Foldy Comics

Make a dynamic five-page zine with a single sheet of paper and no staples!

The Foldy Comic

Here’s a simple and novel approach to making a minicomic or zine that I recently introduced to a group of design students at Drexel University, where I’m a Rankin Scholar this fall as part of the Philly Comics Now show at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.

Me teaching foldy comics at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery a few weeks ago.

“The Five-Page Folded Minicomic” was first developed and promoted by cartoonist Kenan Rubenstein in the late 20th Century. Jessica and I incorporated it into our teaching at the School of Visual Arts back in the 00s.

The “foldy comic,” as I like to call it, is a one-person affair that teaches you a lot about the book form as a storytelling tool because it incorporates folding and changing size and orientation (portrait v. landscape) as well as straightforward cartooning (or graphic design, or poetry, or whatever you want to use it for.

The idea is that you fold a single sheet of 8 1/2” x 11” copy paper four times so that you end up with a little booklet of 2 1/8″ x 2 3/4″:

Fold a sheet of copy paper four times to make a foldy comic.

That smallest size is your cover.

When you open it, it doubles in size and you can draw two panels or a wide splash panel.

Open it again and you get a tall page (classic minicomic size, for those of you who think that way).

Open once again and you get a landscape, half-page canvas to work with.

Then you open up the sheet all the way to reveal the complete second side of the sheet, which could be anything from a splash-page to a dense, Chris Ware-inspired diagram.

The pages get bigger and change orientation at each page turn.

Note that when it is folded up, there is one “extra” page, the back cover. This is a perfect space to put your name and any info you want to share to help people find you if they like your work.

an assortment of foldy comics from our 2010-2011 Storytelling class at SVA. Clockwise from top: José Molestina, Lori Esposito, Lior Zaltzman, Tori Schweyer, & Sean Newman

As an artist, you need to reckon with the various constraints of this form and make them work in your favor to tell a story. Often, the unusual format will in part inform the content: what kinds of stories are prompted by the act of unfolding and/or the phenomena of doubling in size and teetering between vertical and horizontal?

Incidentally, this is also a good assignment to teach scanning and layout skills since you need to be able to straighten the images and make two files (in Photoshop, InDesign, or other programs) that can be printed double-sided so that the folds line up with the art.

Here’s one by a former student of mine, Sean Newman (SVA ’13), formatted for viewing on line. Note that he tweaked the format going into this by having his book start with a horizontal layout (easily understood by the orientation of the title):

The cover is also the first panel of the comic.

opening the booklet upward we get a large panel putting us on the spaceship.

The next, even larger, panel shows the bridge and suggests that all may not be normal...

Now a multiple panel sequence where the crew tries to make senes of their anomalous readings.

Unfolding the last fold you open this dramatic full page image showing the sorry fate of the hapless spaceship!

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Give It a Try!

The Foldy Comic is a fun activity that requires minimal materials to get started:

• 8 1/2” x 11” copy paper

• pencils

• erasers

• bone folder (optional)

To make a finished and printed foldy you will need more tools, depending on your set-up:

• drawing paper

• pen and ink

• tablet with drawing program

• scanner or photocopier

• printer that can print two-sided

Download my two-sided flyer here — feel free to share or use for your own classroom or comics workshop.

The basic steps are these:

• practice folding a blank sheet of paper following the diagram

• lightly pencil in the numbers of the pages, then unfold your sheet of paper: this is your dummy

• think about stories or situations that might involve something growing or moving through space or time

• pencil in your story on your dummy (don’t use pen at this point), paying attention to the orientation of the different pages

• put a title on the front cover and put your name and some kind of contact on the back

• test-read your foldy a few times. If you’re in a group, show them around and ask for feedback

• When you’re happy with your story, make your final art. This might mean:

  • inking directly on the dummy (though be careful of ink bleeding through)

  • copying your art on to two separate sheets of copy paper or drawing paper, then take your time polishing the pencils before inking (or using a darker pencil line or whatever you like)

  • remember to leave a margin around the edges of the sheet and also where the main folds are—you don’t want your art getting cropped off or accidentally wrapping around a fold

  • scan or photograph your dummy and import it into a drawing program of your choice

• Make a test print, either on a photocopier or by printing out a scan or a digital file.

  • making a 2-page pdf of your art is a good way to make it easy for printers to understand

  • you may need to switch the orientation of the second page, either in your pdf of in the printer settings

  • fold your comic and give it a test read

  • If everything checks out, print enough to share with your friends and collaborators!

As always, I’d love to see your work if you make one of these.

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Meanwhile, I hope you’ll share this post if you enjoyed it and feel free to leave a comment. See you soon.

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My collection of constrained comics, Six Treasures of the Spiral: Comics Formed Under Pressure, is full of great experimental comics of mine as well as notes and ideas for making your own.

Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, calling it “an instant classic.” (Read the whole review here.)

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