Monday, May 25, 2015

How to use the Google Slides mobile app to make comics from real life photos

A lot of teachers have been using my process for creating comics with Google tools. I was thrilled to find it can now be easily done using the Slides mobile app! The best part of this is now you can bring in the real world pictures very easily.

If you haven't seen the general process and possible final products, you can read all about it on this page from my Education On Air presentation from a few weeks ago.

That process starts on a Chromebook or a computer and it uses either Google Drawings or Slides.

Now you can start in the Slides mobile app. I did this on an iPad, but the Android app will be similar.

First, start a new Slides presentation.

On a blank slide, click the + sign and select Image.


Choose to get the image From Photos or From Camera. Notice that if you use the camera, this is an amazingly simple way to immediately bring the real world into your creations!


Crop, resize and move the image as necessary.

To add comic elements, click the + again and select Shape this time.


Select Callouts and scroll down to the three comic elements. Choose the one you want.


From there, it's just a matter of placing the thought or word bubble, dragging the point to the character who is speaking or thinking and then entering the text. Here's my sample taken from a game I was playing with my son.


A few things to consider:
  • While the tools are easy to use on the app, you might prefer to just use the app to bring the pictures into the Slides presentation. Then you (and any collaborators) can open that presentation on a Chromebook or computer for easy editing. 
  • See my two-minute tutorial on creating the comics using a computer. The first steps are now replaced by the import process above, but the rest of the video shows the details of adding and editing the comic elements.
  • You can change the background color of the slides by editing the presentation on a computer or Chromebook at any time.
  • See the Projects page of my website for possible end products we make such as PDFs, virtual books or videos.





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