Word Balloon Academy (WBA) is the Toronto Comic Arts Festival’s in-person full day of FREE professional development, skills-building and career management programming for comics creators. Taking place on the Friday just before the main festival, WBA allows emerging comics professionals delve into the ins and outs of making comics with comic and creative industry professionals.
This year we will be facilitating sessions on tackling difficult subjects in autobiography, networking for introverts, finding a character’s voice through archetypes, worldbuilding in comics, pitching a publisher and, of course, the ever popular Creative Law 101 by leading entertainment lawyers.
TCAF 2025 marks 10 years since WBA’s start in 2015 as TCAF’s annual career development program for aspiring and emerging comics creators. The inception of WBA was headed by Georgia Webber and Kim Hoang, and the program has continued to offer free presentations to TCAF attendees as the kick off to the festival weekend. Check back soon for the full roster of programming, and come celebrate ten years of Word Balloon Academy at TCAF 2025!
WBA is served up in two development streams:
(1) creative and (2) business.
1
Creative Development Stream
In the creative development stream, artists explore the multifaceted creative process of making comics, from inspiration and outlining to physical and mental health care. Over the past few years artists such as Lara Antal, Sami Alwani, Georgia Weber and Scott Chantler have contributed their expertise to WBA’s creative development stream, among many others.
2
Business Development Stream
The business development stream sessions explore the multitude of ways aspiring and emerging artists engage in the funding, marketing and publishing side of a career in comics, exploring topics such as grant writing, creative law and crowdfunding. Artists and writers including Ryan North, Kat Simmers and Johanna Draper Carlson have presented in the business stream alongside publishers and editors from Renegade Arts Entertainment, Drawn & Quarterly, Conundrum and Silver Sprocket.
Who can attend WBA?
Anyone interested in learning more about the creative and business development side of comics. Whether you are starting out or have been working in comics for 10+ years, WBA is open to all current and future comics writers, artists, developers, publishers, editors, and other professionals.
Want to support TCAF and WBA another way?
Did you know that TCAF’s professional development programming which includes Libraries & Education Day (LED) and Word Balloon Academy (WBA) is the only FREE large scale public professional development programming around comics and graphic novels in Canada? And that our free professional programming is one of the only such initiatives in the world?
SUPPORT TCAF with a small one-time or regular donation.