Easy Comic Drawings for Mini Comic Books

Here's a step-by-step demo for building an 8-page Quarter-Fold mini-comic "master copy." You can then photocopy the "master" to self-publish your own mini-comic!

JUMP TO: Reduction | Folding | Numbering | Taping Up | VIDEO VERSION >>

• MATERIALS:
  • 8 pages of artwork (P*I.E. full size on standard-size copier paper)
  • blank paper
  • pencil
  • scissors
  • masking tape
  • (photocopier / scanner or some other way to reduce the artwork 50%)
• FINAL PRODUCT: MASTER COPY of short booklet collecting 8 single pages by 1 artist or multiple artists.
• FORMAT: Quarter-Fold Mini (8 pages)

This work is PATRON-POWERED!

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1. REDUCING ARTWORK

We'll begin with the original full-size pages (A, left), and shrink them down 50% on a photocopier/scanner (B, center = part of a "4 ON 1" page):

Here are 8 pages by 8 different students, reduced to 50% size (single-sided / 4 per sheet):

NOTE: Since our demo artwork pages are all WIDE ("landscape"), we'll build our demo booklet WIDE as well. To make a TALL ("portrait") format booklet for tall artwork pages, simply follow these instructions holding all your pages TALL instead of WIDE.

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2. FOLDING THE MASTER

Setting aside those reductions, we'll start building the master with a single blank sheet:

Fold the top half of the sheet down:

Fold the left half over the right, book-style:

The resulting booklet won't quite open up, due to the fold across the tops of its pages:

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3. NUMBERING PAGES

With a pencil, number the pages of this booklet 1-8, starting on the outside front cover:

The booklet doesn't fully open, so on pages 2-3 and 6-7 we'll have to slip our hand in & be sure to get those numbers right-side-up on the page:

Opening up the sheet, we can see that page numbers 1-8 are distributed in a pattern across the quadrants of this 2-sided master.

I like to put a "secret mark" on the spine of the book. See the star (*) between pages 8 & 1 below; This makes it easier to spot the cover & fold the booklet correctly:

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4. "TAPING UP" = LAYING OUT BOOKLET PAGES

Now we'll carefully cut out our pages, trimming along all four sides of the artwork to remove margin areas:

We'll put our pages in order and make sure they're all there… Then we'll start by making a small roll of masking tape & sticking it in the center of page 1:

Find the "1" on the master sheet, center p.1 on it, and press down to affix the tape roll:

In this example, we don't have a cover page — So I've selected a page of student artwork with space for a title at the top. I'll paste in a simple "CLASS COMICS" title like so:

Alternatively, one of the artists might design a cover page. Note that the cover page is always part of the total page count (here, 8 pages).

Flipping the master around, we'll affix page 2 to its spot in the booklet:

Note that all pages will align to their number in the booklet, so page 3 will go "upside-down" to align with the underscored 3 :

Affix all the pages to their places, then open up the master like so:

Note that I've added website contact info (www.MarekBennett.com) to the booklet's spine, just above the "secret mark"…

READY TO COPY?

Bring this MASTER to a photocopier to print as many copies as you need of your book (@ size, 2-sided).

The resulting copies will need to be folded, stapled, & trimmed across the top. (This is a fun activity to do with friends!)

IMPORTANT: NEVER staple & trim your master — You may need it to make more copies someday soon!

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Easy Comic Drawings for Mini Comic Books

Source: https://marekbennett.com/2021/05/24/quarter-fold-mini-comic-8-page-master/

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