Mark Bradley's comic book Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates can help us learn about:
comic books and how they are made
key features of comics
creating characters
expressing feelings in stories and drawings
making your own comics to tell stories
Title and cover
Activity 1 - Cover
The title and cover of Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates introduce our two main characters and tell us a little bit about the adventure we're about to enjoy.
Can you tell which character is Bumble and which is Snug?
How can we tell this?
What else does the cover make you think about the book?
What is the book about?
Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates is a comic book about two emotional little creatures named Bumble and Snug, who are the best of friends. They are very different characters but together they have lots of fun adventures.
One day, they decide to go on a picnic, but find themselves on a desert island. After they find a giant X on the sand, they dig up a chest full of treasure. They take it with them - but the Angry Pirates are not happy when they find it is missing.
Watch Mark Bradley read from Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates, on BBC Authors Live.
Mark: I'm just going to start with the introduction where we're introducing Bumble and Snug here. So Bumble and Snug are always going on new adventures to new places and seeing new things.
"What shall we do today?"
"Hmm…" "Let's go for a picnic in the countryside."
"Yay!"
"We can find a lovely spot for a nice relaxing picnic and-"
"I'm going to tickle a badger."
"Wait, what?"
"Then I'm going to build a den, no, a fortress that's a bajillion feet tall. Then I'm going to find a fox, an owl and a shark!"
"What do you mean, 'shark'?"
"You know - the pointy things that look like brushes with teeny tiny legs!"
"Err… Are you thinking about hedgehogs?"
"That's the one."
"Anyway we better get packing."
"Yeah!"
So, Snug's packing list: Umbrella. Tea set. Emergency survival kit. Checklist. Blanket. Sandwiches.
Bumble's checklist: Inflatable dinosaur. Trampoline. Bongos. Hat stand and marbles.
"Right, I'm all set. Did you pack everything you need, Bumble?"
"Yes! I did an excellent job!"
"Is that the trampoline sticking out of your case?"
"Definitely not. Let's go!"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes!" [takes a breath in]
"Hold on tight!"
"See you later, house!"
"All we need to do is head north for 30 minutes and we should find a nice spot there."
"OH MY GOSH! LOOK AT THAT TRAIN!"
"Ooh, look, there's some cows! Helllloooo cows! Moo!"
"Err, Bumble? We need to head the other way."
"SEAGULLS! I've always wanted to be a seagull!"
Some time later…
"I feel so majestic."
"Sigh…"
"Oh! My! Gosh!"
"It's the seaside!"
"I think that that wind is picking up a bit…"
"I'm going to eat 100 ice creams…"
"Bumble, I REALLY think we should turn around."
"And ride a donkey!"
"We're getting blown out to sea - it's dangerous!"
WHOOOOSH!
"I need to get us down… I know what to do."
Tickle.
"Hahahaha!"
"Uh-oh…"
And we're going to cut a little bit later, after they've had a little bit of an adventure finding some buried treasure. So:
Meanwhile…
"This is the best day ever!"
"I can't believe that donkey let us have three rides, in exchange for that shiny rock!"
"That was so much fun! It was strange that he ran away so fast afterwards though…"
"Would you like some more ice cream?"
"Hmm… I've only had 20, I should probably have a couple more."
"YARGH!"
"What was that?"
"Look over there!"
"YARGH!"
"Tell us, you no good landlubber, who has taken our treasure?"
"Eek! Pirates!"
"What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?"
"I know what we can do! If we scare them they'll roll into a ball and try to hide."
"Again, Bumble, that's hedgehogs. We really need to work on this."
"They look angry. The treasure must have belonged to them."
"Give it up or we be making ye walk the plank."
"Oh no - they're going on a rampage!"
"Eek! A shark!"
"Haha!"
"Snip!"
"Oi! No walking on the grass."
"Heehee"
"Whack"
"Grr!"
"We need to stop them, Snug."
"But how can we? We gave away all the treasure."
"Well then we need to tell them the truth and say sorry."
"But they might do terrible things to us, like making us walk the plank. Or feeding us to a shark, then feeding that shark to a whale, then feeding that whale to an even bigger whale!"
"I don't think we need to worry about that. They'll probably just stop after the first whale."
"Even if you're right, we can't go over there. I'm too nervous."
