Club de Arte 2.06: Superhero sidekicks and archenemies

THEME OF WEEK 2:06:  My Superhero's Sidekicks and Archenemies

Art Club with Fundación Junto Con Los Niños - JUCONI 

and the Charlotte Miller Art Project in Guayaquil, Ecuador

IDEA AND AIMS:  For the children to imagine and draw the sidekicks and archenemies of their superheroes and super-heroines.  (Also for those children who haven´t yet had the opportunity, to create their super-character´s cape.)

 
PROCESS:  
1. Facilitators pre-prepare "create-your-own" sidekick and archenemy sheets, including drawn outlines of various body shapes and heads (including animals), different weapons, shields, tools, hats, boots, capes and belts. 
2. The children use these sheets and / or drawn by hand to create two drawings on one sheet of paper: one of their super-character´s best Sidekick and one of their worst Archenemy.  Give these characters names and imagine their special powers and abilities, write these beside the drawings.
  

3. Children who finish quickly can imagine a scenario where their superhero or heroine character and his or her sidekick have an encounter with their archenemy.  On a separate sheet of paper draw what happens between these three characters when they meet.

Jean Carlos in Socio Vivienda: His original superhero character is "Super ´A`" who is invisible, throws ice from his eyes and has lengthening arms and hands.  Here his sidekick is "Super Carlos" the dog who has a three-speared dagger, can also throw ice from his eyes, hits, can fly and is invisible.  His worst enemy is Cobra the snake who has a hammer, moves quickly and throws water.  In their confrontation Cobra throws water at Super Carlos, who retaliates with ice-rays from his eyes while Super ´A` shouts "eee" from the sidelines.

Adonys in Socio Vivienda: His original superhero character is "Super Humano" who can fly, throw rays from his eyes, fights and saves.  Here his sidekick is "Rovington" the dog who can run really fast, fly and is very strong.  His worst enemy is "Covello" who carries a sword and can stretch his hair as long as possible and is invisible at night. In their encounter Rovington and Super Humano are in a battle of forces with Covello.

MATERIALS: "create-your-own" sidekick and archenemy sheets of drawings, paper to stick to, scissors, glue, silicone, felt pens, pencils, coloured pencils, rubbers and sharpeners.

Meet all of the Super-sidekicks and Archenemies imagined by the children in Socio Vivienda:

SUPERHERO AND HEROINE CAPES:

This week´s Sidekick-Archenemy session was run only with our Socio Vivienda group, with the other two groups being scheduled to create their superhero capes.   This was because during the original week of designing superheroes our Art Club team observed in Socio Vivienda that designing a character from scratch was too big an ask for the majority of children, who therefore moved straight onto making capes.   I then created the "create-your-own" sheets of cut-out-&-stick drawings that the children could use to build up their character designs.  These sheets proved a great success in Sergio Toral and Nueva Prosperina and the children spent the entire session creating their character designs.  The result at the end of that week was that although the majority of kids had created character designs, the children in Socio Vivienda had not had the chance to experiment with the "create-your-own" sheets and neither of the other two groups had had the chance to make capes.  Hence the reason for our plan for this week.

Our session in Sergio Toral was cancelled, however, because of logistical issues connected with the World Cup:  Ecuador were playing at the same as Art Club which meant that the space we have recently begun to use, which is in a local family´s home, was not available.   However we did run the cape-making session in Nueva Prosperina and the kids did a great job in collaborating with we facilitators to adapt rice sacs into superhero outfits using velcro and tape to make the adjustments and permanent marker and Fomix to personalise their designs.  Here our brilliant colleague Ronald demonstrated a real flair for original costume design!  

 

PROCESS:

1. Each child chooses their preferred colour of rice sac and in collaboration with a facilitator decides on how they want it to fit to their body.  Holes are cut for the arms as required, and velcro attached with silicone and staples where necessary. 

2. The children reinforce any cut areas of the rice sacs with masking tape or colourful electrical tape.

3. The children personalise their cape with designs created from Fomix and drawn with permanent markers.

MATERIALS: Rice sacs, masking tape, colourful electrical tape, Fomix, scissors, permanent markers, silicone, velcro, stapler and staples.

Take a look at Nueva Prosperina´s capes....