DVR Week: Sara Vaca on 4 Easy Free Comic-generator Tools

Hi, I’m Sara Vaca and I am completing my Master in Evaluation in Madrid and you can learn more about me on my blog, Visual Brains or follow me on twitter at @VisualBrains. Inspired by this post, I thought about comics, and wondered, have you ever thought of using them in evaluation?

Hot Tips: Comics could be used as an informal means of bringing evaluation closer to certain audiences. For example, one could think about considering using comics for:

1. Explaining the evaluation process, especially in preliminary phases by including a comic in a leaflet to hang on notice boards.
2. Reflecting responses from certain stakeholders –for example, teenagers- on their feedback and opinions on a program.
3. Articulating and validating qualitative information (discourses, stances), collected during research.
4. Sharing quantitative data collected in surveys, or evaluation findings in general.

Hot Tip: Be sure to check the Terms of Use for each strip generator to be sure that you may include strips from a particular site in the types of communication that you wish to create.

Rad Resources: Below are 4 easy comic generators I tried and the examples I created using them:

1.      Stripgenerator

Good things: it is really easy.
Not so good things: characters are a bit “dark”, black and white only.
Example:

2.       Makebeliefscomix

Good things: more “human” characters, you can choose 4 different attitudes for each.
Not so good things: black and white characters.
Example:

 3.      Marvel kids

Good things: very professional style.
Not so good things: characters are only superheroes, some of them maybe a bit aggressive.
Example:

4.     Toondoo

Good things: A very wide range of resources, characters, backgrounds; very colorful; my favorite.
Not so good things: it has more commands than the others, but still quite easy to use.
Example:

Get involved: Share your ideas on using comics as another tool to improve evaluation understanding, reporting, and use.

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