"Me too, buddy. But we can do it together."
"Can you do the talking?"
"Excuse me?"
"Yargh? What be it?"
"I'm really sorry but we have something to confess - we took your treasure."
"I'M REALLY SORRY, WE DIDN'T REALISE THAT IT BELONGED TO ANYONE. PLEASE DON'T FEED US TO THE SHARKS."
"GRRRRRR!"
"Eek!"
Janet: You've been brilliant! A huge round of applause for Mark!
What are comic books?
Comic books are books that put words and pictures together in an interesting way to tell a story.
Think of some books you have read and how they use pictures.
Most picture books have one big picture on each page, and a lot of books have no pictures at all! Comics tell a story through lots of pictures or drawings, laid out on the page in such a way that you can follow what's happening in the story.
Panels
In a comic book, each little moment in the story fills a space on the page. These are called A box or frame that contains a moment or scene in a comic. . In this picture you can see blank panels all ready to be filled with drawings, to make a new comic story.
One of the things you can do when making a comic is to plan how many panels you will need to tell each part of your story. It's also important to put them in the right order on the page so that the reader can follow and enjoy the story. Panels come in all shapes and sizes - but it can be easier to think of them as boxes to start.
Once you have your panels you can start filling them with your story. Here are a few special features of comics that will help you get started.
Image caption, Speech bubbles
Speech bubbles are how characters talk in comics. In a story you would write 'he said', or 'she said'. In a comic you write what the character has to say, draw a circle or another clear line around the edge, and then draw a little tail pointing to the character who is speaking. Like the panels, it's important that the speech bubbles are on the page in an order that is easy to read. It is worth thinking about where you draw your characters and what they're going to say! (fStop Images GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo)
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How do you create a character?
A character is someone in a story - they can be real, or made up. They can be people, or animals, or anything else you can imagine!
In Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates, Mark Bradley has two main characters, Bumble and Snug, who are best of friends.
Bumble is full of energy, always looking for adventure and getting into scrapes. Snug is a quieter and more sensible character, who would rather take things slowly.
In a comic, there are lots of ways you can show things about your character. Read through the examples below:
Introduce them in a caption.
A caption is a small box or some words drawn inside a panel that help tell the story.
In this comic, a caption says that Bumble is '50% enthusiasm and 50% energy - 100% excitement'. Another caption says that Snug is '33% kindness, 33% caring and 33% brains'.
Let your character speak!
Characters can tell us more about themselves through what they say.
When Snug says: 'We can find a lovely spot for a nice relaxing picnic and -' Bumble says 'I'm going to tickle a badger!'
The reader can guess from this who is the very excited character and who is very calm.
Draw something that reveals more.
When Bumble and Snug are packing bags for their picnic, the picture shows us that Snug's bag contains an emergency survival kit, sandwiches and an umbrella. Bumble has packed bongo drums, a trampoline and an inflatable dinosaur!
This shows us they have very different ideas about what it is important to bring!
How does Mark make Bumble so funny?
Janice: How did you make Bumble such a funny character? Can you give us any tips for writing funny stories?
Mark: Oh, gosh. Right. So, Bumble… If ever I'm stuck for an idea, I can stick Bumble in a situation and she will generate the situation for me. She's almost like self propelling so I think when you're writing a character like Bumble, I think the main thing you can do is just don't say no to an idea. Like… just be unrestrained, be like: "What's the most exuberant I can be about this?" "What's the most excited I can be about any situation?" and then run with it like that and exuberance in and of itself, unrestrained exuberance, because especially to adults we're not… we're supposed to be quite sensible. It can be quite a funny thing. So Bumble works for that.
Activity 2 - Character
Why not try to create your own characters? Having more than one is helpful, so they can talk to each other.Some things to think about:
- Are they friends, like Bumble and Snug? Or enemies?
- Are they funny, or serious?
- Are they people, animals, or something else altogether?
How to draw Bumble and Snug
If you're stuck for ideas for your own characters, maybe you could learn how to draw Bumble and Snug, and use them in your comic instead. Mark showed us how to draw them in his BBC Authors Live event! You can watch the video here:
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you how to draw Bumble and Snug and show you how I draw a bugbop, and then show you maybe a few little tips on how to create your own easy ones.
