Learning From Cybraryman

Guest post by: Sasha, Mia, Sammy, and Parsa

Recently, we Skyped with the world famous Cybraryman from Florida! He taught us the process he uses to make cartoon books. There are many steps to consider when writing a story.

Several students took notes to help them learn.

Cybraryman was hired to write a cartoon book for a utility company. A utility company  is a company that works with electricity.  He was very funny and made us try to guess what a utility means!  He was hilarious and asked Mrs. Yollis to turn off the lights as a little clue!  Utility companies provide electricity, gas, and water!  

First, he had to think of a main character. 

Cybrary Man's first idea for a character was a super hero!  If you look  closely, you can see that the super hero is a very old man!  It just didn't seem to be the right character.  

       This is the hero that Cybraryman wanted because he is young, but this picture had some problems.  The boy was clenching his fists, and the little girl's hands looked like they had claws.  She was also looking up in the sky like she was waiting for something evil to happen.  They had to change that!

                            When you are writing a book you have to research!  Cybraryman researched energy, since that is what the book is about.   He always goes to the library, not Wikipedia.                                            

This is a close up of a classmate's notes.  Everybody wanted to learn how to make a cartoon book, so they brought their notes home and tried.  Cybraryman told us to make the story interesting and to try to make good ideas better!

When Cybraryman  started making cartoon books, he used a typewriter!  He said, "It was a real pain in the neck because if you made a mistake, you'd have to start all over again!"

This is an example of things you need to do before you do the final copy.  First you plan, then outline.  Then you ask your friend or somebody like your boss to give you feedback.

Cybraryman showed us a sloppy copy and a final copy to show us how much a book can change.  He asked us if we can indicate  any differences.  If you can see, the cat on the left has his fire suit unbuckled and on the right it is snapped together.  (The left is the sloppy copy.)

These are all the steps to write a cartoon book: idea, need, approach, outline, script, dummy, revisions, and  final copy.  A dummy is a real size fake person of the character, so you can see what the character will look like.  

This is what the final copy looks like!  The boys fists are not clenched, the girl is not looking at the sky, and her hands do not look like claws.  That was an improvement! 

Cybraryman told us that it can take a long to complete a book. This one took him about a year to make! That's perseverance!  


We are writing a class book right now and are going to apply Cybraryman's ideas to it a great book!

Thank you, Mia, for the wonderful photos!

Do you know how to write a cartoon book?

Have you ever written a book? Tell us about it!

What steps did you take?