Saturday, September 19, 2009

Mini Comics Part 1: Tips & Tricks

First off, those who are going to SPX need to get their deposit to me or Pat so that we can buy the bus tickets. It's not cool for me to be charging all this money to my credit card through my own expenses if I'm not gonna get reimbursed. At least call Pat at 732-770-0560. Please? I don't want to have to be a meanie and say that people can't go. :(

Anyway, on to other stuff...I thought I would do a bit about Mini-Comics in celebration of the upcoming cons. Now you probably won't have time to get to actually use any of these techniques/gimmicks before the cons, but I thought I'd share some interesting things I've found over the years for ideas to do in the future. ^__^

This will be in two parts...this part is for people who know the basics, and the next part I'll make a walkthrough of steps to making a Mini in the Digital Imaging Center (DIC) located on the 6th floor of the main building. (I want to take pictures for that, which is why I'm doing it all opposite..lol sorry, I commute and can't get there right now!) ^_^;;; Mainly for people who missed my tutorial, and for a reference place. :)

SO Part 1: Techniques and Gimmicks!

Mainly this is going to be links to site's I've come across that are useful. :)

How to Make a Mini Comic: Basically a review of the technique of actually making one, kinda technical jargon but a good reference. I will go through this in detail next post on how to do it at our school, and how to make the most of your tuition money! :D

How to Embellish a Mini Comic: While not the most innovative, these are the basic techniques used to make a mini comic stand out a bit more. Covers things like ribbon binding, cutouts, different sizes, and utilizing color.

How to do Japanese Stab Binding: This lady is a bore to listen to, but she lays out and illustrates a pretty interesting way to bind books and does so very clearly. You can create some beautiful books with this technique if you are willing to put in the time. Certainly looks better than staples! :)

An Innovative Binding Technique: When I found this, I was just giddy with excitement. This guy figured out a poor man's way to do a perfect bound look to a mini-comic! I imagine it would be better to use with a longer comic, but how he used a sleeve, and the 3-books-in-one ploy is just genius here. Couple it with the beautiful silkscreening, and you're golden.

Silkscreening is a wonderful technique to know, and if I knew how to do it I'd be sure to tell you all about it. Luckily, we have a wonderful silkscreen class here at SVA, but you probably won't be able to take it until Senior year, maybe Junior if you want to invest the time for the 5-hr class. (I think they started having one Freshman year too?) Regardless, in order to do it you need the tools, but our silkscreen lab is open to students if you pay the lab fee I believe. It's not hard to do, but you just have to have the means to do it. It is widely popular in mini comics though, and eventually you should learn how to do it or find a printer who will let you use their lab. :)

Other sites of note for ideas:

A Mini Comic blog: If you want some more ideas on what you can do with them, this site often has some interesting comic ideas and you can see what others do to make their comics stand out.

APE: The Comics Reporter: Kind of technical jargon on how to make a mini-comic, but it lists some good sites that you can look into if you want to professionally sell and/or publish your mini comic. APE is like SPX, but it's too far away for our school to go to. :(


I'll be sure to take pictures of innovative comics or buy them and interesting new techniques artists come up with at SPX. It's the epicenter of innovative comic making, and new methods pop up every year. It's very exciting, and I'm looking forward to sharing the loot! ^__^


Okay, I guess that's it for now...I'm pretty sure I could go on and on, but I'll leave that for later. Hope you found this interesting at least!

- Allison Strejlau, V.P, CA.

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