Who Cares? Scotland are one of the country’s leading advocacy organisations for those with experience of care. A series of short cartoon strips produced with the Studio will appear in their quarterly children’s magazine over the coming year.

The first task was to take the characters from their existing logo and redraw them as a cast to appear in the strips.

After meetings with staff at WC?S rough drafts were prepared of the strips. These are intended to be provocations for discussion between children and those who are responsible for their care, so rather than whole stories they concentrate on the anxieties associated with being away from home, separated from family, uncertain about school placement etc.

The roughs were shown to a group of youngsters to ensure that they were clear and comprehensible. Their feedback was incorporated into a pencil draft and then further comments into the final inked and coloured version. By expressing preferences for details throughout the strips the children had a sense of involvement and ownership of the strips.

When working on this kind of project it is important to bear in mind that certain cartoonists’ habits do not necessarily make sense to a very young audience. For example, hand lettering or custom fonts often contain letter forms that are discouraged or even absent from children’s educational materials. Teachers do not appreciate their lessons being contradicted by outside organisations!

“These look amazing. We are so grateful to you for bringing these comic strips to life and we are so excited for the purpose they will serve, even beyond the magazine!” – K.MacMillan, Membership Development Officer, Who Cares? Scotland

This is the first of a number of projects aimed at youngsters we’ll be undertaking in 2016. More to come!