A guide for families
How to make a comic book with your child, on one sheet of paper
One sheet of paper, a few folds and one small cut make a little book with eight pages: a front cover, six pages of comic and a back. Print Peabody's 8-page mini comic template (Letter or A4, with the folding steps drawn), or use any plain sheet and the steps below.
Start here: The 8-page mini comic template · Checked
Plan it in six pages
Six inside pages is a good size for a first comic: long enough for a real story, short enough to finish in an afternoon. A plan that works:
- Page 2: meet the main character, and where they are.
- Page 3: they want something.
- Page 4: something gets in the way.
- Page 5: they try, and it goes wrong.
- Page 6: they try again, a new way.
- Page 7: it works, or something funny happens instead.
Page 1 is the cover, with the title and the maker's name. Page 8, the back, can be a joke, a "The End" or a drawing of the character waving.
Draw it while the paper is flat
The trick of a mini comic is that you draw before you fold. On the template, the top row of four pages is printed upside down, because the fold turns it the right way up. Turn the paper round to draw that row instead of drawing upside down.
Big simple drawings work best: each page is small. One panel a page is plenty for a young child; an older one might split a page into two. Draw in pencil, then go over the lines in pen, and write the words before drawing the bubble round them so they fit.
A grown-up can be the letterer: the child says what the character says, and the grown-up writes it small and neat in the bubble. The story stays the child's.
Fold, cut and fold again
The template's second page draws each step. In words, the same six steps:
- Fold the page in half the long way, top to bottom. Open it again.
- Fold it in half the short way, then in half again. Open it: eight boxes.
- Fold it in half the short way. Cut along the middle line, from the fold to the next crease. Only that far!
- Open it. Fold it in half the long way again, with the drawings on the outside.
- Hold the two ends and push them together. The cut opens up into a plus.
- Fold it flat into a book, with the front cover on top. You made a comic book!
The cut is the only sharp part; a grown-up can do it, along the one middle line and no further.
The first one is often a little crooked. That is part of its charm, and the second is always neater.
When it's finished
Read it aloud together, then give it away: mini comics make good presents for a grandparent or a friend, and they fit in an envelope. For more paper to draw on, the template pack has strips, pages and cut-out bubbles. A child who would rather tap than draw can make a comic page in the Comic Studio, which keeps it on your device and prints it, and Make a comic has the rest.