So, Bumble and Snug are two little creatures and I like to call these types of creatures bugbops, little monsters. And the thing I like about these is they can be as simple as you want to make them or as complex as you want to make them.
So, show you Bumble and Snug… It is really, really simple to draw them both. So Bumble is literally just a capital D on its side and then with two little legs at the bottom and then two little arms at the side and then two little eyes and a big mouth. And you'll have to forgive the fact that these are a little bit rough, cos I'm just drawing quickly today. And then the thing with Bumble is… the top hat.
Now, you can never draw Bumble's hat too, too big… and it's as simple as that to draw Bumble. Like, it's super, super easy and the best thing about Bumble is that she's got shape changing abilities. So even if you go wrong and draw a shape like that…
That's still what Bumble looks like, she's just warped her body to be that size so that's the thing, you can never go wrong with her. That's one of the reasons why I like drawing her so much 'cause you can never, ever, ever, ever go wrong. So next up we have got Snug.
So snug is a touch more complicated. Rather than the one shape that we've got for Bumble, we have four whole shapes for Snug. Snug is just an oval. And again, two little eyes and a mouth. There we go. An oval, two little triangles for the bow tie, another triangle for the body and there we go.
So again… That's how easy it is to draw Snug.
How can we express feelings in stories?
One of the special things about Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates is that the characters have lots of big feelings and they work through them together. They talk about how it is okay to be angry, and that sometimes people (and monsters!) behave angrily when they're really scared.
On Authors Live, Mark showed us how to make Bugbops that show different feelings, whether that's being nervous, sad, happy, excited or even a mix of different feelings.
Mark shows the audience how to use feelings to create characters
I like using basic shapes to make characters. And what happens over time is you build up enough basic shapes in your head that you can create a whole library of different characters… and this is… some of the bugbops that I draw. And what happened… each of the ones I've drawn is… I like to base them around a feeling and over time have associated the basic shapes that I use with types of feelings. So a jaggedy one might be me feeling a little bit angry one morning or a round one might be me feeling mellow and I'm all nice and relaxed. So, over time if you keep drawing these little random shapes, you'll eventually be able to build them into your own little library, so I'll show you what I mean.
You don't need to draw along with this part. I'm just gonna… I'm gonna draw a bugbop that reflects how I'm feeling today. So, today I'm feeling really excited to be speaking with you all, but I'm also feeling a little bit nervous because I'm not used to being in front of television cameras, being in lights and being interviewed about things, so I'm going to try think of how that feels inside of me, that emotion. So what I do with that sometimes is I close my eyes and think about it. Now, the excitement… There's different types of excitement, like every emotion. It's not like the excitement when you feel it's coming up to your birthday or Christmas. Where it's like a slow build, and it's just like "aw what am I going to get? What am I going to get?" This one's kind of like a fizzy, nervous excitement, so it's sparkly and it's just a bit fizzy and a bit floaty in my head. So I'm going to create a shape like that. And it's also a bit, there's a little bit of spikes at the end there because that's feeling a little bit jittery with the excitement. So I'm going to put an excited face there. So, there we go. But like I say, I'm also feeling a little bit nervous about being in front of cameras, being in front of, in a different environment, so that nervousness, it feels here in my body. So it's going to be a really small shape. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a little body like that and put some arms and legs on it. So I've got the start of the character there. Now I have a colour that I associate with excitement and I'll always use which is really bright pink. I love… Oops… I love bright pinks for everything.
So we've got the start. We've got the basic colour. We've got a nice little shape there, but it's still not feeling excited to me. So what I'm gonna do, and you don't need to worry about all the computer stuff I'm doing at the moment, that's just for my amusement. So I'm gonna give a little head there like that. So she's got a bit of different colour and then I'm going to think about this nervousness again and nervousness I associate with the colour yellow and again everyone might have different colours that they think, some people when they're angry they think of red or green, maybe like the Incredible Hulk or something like that… Over time you might think about different colours that you associate with them. It's like, with anything, it's just about practising. Um, what you do, so I'm going to put a little bit of yellow here on this bugbop and keep that those jagged lines. I'm gonna go add a little bit of orange as well there to reflect those. So we're on our way, but it's still feeling like it's missing some stuff. So, excitement, it's feeling jittery, it's feeling like it feels like it could explode. So I'm thinking… Have you ever watched a fire at Bonfire Night or anything like that, and there's the embers coming off it? So I'm thinking what I'll do is I'll give this little bugbop a trail. Because excitement, it's floating through the air. It's excited, but it is leaving a nice little trail of sparks and things like that behind it. But it's still missing something, this one. So what I'm thinking is we will add like I say, excitement is sparkly and nice so I'm gonna add some stars into this one. And there we go. So it's coming along. I'm gonna add a few of these stars outside it as well so it looks like it's leaving a trail of them 'cause it's really excited and it wants to show the world how it is.
