Hello all! Thank you to everyone who came to the "Make your own mini-doujinshi" workshop at Otafest! It was surreal to hear that the line was totally full well before I opened the doors. We had almost 100 people!!! That means almost 100 mini-doujinshi in less than 90 minutes!!! Not gonna lie, I was a little nervous that they put a first-time panelist running a first-time panel at one of the busiest times (Sat afternoon), but it all worked out in the end. The Otafest staff and volunteers were lovely and I'm also very grateful for my assistant's help. I will be running a free online slightly BL-ified version of this workshop at CitrusCon, an free online con running June 20-22 (register by 19 June), mostly through Discord if I recall correctly. Please come and have a fun creative time.
I could keep secrets but I don't care: here's an outline of the workshop. The CitrusCon iteration will have changes to BL-ify the exercise and tailor it to the online format but I haven't decided what those will be yet.
How to run a mini-doujinshi con workshop:
The central conceit is that a doujinshi, being an independently published magazine-like object that can contain fanworks, is at the very least extremely superficially similar to a zine, being an independently published magazine-like object that can contain fanworks. So we can roll into an anime con, tell people they'll be making mini-doujinshi, and bring them through a minizine-making session. This was billed as a 90-minute workshop and we were able to finish in approximately 75 minutes, including time to go through a few informational slides at the beginning and the end.
The minizines made in this workshop are a classic quick & dirty zine format where you take a rectangular piece of paper, crease into 8 sections, cut a slit in the middle and fold into a little book with a front and back cover and 3 interior page spreads (example video). I provided two dollar-store markers and two sheets of paper (one for idea lists and warmup, one to become the zine). Also, my room didn't have tables so I brought foam boards (dollar store sheets cut to size) to give to each participant so they would have a firm surface to fold and draw on.
The actual content of the story is generated by the participant using structured, timed prompts. Each participant writes a list of 10 "problems" that a character could have that would drive a story (3 minutes). They also list 10 characters of any kind, including any they like out of characters from others' published works, their own characters, real people or anthropomorphized objects/concepts (2 minutes).
Participants choose 2 characters whose interaction can also help drive the story. They warm up by drawing a full-body view of each character (2 minutes per character).
Participants fold and cut a blank piece of paper into their minizine. Then they choose one problem from their problem list and start drawing on the folded and cut zine.
Each interior spread is allocated 5 minutes. In the first spread, one or both of the characters encounters the problem. In the second, the character(s) try to deal with the problem. In the third, the results of their efforts are shown.
The front and back covers are allocated 3 minutes each. Participants can basically draw what they like, but I did mention options for the back cover including an extra panel to finish the story, a parting comment from one of the characters or another character, a self-portrait, an artist's bio and the artist's contact info.
Participants are then given 5 minutes to find a stranger and exchange zines with them. They are asked to say nothing about their zine except to identify the characters. Participants look at their partner's zine and think of something true and pleasant to say about it. Participants hand back the zine and say the true and pleasant thing. When they receive their zine and the true and pleasant thing, they say "thank you" and nothing else.
At the time I was really focused on just managing doing a novel thing in a novel environment in front of an audience of strangers (i.e. surviving Autism Hell), so I missed out on seeing most participants' zines, but one person was kind enough to give me theirs to post, so here it is! Amazing what a participant can get done in ~21 minutes.
As for acknowledgements, I would be extremely happy to see people taking up doing this or a similar workshop at other cons. Shoot me an email or message me on Mastodon if you have any more detailed questions about how I did the workshop. If you do end up presenting, it would be nice to mention my screen name and website URL at the end but I'm not too fussed as long as you don't lie about coming up with the idea or prompts. On my end I was heavily influenced by a zine-making workshop at Anime North 2023 where we made autobiographical minizines commemorating our experiences at the con (my notes are vague but seem to reference a "zeekayart", a "AJfanfic" and a "Veronika"). The timed prompt structure is lifted nearly wholesale from various presenters at the Sequential Artists Workshop's Friday Night Comics workshop series (free, online and open to all, by the way!).
The sharing exercise at the end is my addition. I think sharing your art carefully and interacting respectfully with other people's art are core artistic skills deserving as much attention in instruction as the actual drawing is, especially for an audience that might be very new to making art. It was very cool to see the energy in the room really lift up when people were talking to each other about their zines. I'm not sure how I'll address that component in the online version but I'll keep thinking about it. Anyway, thanks all, hope you can get something made this week! Recap of other aspects of Otafest (including the Artist Alley haul) will be in another post.