fully consider what place or location meant something to you in your past and why And whenever you then may be ready, refer to the corresponding Worksheet in this Chapter 12 to help make your submission to us! And we will be highlighting some of your submissions throughout this round of featured collaborations .
Featured Collaboration #3
Back of the Yards – Issue 3!
Studio Card #3!
Having walked you through the first two featured Studio Cards, we then bring you to Studio Card # 3 – our Back of the Yards comic series! It is here that, with your collaboration, we will:
1. Bring Issue 2 (already fully illustrated) to final production, and 2. Present you with a working manuscript for Issue # 3 of the comic series to develop into a final script for production
First, with respect to the Issue 2 . we have fully developed 25 pages of illustrated pages, and at this point, we will invite you to be a part of the production process as we finalize front and back comic covers, identify a printer and go to print production .
Separately, using concepts from the first two featured collaborations, you will be presented with opportunities to review and provide input and “notes” to the Issue 3 working manuscript over the duration of this collaboration . And eventually, with your help, this working manuscript will become a final script for illustrations and production . At which point, we will continue to provide you with opportunities to provide your notes and input all the way to final production and publication of Issue 3 !
It is also from this initial Issue 3 working manuscript that we will identify a few more related featured collaborations in the form of the following Studio Cards :
• Studio Card # 9 (Law Enforcement & Community Relations )
• Studio Card # 8 (Neighborhoods & Their Residents )
• Studio Card # 12 (Dexter Coleman )
• Studio Card [# 14 ] (The Monahans!)
Just turn the page to learn more about each of these featured collaborations and how each of them will be integrated into the Back of the Yards comic series, starting with Issue # 3 !
Featured Collaboration #4
An Open Dialogue & Two New Characters
Studio Card #9!
I thought I’d start with these set of featured collaborations with picture I took in the early summer of 202 A picture taken by me in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois
Just across that drawbridge is Chicago’s infamous Magnificent (Mag) Mile, Michigan Avenue. A famed stretch of real estate that hosts some of the finest shopping, food and other tourist attractions year-round . Yet on that day and week in 2020 , Chicago had decided that nobody would be going to Mag Mile Indeed, no one would be going anywhere
The picture was taken just after the George Floyd tragedy and the protests that occurred in the aftermath . By the time this photo was taken, the National Guard had been brought into the city And drawbridges throughout the city had been raised to cut off access to the city’s center from just about every angle.
Surreal may be an overused word these days, but there may not be a more apt description when describing the city that morning . And one couldn’t also help but think that those drawbridges were the perfect metaphor for the state of our country’s discourse of the time. Instead of talking with one another, let’s just cut the whole damn thing off.
It is in that context that at that time, we decided we were going to integrate the topics of law enforcement and community relations into our new comic series, the Back of the Yards And as a very practical matter, we knew we couldn’t continue our comic-based narrative, based in our fictional fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, without incorporating law enforcement into the ongoing narrative in some central way
And when the events of 2020 occurred, and the corresponding protests, we felt these collaborations were even more relevant and timelier. So, it is with this set of featured collaborations that we present you with two related opportunities collaborate with us as of these Issue collaborations .
Within the Studio Card #9 Law Enforcement series, we present a brief overview of the early origins of the state police force, starting its early founder, Sir Robert Peel. This illustration by Eric Nyamor, depicts Peel traveling in time to observe his modern-day police force and the issues they face today.
First, we invite you and participating youth from after school programs to submit questions to police officers from Chicago and other parts of the country These questions, the responses from the participating police officers, will form the basis of an ongoing dialogue over the next 3 to 4 months as Issue # 3 of the Back of the Yards comic is developed in parallel
The objective of this dialogue collaboration is to try to promote a balanced discussion and hopefully with that, some better understanding between all participants . We will also publish excepts from this ongoing dialogue in the supplement of Issue 3 of the Back of the Yards comic series .
And in parallel with this ongoing dialogue, as part of the second set of related collaborations, we will work with you to create two new characters for our comic series, both police officers and each to be first introduced in Issue # 3 (with perhaps some of the dialogue captured above also incorporated into a comic scene with those officers).
You can learn more about those character collaborations in the corresponding Worksheet included in Chapter 12 , or by simply visiting the Studio Card link above!
Featured Collaboration
Let’s Create Your Hero’s Journey!
Studio Card #2!
Across history and cultures, many of the greatest stories follow a pattern known as the Hero’s Journey . From Hamlet to Harry Potter, from Buddha to Spider-Man , this universal formula transcends time and place Why? Because the Hero’s Journey isn’t just about how stories work . It’s about how we work . It’s a roadmap for life itself. Some stories are so powerful they don’t just shape our imaginations . They build nations, religions, skyscrapers and cathedrals around them .
With this featured collaboration, we will:
1. Provide you with another foundational digital template that will walk your through 12 phases of this Hero’s Journey as popularized by Joseph Campbell, and more recently further refined by Vogler, and 2. We will use these 12 phases to help develop your own Hero’s Journey, which can be applied to the new character you may developed with our first featured collaboration in Studio Card #1
And like the Character development collaboration, we will also present you with an opportunity, completely your option , to submit those new Hero’s Journey collaborations to us, from which we may select one of two for further development either within the Back of the Yards comic series, or if you’d prefer, your own independent collaboration – perhaps a new comic series altogether!
Featured Collaboration #6
Who Is Dexter Colemen … really?
Studio Card #12!
For our next featured collaboration, we visit one of our originally developed characters for the Back of the Yards comic series – Dexter Colemen , a/k/a Dex , for short Where does one start when describing the character of Dex ? Well, rather than recreating that character description wheel, let’s just lift what is already on his Studio Card page …
“Dex has a sharp mind. As steel sharpens steel, he keeps his mind sharp through constant use: chess in the park, all-night poker games and the occasional hustle. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but that isn’t true of Dex he’s probably the only one of the Elders who knows how to work a smartphone! Even so, he’s never learned his lesson Dex has lost a step or two, but he stays one step ahead of the law, for now. ”
So, there’s a bit to unpack in that short little paragraph . First, as referenced, Dex is part of a trio of Elders that meets just about every day and night in front of the General Store in our fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood, along with his two elder cohorts, Big Earl and Peaches .
Second, you get a feel for Dex’s personality, which can perhaps best be described as a bit on the irascible side! In a good way. Dex is just always one step ahead of the other two, with quick wit, and biting barb and perhaps more than a few plates in the air at any given time. And with that, yes, Dex may have found himself on the other side of the law from time to time. Heck, he may even be on that other side now.
And that’s where you enter the scene! With this featured collaboration, you will help us develop Dex’s back story a bit more. Just what is Dex’s score? What has he been up to in the past? What is he up to now? Could Dex be a confidential informant? If so, do his fellow elders know? Or is there even more to it than that? In other words, with this collaboration, you will be helping us to further develop Dex’s own Hero’s Journey.
These are some of the questions that we invite you to consider and collaborate upon with us! We will collect some of your submissions and consolidate the same into a back story for Dex that we will ultimately publish on our website, and with that, begin to incorporate further into the Issue 3 script and beyond!
