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:

dvr_stripgenerator

2.       Makebeliefscomix

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

dvr_makebeliefs

 3.      Marvel kids

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

dvr_marvel

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:

dvr_toondo

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

aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. AEA is celebrating Data Visualization and Reporting Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from members of AEA’s Data Visualization and Reporting Topical Interest Group. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice.

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

  1. Thanks for posting this, Sara. Comics are such a fabulous communication tool, since the humour helps us be more open to new ideas. I really appreciate your clear & succinct reviews of the different generators.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.