A half-day summer camp for young artists who want to make comics, manga, and page-turning adventures—with characters worth rooting for.
📚✍️🖊️🎨 Calling all middle school creators who love graphic novels, webcomics, manga panels, big feelings, bold action, and those perfect dramatic zoom-ins.
This is the camp where your drawings tell stories—and your stories get to look cool.
In Comics & Manga Camp, we’ll read favorites, study what makes comics work, practice essential drawing and storytelling skills, and build your own in-progress comic or manga from the ground up. You’ll create characters, shape a world, plan your scenes, and start making pages you can’t wait to share.
By the end of the week, you’ll have real momentum on your own comic or manga project—and a roomful of fellow nerds who get why panel spacing is a life-or-death decision. (It is.)
Who’s this camp for?
This camp is a great fit for middle school writers and artists (ages 11–14) who love comics, manga, and visual storytelling—and want to make their own.
No fancy experience required. If you’ve got curiosity and you like making stuff, you belong here.
What you’ll do
We’ll go deep on how comic creators and mangaka make stories stand out—and then you’ll use those tools to make something new.
During camp, you’ll get to:
- Read and study favorite comics and manga (and learn what makes them hit)
- Create characters with real motivations, choices, and consequences
- Build your story world, from setting details to the rules of how your world works
- Outline your plot using story structures that help your story grow (and keep it from wandering into the void)
- Plan scenes and pages—what happens, what changes, and why it matters
- Practice drawing skills that support storytelling, including:
- linework and expression
- composition and visual clarity
- coloring/shading (as desired)
- linework and expression
- Connect body + emotion (aka: how physical expression makes characters feel real)
- Share your work with others and learn how to talk about creative choices in a supportive way
At the end of the week, campers will share their comics and manga with each other—because stories are more fun when they have an audience that actually understands them.
You’ll leave camp with:
🧍♀️ Original characters with goals, flaws, and big “main character energy”
📖 An in-progress comic or manga project you can keep building after camp
🧠 A comics-making process you can reuse again and again
🗺️ A story outline with clear events, changes, and stakes
🎨 New skills in linework, composition, and coloring (digital or traditional)
🤝 Creative confidence + community (aka: new friends who also think in panels)
What to bring
Campers are welcome to bring:
- Their favorite comics/manga to share (optional, but fun)
- Their preferred drawing tools (pens, pencils, markers, sketchbook, etc.)
- A digital drawing device/tablet if they want to work digitally (totally optional)
We’ll have special pens and paper available, but bringing your favorites is encouraged.
Meet your guide
Comics & Manga Camp is taught by Jen Hernandez, who’ll guide campers through the creative process—from first sketches and story sparks to scenes, pages you’ll be excited to share.
Ready to make your own comic or manga?
Bring your imagination, your favorite pens (or tablet), and your most dramatic sound effects.
We’ll bring the story magic.
Monday-Friday, July 6-10, 2026
10 am-1 pm
In-person at the Wordcrafters studio
436 Charnelton St. Ste 100
Eugene, OR 97401
Cost: $269
Ages 11-14
Pricing info: Our classes and events are priced at their actual cost to run.
If paying the full price would keep you from joining us, use the code ACCESS at checkout to reduce your registration amount by 20%—no questions asked. If you’re a Wordcrafters member, use code MEMBERACCESS.
If the full price is within your means, please leave the ACCESS code for those who truly need it.
If you’re able, you can add a donation during registration to support our scholarship fund.
Scholarship info: We want everyone to have access to our writing programs. If you need additional support, please complete our scholarship request form.
Wordcrafters members save 10% on this and other events and classes.
Click here to learn about becoming a Wordcrafter.
HEALTH CONSIDERATIONS
Masks are optional. Please stay home if you’re unwell with any upper respiratory illness.
Your instructor
Jen Hernandez (she/they) is an artist and educator based in Corvallis, Oregon.
Through fine arts illustration, comics and crafting, Jen tells stories inspired by the natural environment, people, and stories of the Pacific Northwest and world mythology.
Connect with her on Instagram or at her website https://jenhernandezart.com/.
Other Classes You May Enjoy:
Get your writing time in at the Wordcrafters studio at our regular write-ins. FREE for Wordcrafters members (open to the public, pay from your heart pricing).
Tuesdays 9:30 am-noon
Sundays 6:30-9 pm
Nap-a-thon: a fundraiser for people who are tired. Which, statistically, is everyone.
Nap Ambassador sign ups close Sept 30.
Napping and fundraising happens Oct 1-31.
Share your words in sweet community at our monthly open mic emceed by spoken word poet Jorah LaFleur.
Second Thursdays, September through June | Age 14+
The Oregon Author Series brings a visiting Oregon writer into our space for an afternoon of live conversation: about their book, their process, and the stubborn, beautiful work of making something true on the page.
Sept 13, Dec 13, 2026; March 14, June 13, 2027 | 4-6 pm
Ages 16+
A community nap for tired people.
Saturday, Oct 10 | Wordcrafters studio and online
Come share a meal with other writers and talk shop—craft, process, money, motivation, publishing, rejection, weird writing habits, and whatever’s currently living rent-free in your brain.
Friday, Sept 18 | Noon–1:30 pm
Ages 18+