Dilating Comics

I love coloring.  I took drawing classes in high school but wouldn't call myself an artist.  This project makes me feel like an artist, and I get to color.  Plus, there's math and it's a "real life application" or whatever you want to call them (all math can be applied to real life!).  The original idea came from a friend who had his students really dilate their images - onto poster board.  He used a more vector-like method.  My first incarnation used some math, this year there was more math.

Past Method:

1. Trace comic panel onto small piece of graph paper
2. Figure out how many boxes you need and divide 8.5 or 11 by that number (we actually used centimeters, but 21.5 and 28 aren't as recognizable of numbers)
3. Draw in grid lines on the big paper
4. Redraw comic panel on big paper by plotting some points and using the lines as guides
5. Measure a few parts of each picture to compare, determine if it's proportional

My model

Current Method:

1. Trace comic panel onto small piece of graph paper
2. Draw in some axes and choose 10 useful points, write down their coordinates
3. Draw and label axes on the big paper (kids are tempted to change the scale- don't let them! one box = one unit on both small and large paper)
4. Choose a scale factor that will allow your image to fit on a full size piece of graph paper
5. Scale up your points and record them
6. Redraw comic on big paper by plotting points and connecting, add more points as needed
7. Measure a few parts of each picture to compare, determine if it's proportional

Differences:
The scale factor is more obvious now.  It was a pain to draw in the grid lines before (measuring is tough, then add in lining things up? Disaster.)  Kids were less willing to plot tons of points this year (they had to calculate the new point rather than being able to count boxes) so some drawings didn't come out as well.  However, they recognized that when the pre and post images weren't proportional it was because they'd free-handed that section.

Actual student work

This one too!