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How to Make Comic Books at Home

Comic books can be used to tell a story in a wide range of genres, to communicate information on any number of topics or to simply have some fun. While professional comic books found in stores go through a months-long process from initial creation to the retail racks, making your own comic book at home can be fast and fun. Professional comics also follow strict formats, which you are more than welcome to completely ignore when creating your own.

Things You'll Need

  • Blank white paper
  • Pencil
  • Colored pencils (optional)
  • Stapler (optional)
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Instructions

  1. Your Imagination Is the Limit

    • 1

      Fold one sheet of blank paper in half, horizontally. Turn the paper on its side so the fold is to your left and the opening is to your right. This fold is called the spine.

      You now have the basic structure for a four-page comic book. If you'd like to have more pages, simply fold more pieces of paper and insert the folded portion into the opening of your original piece until the spines line up. You'll note that your page count will increase by four every time you add a folded piece of paper. The first page is called the front cover.

    • 2

      Make up a story and write it down on another sheet of paper. Use this as a guide when creating your comic book.

    • 3

      Create your front-cover artwork. Normally, you'd want to have an image here that grabs the attention of anyone reading it. While most comic covers have hand-drawn artwork, feel free to cut out pictures from magazines to put here if that suits your needs. Make sure to leave the top third of the page open for your logo.

    • 4

      Put the logo at the top of the cover. A logo is the title of your book. This can also be hand drawn or created using letters cut out from something else.

    • 5

      Create your interior art. Open up the book to page one and draw in your story. Comic books tell stories in panels, which are small boxes containing different images. You can create as few as one panel or, easily, as many as nine panels.

    • 6

      Continue the interior art creation until you've filled the book with your entire story.

    • 7

      Go back and write in your dialogue, narration and sound effects as called for in your story. Dialogue is normally placed in word balloons, with the tails pointing to the speaker. Narration is normally in caption boxes, and sound effects are usually drawn right on top of the image the sound is coming from---so feel free to get creative with noises.

    • 8

      Use colored pencils to color in your comic, if you so choose. Otherwise, leave it black and white.

    • 9

      If you've added more than one sheet of paper, staple the fold to ensure the inside pages don't fall out.

      You're now done. Read your comic and share it with friends and family.

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