Posted March 2004 Students design their own Comic Chat characters by Peter Turner, Student at Kenmore State High School
		Comic Chat is the latest chat room communication tool from the Learning Place. Comic chat appeals to all ages as it is visually engaging, instantaneous, motivating and enjoyable. Students can participate in project rooms set up by their teachers. They choose a character and whatever they type is displayed within a comic strip in speech bubbles. Students can also create their own characters and upload them into their chat room. Being able to create your own characters would help students explore characters in novels, famous people or give students the ability to bring their own characters to life as each Comic character has 12 emotions and students can use them in scenes, plays and story settings.

Peter Turner from Kenmore State High School shares his experience with Comic Chat as one of our first students to create their own characters.

Kimono doll

Robot

My name is Peter Turner, known to web-goers as ‘Dekuscrub’. I go to Kenmore State High School and am currently in the year 11. I have always wanted to be an animator, it is my life’s dream, and as a result, I draw quite a lot. That’s where my two comic chat characters, Akina the Kimono Doll and Rex the Robot come in. However, they are merely two of a total swarm of odd, quirky characters that my mind has produced thanks to too much music, too many video-games and way too much drawing.

The characters themselves were drawn in Macromedia Flash, a program I have grown very fond of. Incidentally, Flash is also an excellent program for animating, which is probably the only reason I even know about it. Both characters were actually ones I had designed about a year earlier. I just wasn’t exactly sure how I could use them. Of course, when Comic Chat came along, I thought 'BINGO!'

I nearly made another character for the Comic Chat as well, but I didn’t really have enough time. It would have been a pirate, no doubts about that. I love pirates.

My interests include movies and television, reading, drawing and animating. I love watching Japanese Anime and Saturday-Morning Cartoons, both of which serve as quite a large inspiration for me. Nothing appeals to me more than a good Anime, in particular. I also love comics and manga, and to a lesser extent, books. I have even had a picture of mine published in Hyper Magazine.

Here are some more of my illustrations.

Captain Eastwood	Demon
Cats