I think we're almost there. I'm going to add a few of the little stars this colour and I'm thinking maybe one more little thing, a little bit of light yellow as well just to show that it's shimmering and I think that this bugbop might be done. And I think that's looking like how I'm feeling today, which is a nervous sort of giddy excitement. Now, the final thing to do with any bugbop is I've got to think of a name for it. So, excitement… Zip! I like that.
So this bugbop is called Zip. So I give it a name, it's got a character, which is it's floating around, it's zooming around, it's leaving a trail behind it, so it's built a character in itself. So that's what I'm talking about over time to create a character.
Activity 3 - Express yourself
Can you use your feelings to add interest to your characters?
You can use characters you thought of earlier, or you can make a new one to go in your comic with them.
- Draw the character and think about how different feelings might look.
- What kind of colours would you use for these feelings?
- Does your character have a name?
Making your comic
When Mark appeared on BBC Authors Live he had lots of helpful advice for anyone making their own comic strips and books. Here are a few videos to help you get started!
Mark's advice on creating comics
Ok, so, advice for somebody who wants to write and illustrate their own books…
Just do it. The reason my book happened was 'cause I started putting it out there as a web comic online. So just start doing it yourself. You never know what might come of it. There's no right and wrong way to do comics. It's like learning anything else.
The best way to do it, is just start doing it and learn what's working for you and what's not. And don't be afraid to put stuff out there. Even if… be kind to your own work. Never look back and be like that - it's okay to look back and be like, "I'm not so happy with that" but always be like, "this is what was good about that" and appreciate what you've done.
And if you start putting it out there, showing it to your friends, family, maybe even if you're old enough, putting it online, you'll see it growing over time and that's a wonderful thing to see develop and like I say, you never know what's going to come out at the end of that.
Which comes first, the pictures or the story?
The starting point is which emotion I want to look at in the book.
So in the first, for instance, it was anger for pirates. In the second one it's excitement and in the third one it's shyness.
And then I try to find a creature that will go with that, so anger was pirates. The second one, excitement is a unicorn… it feels sparkly and bright and exciting. And then for the third one, shyness, I'm doing a ghost. So it starts with that point. And I… It's a combination of a lot of different things. It's… which do I think has good exciting settings or scenes that I can put in Bumble and Snug.
It's kind of a little bit of setting Bumble and Snug off on their own course. Some of it's images that I want to draw, some of it's the story itself and sort of squidging them all together and hoping it comes out in a sort of coherent shape.
What's the best thing about reading comics?
The best thing about reading comics is the inherent sense of play and imagination you can have with them.
When you're reading a prose book, I love prose books, but it's line, line, line, paragraph, line, line, line, paragraph.
In comics you can stretch and warp the reality of what's going in there. The panels can be any size, it can take over the whole page and explode out. It can reduce down. You can change the shapes of the word, the speech bubbles, everything's at play.
So it's just that sheer sense of play and wonder and chaos and dynamism that I love about comics so much.
Put it all together
- Think of a very simple story (you might already have a couple of characters from the earlier activities!) This is your chance to send them on an adventure.
- Work out how many panels you might need to tell the story with a beginning, middle and end (you could sketch these out before you draw your comic properly).
- Think about how your characters might feel and how you might show this - remember everything you heard about drawing characters from Mark.
Most important of all, have fun! Comics are so much fun to read and make. You're on a great adventure!
How to create a comic
A helpful guide for anyone who wants to build their own comic.
How to create a character. video
Great ideas for getting characters thought up, thought through and worked out.
Cuiken Primary Comic Characters
Pupils at Cuiken Primary design comic characters with help from the LAB.
