Illustrating a Kamishibai with the children of the Club Français de Louth

As part of the preparation for the visit of the French Ambassador to Ireland, I had the pleasure to lead a small creative workshop with the children of the Club Français de Louth around the art of kamishibai.

Kamishibai is a form of visual storytelling originally from Japan. The images slide inside a small wooden theatre while the story is read aloud. Each illustration appears, then disappears, giving space to the next one. The image becomes almost like a small stage scene.

For this workshop the time was quite short. We only had two sessions. Because of that I arrived with a story I had already written, called My Language. The story speaks about language as something alive, something that can become a seed, a bird, a key or a bridge, connecting children to each other and to the wider world.

Our goal was then to transform this story into images.

Drawing ourselves into the story

We started with something simple but very important: self-portraits.

Each child created their self-portrait using collage. This technique makes it easier to include everyone, the youngest children, those who do not feel very comfortable with drawing, but also the children who already enjoy drawing a lot.

The styles were very different, and the colours as well. Some characters were very expressive, others more minimalistic, some very detailed.

All these portraits were later gathered together to form a collective image. In the final kamishibai panel all the children appear together. The story is then no longer only about an imaginary character. It becomes about them.

Building the story in images

After creating the characters, we worked on what illustrators call a storyboard.

It is a simple way to think about the visual structure of a story:which scene belongs to which part of the text, what we want to show on each panel, and how the images help the story move forward.

Kamishibai works quite differently from a picture book. The image is seen from a distance and only for a short moment. It needs to be understood very quickly.

Because of this, we have to make choices: simplify some elements, highlight what is important, and use space and colour to guide the viewer’s eye.

A collective creation

With the older children we divided the tasks.

Some worked on the recurring character who appears through the story.

Others illustrated the symbolic elements: the seed, the bird, the key.

Little by little the story started to take shape.

Each panel became a moment of the narrative.

Assembling the panels

Once the drawings were finished, I did the layout work at home.

I used InDesign to assemble the illustrations, organise the panels and prepare a clean file to send to the printer. This step allows the drawings to become a real storytelling object ready to be used in the kamishibai theatre.

But this technical step is also part of the creative process. With a bit of luck we will have the opportunity to organise a longer kamishibai workshop with this group in the future, and next time the children will also take part in this stage of the making.

When the images come alive

The final step will be the reading.

During the meeting with the Ambassador, the children who wish to will read the panels while the images move inside the theatre.

Kamishibai is a very special art form, somewhere between illustration, reading and performance.

The children are not only drawing, and not only reading.

They become storytellers.

And this is probably where the magic happens: the drawings stop being only images, and they become a living story.