Social media and drawing workshop to student correspondents from local press

(Photo credit: 汉聪)

I was invited to conduct a workshop to a group of student correspondents from a local press on 29 October last year. The objective of the student correspondent program was to train them to become future journalists. So in order to let them get some hands-on experience, the press would occasionally invite people to talk about our trade and be interviewed by them.

(Photo credit: 汉聪)

The initial idea was to just teach them about how I did my social media marketing, but I was later asked to also give a workshop on how to draw my characters, because there must be an activity for the students to participate in.

So I did an impromptu drawing demo and drew both the adult professional journalist and one of his students.

They were then given an hour during lunch break to work on their drawings. The theme was to make yourself into a comic character.

I was quite amazed that ALL OF THEM COULD DRAW ALREADY!  😳
(walau no need to teach them wat)
I was later told that those who subscribed to my workshop were mostly able to draw and recommended by their secondary school. Oh...no wonder.

Some of them wanted to become a comic artist like me, but I had to warn them first: You need to work for many years to build your fan base without any pay, and a freelancer's income is unstable. So it is better to start working on your comics while you are a student or having a full-time job. Nevertheless, I told them that if it's destined and you want it hard enough, you will return back to work on your dream. For example, when I was their age (15-16), I dreamed about being a comic artist but I quit after seeing how good my course-mates could draw (FYI, just to give you an idea about how good my course-mates were, a few later co-founded Imaginary Friends Studio or worked as the pioneer batch). But alas, I returned to draw comics again 10 years later, and worked on it for 6 years before having my very first book.

I also learned that for drawing comics, the most important thing is your story and your own style, not trying to be like that awesome artwork you just saw. If you want to write your own stories, you have to explore more things and gain more life experience and knowledge so the material you work with is always first-hand and not an interpretation from another person.

With that, I wish that their dreams come true one day~

You can find the published article on the18th Jan (Wed) Zaobao Comma, available only to secondary schools.