Hi there, and thank you for your interest in Jarrett Lerner’s Creator Club!
This summer, Jarrett will be hosting a one-week “course.” Everyone (including grownups!) is welcome! The lessons and materials are appropriate for ages 6 and up!
Jarrett has been working closely with aspiring authors and illustrators for more than a decade, and over thousands of hours and with tens of thousands of creators, he has created a wealth of engaging, fun, inspiring, and productive instructional content. Jarrett’s goal when working with creators is to always leave them not just impressed by what HE can do, but – much more importantly – impressed by what THEY can do. Both kids and adults tend to leave his sessions feeling confident in their abilities and energized to further explore, use, and share their creativity.
Here’s how this summer’s Creator Club will work . . .
Every day, Jarrett will conduct a live, interactive session exploring a particular topic (see below for more detailed descriptions of each day’s session, plus a note on the availability of recordings of the sessions). The sessions will include tips, techniques, strategies, and exercises that attendees can put to use on their own to further experiment and explore that day’s topic, and to further develop and hone their skills. In addition, attendees will be given access to bonus content – activity sheets, prompts, and videos, all created by Jarrett – to use, if they wish, between sessions.
Each day’s session will run approximately 60 minutes (Jarrett will not stop promptly at the 60-minute mark if he and the attendees are in the middle of something important and productive). The first part of each day’s session will be the “lesson” portion, which, depending on the day, will run between 40 and 50 minutes (it will be engaging and interactive – a visually rich discussion as opposed to a lecture). The remainder of the session will be left open for Q&A, so that Jarrett can make sure to address and teach about aspects of any given topic that attendees are particularly interested in. If questions are not forthcoming, Jarrett will fill the remainder of any given session with additional instruction, extra tips, and individual and/or group exercises.
NEW THIS YEAR!!!
In addition to the daily sessions and bonus content, this year, Jarrett will also be offering Creator Club attendees the opportunity to get feedback from Jarrett on their work. Attendees will have until the end of the summer to send Jarrett a short story, a picture book or early reader manuscript, a collection of drawings, comics, or a portion of a graphic novel, and Jarrett will critique and offer constructive feedback.
To learn more about the particular sessions Jarrett is offering during this summer’s course, see below.
Creator Club (Summer 2024)
IMPORTANT: These sessions are made for creators of ALL skill levels and ALL levels of familiarity. In other words, you can attend – and learn lots and have fun – whether you have never tried to draw or make a comic or write a story before, or you already love and do these things regularly.
Day 1: Drawing
In this session, Jarrett will share a variety of techniques that can be used to draw anything and everything. Whether an attendee has never attempted to draw before, or is someone who loves it and does it regularly, the material presented will be applicable – it will either serve as a foundation from which one can further develop their skills and style, or as a new collection of strategies and exercises to assist one on their ongoing drawing journey.
Day 2: Comic-Making
In this session, Jarrett will explore how comics work, and will share how one can make meaning and create stories using the unique language of comics. Once again, the material presented in this session will be applicable both for those who have never tried to make a comic before and those who are already making their own comics strips, books, or even graphic novels.
Day 3: Character Creation
In this session, Jarrett will explore the importance of character in stories and storytelling. Attendees will learn how to figure out why they find their own favorite characters so great, and then learn how to create characters who are equally compelling. This topic, and all of the associated matters, will be explored from a verbal, writing perspective as well as a visual, design perspective.
Day 4: Story-Building
In this session, Jarrett will share many of the ways one can find ideas for stories, and will then go on to explore what to do once you have an idea. Attendees will leave this session with multiple, easy-to-use techniques for “building” a comprehensive, compelling story from scratch. Jarrett will further share how, once a story’s scaffolding (or general shape, or outline) has been laid out, one can use that structure to figure out what words and/or pictures to use to tell that story, whether writing prose or making comics or doing some combination of both.
Day 5: Digital Drawing and Book-Making Tour
In this session, Jarrett will give a quick crash course in digital art, sharing a variety of tips, techniques, strategies, and methods for productively and powerfully using digital drawing platforms (such as the relatively affordable Procreate, as well as other, similar ones). Building on this, Jarrett will walk attendees through the process of how a book actually becomes a book – from an idea in one’s head, to a first draft in a notebook or on a computer, to a physical, bound-and-glued bundle of pages one can pick up in a bookstore or library (and all the steps in between, too).
PRICE (INCLUDING ACCESS TO ALL FIVE SESSIONS, PLUS ASSOCIATED BONUS CONTENT AND FEEDBACK ON ATTENDEE WORK): $195 (US). Once an attendee has signed up, an invoice will be sent to the email address supplied in the below registration form.
START TIME OF ALL FIVE SESSIONS: 3 pm EST (on June 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28). Sessions will be held on Zoom. Links to join each session will be sent out each day, either the night prior to a session or on the morning of the session, to the email address supplied in the below registration form.
NOTE ON RECORDINGS: All sessions will be LIVE, meaning attendees can interact with Jarrett in real time, and also have the chance to ask their questions and share their thoughts. However, all attendees will also have access to recordings of the sessions, should they be unable to attend one day or several days, or if they simply wish to tune into all of the sessions on their own time. These recordings will be available to attendees immediately after the sessions, for the remainder of the month of June and the entirety of July. (The recordings will be password protected and MAY NOT be shared.)
IMPORTANT: Attendees under the age of 18 can only be signed up by parents or legal guardians.
To sign up or sign someone up for Jarrett Lerner’s Creator Club Summer 2024, fill out the Registration Form, which can be found by clicking HERE.
Want to share about Jarrett Lerner’s Creator Club Summer 2024 with others? While you can, of course, simply share a link to this page of Jarrett’s website, you can also download and print a one-page flier about Jarrett Lerner’s Creator Club Summer 2024 by clicking HERE.
Jarrett Lerner 