Some people are crafty, some aren't (i.e. me). It's the way of the world. But taking a cue from Mantastic Crafter Patrick Murillo, I'm training in the art, and hoping to work my way up to
something truly mantastic, all while trying to avoid what Murillo calls a "craftastrophe."
I felt my creative muscles start to stretch this week crafting with Murillo; heck, I felt like I was about to have a creative hernia.
Case in point: this week's project, a zine-style comic booklet.
Like a few of the other projects we've tackled so far in the Crafting like a Man series, this craft combines several skills (none of which I have) into one final product: In this case, a documentation of a story, joke, etc..
As I learned with Murillo's stenciled T-shirt project, an unexpected problem in the crafting profession is writer's block. I had trouble thinking up a phrase to stick on a T-shirt, now I have to throw together an 8-page booklet?
Murillo doesn't have the same problem, and gets cracking right away. I dive into the crafting pool too, and just about drown.
1. Start by taking a standard sheet of white paper and folding it three times, first length-wise, then width-wise, then length-wise again. This should create eight even boxes that will becomes your story panels.
2. Then, using a precision cutting knife, cut a slit along the center of the paper, spanning two boxes.
Now, you should start putting together at least a general idea of what your booklet will be about. After that, there's two ways to go about creating it: You can draw or pillage a magazine.
If you suck at drawing, go with the cutting. If you suck at cutting, go with the drawing. If you suck at both, we should hang out, because we have a lot in common.
I went with cutting from magazines.
3. Fold your paper length-wise, then pinch both ends and push them together, so it creates the eight-page booklet (including covers). Mark page numbers, one through eight, then unfold it again. It makes drawing and gluing easier.
4. Then, start cutting out pictures from magazines that fit with your story. Mine was about a lion telling a joke to a Jackalope; I used drawn-in word bubbles for dialogue. Murillo used quotes from magazine interviews to tell a story.
5. Once you've added what you want (and in the right sequence) to the pages, you're all set.
My final product came out a little bit surreal, since I wasn't sure exactly where I was going with it as I was laying down pictures. On top of that, there's something off to me about cutting up words from magazines and putting them on paper -- a little too ransom-note-esque.
Once we were finished Murillo and I picked up scraps of the magazines and threw them into a cardboard box that doubles as Murillo's trash can. I joke with him that next week he's going to have the trashcan turned into a robot. He laughed, but I'm still not going to be surprised... until next time...
