Toondoo Tutorial

The best online tool to create your own comic strips and cartoons is Toondoo. You just have to click a few times and drag and drop a few items and your comic strip will be ready to share with your loved ones or social network friends. This web 2.0 tool allows you to create, design and share comic strips and it provides you several cartoon characters or the possibility to create new ones. 

I think it is a very useful tool because students can express themselves through their comic strips, practice their writing and reading skills and create advertising campaigns about many topics to raise awareness such as contamination, the importance of eating healthy food, harassment, the importance of rules of cohabitation, among others. Moreover, the students can become more creative and autonomous builders of their own stories. 

There are some steps you should follow to make use of this tool:

Step 1

Go to http://www.toondoo.com/. To start creating your own comic strips, you need to sign up first, but don’t worry it is for free. Click on the red button “Sign up for free” on the right top of the site.

Step 2

When you click on sign up for free, a window will pop up with two options: public toondoo for the individual or private toondospaces. The first one is for free and the second one, the users have to pay por it, but it is for schools and educational institutions. Choose the first option.

Step 3

 The site will ask you to provide your username, password and email. Once you have logged in to the site, go to the menu, where it says toons, books, dooers, tools and place the mouse on the option Toons. A drop down menu will pop up, select the option create toon.

Step 4

The site will lead you to select a horizontal or vertical layout. Choose one of the options.

Step 5

Afterwards, the site will lead you to the layout you have chosen and you can start creating your comic strip by dragging and dropping several items from the menu at the top of the site: characters, scenes, objects, speech bubbles and images saved in your computer. You can write a title for your strip just by clicking on “untitled” (above your comic strip). And below it, you’ll find many tools that help you accommodate or edit your comic strip such as the following:

• ·         Lock: to immobilize the object
• ·         Shrink and enlarge: to change the size of the object
• ·         Clone: to make a copy of the object
• ·         Flip: to turn over the object
• ·         Rotate: to spin the object to the left or to the right
• ·         Front: to send the object to the front
• ·         Back: to send the object to the back
• ·         Delete: to remove the object

Besides you can find in the right part of the menu, below the comic strip more tools if you want a more personal design:

Ø  DoodleR: to draw a character or an object that is not available in the options

Ø  TraitR: to create your own character (you can choose its physical characteristics)

Ø  ImagineR: to upload images from your computer to add to your comic strip

Step 6

Once you have written the title and added the characters, speech bubbles and scenes, your comic strip will be ready to be saved. Place the mouse on “Toondoo Start here” button. It is on the left top of the site, next to all the items you can drag and drop. A small drop down menu will appear. Click on save as and then. You’ll be asked to fill in some fields: title, description and tags. You should also select a language and choose if you want to publish your comic strip for anyone to see it, share it with your friends or keep it private. Finally, you click on publish.

References:

Ministerio de Educación. Tutorial Toondoo. Retrieved from: http://integrar.bue.edu.ar/integrar/blog/articulo/tutorial-de-toondoo/