CNet's Seth Rosenblatt interviews Al Jaffee, the MAD Magazine legend who created "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and the back-page Fold-In, and mentions the mouth-watering Fold-In complete boxed set books, woah.
How do you make a Fold-In? Do you use a computer? We could see it being complicated.
Al Jaffee: I don't do anything digitally. Although, if I was much younger and could work with Photoshop, it would cut my time drastically. I paint in gouache and watercolor, and you can't easily paint over in watercolor. So I have to pretty much nail everything down mentally. I've been doing this so long that I don't even bother with color sketches; I can visualize the colors throughout.
I do a lot of preliminary sketches, and the one I just did for next issue took 10 times the number of usual sketches. They're done roughly on 8.5-inch by 11-inch bond paper. Then when a final sketch is approved [by editorial] I go to work and do the painting.
In pencil, I draw the answer first, which is half a page vertically, then I put a sheet of tracing paper over it and draw the middle. Then I put it on an illustration board and trace it. After I finish the board, I don't see a final copy until I get the magazine. The editors scan it in and make minor corrections digitally. They send a digital version to the printer.
This particular one didn't take me as long as others have, because a lot of it is typesetting. And I only had one figure in the middle of it. But the usual time is about a week for the artwork, and then I have to do the copy.
