The most boring post ever.

I am about to blog about the frustrations I have had with the file formating from my book. It will be boring. If you proceed take note that I did warn you.

When you are formating a book, particularly a comic book, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. I know what you're thinking. I can hear you sitting there in front of your monitor, thinking to yourself, "I already know to make my files at least 300dpi for print. I already know about using CMYK instead of RGB. Why are you telling me this again?"

Well, I'm not going to tell you again. (Did you see how I really did anyway? I thought that was clever.)

This has more to do with things that you might think are common sense. All those little common sense things that you are supposed to remember, but always forget, because it's just too much to keep in your head at once. And then when I mention these things (and don't tell me you won't do this because I know you will) you'll think, "Well that was obvious. How could he miss that?" (I must take care not to bludgeon my readers with this point.) And you'll have already forgotten the point, which I so carefully made in my previous parenthetical statements, about how the mind gets cluttered and confused when formatting comics, as well apparently as writing blog posts. But now I shall break for a cup of tea. (I've been reading Salinger recently, can you tell?)

So where was I? Ah yes, common sense. Little things like, keeping in mind how big you book will be when you start creating your pages, and Oh yes, leave room for margins, gutters and bleed (trust me dear reader, when all is said and done you won't have left enough). In particular, if you draw pages, proportions 9 x 16, and then draw a cover that is supposed to bleed, you need to keep in mind that the margins will make the cover larger and change the proportion of the image. You might think that the change would be insignificant. Margins are very small, after all.

If you think this you have deceived yourself.

Because, and when you think about it rationally it really is only common sense, a book which has oblong proportions will be irregularly changed in proportion when you add trim to it. This isn't true of a perfect square, but a book that is as wide as 16x9 will change, and very quickly. All of a sudden I found that the image was going to have to be cropped. And not just a little bit. A lot. Enough that I would lose my favorite robot off of the back cover. And I know, dear reader, that I have more than once quoted Oscar Wilde about his little darlings, but this time it was more than that. (Also note that words are more easily edited than pictures.) On top of this it would then also off center the title and the symmetry of the characters on the front page. This was too much to bear. So instead I went with a look that suggests the classic wide-screen-movie-on-a-standard-television-set and added some black bars to account for the funny margins.

I hope the reader will not delude himself to think that I am now done talking about formatting my pages for I am really just beginning. See the next problem was that the printer could not print the book as widely as I had wanted and now I had to chose whether or not I wanted to change how the book would be printed.

You see comic books are made by folding a single large sheet of paper in half and creating four pages (think front and back) out of a single sheet. But to do this, especially with pages that are (proportionately reduced) thirteen inches wide would require very large stock indeed, which could not, if you must know, be run on a standard copy and saddle stitch machine. So to do this I decided to print the book stitched along the top so that the pages would open top over bottom like a calendar. In order to make this work I had to change how I set up the files...

Wait. I think I must recant what I said about just beginning to talk about formatting for it occurs to me that you have all given up by now. In fact no one will have made it far enough even to read this.

Oh well.

Maybe someone out there cares about file formatting...

It depresses the hell out of me, I swear to god.

Sketchy Business.

Going from the thumbnail to the sketch is, for me, the hardest part of the process. In this step I have to resolve my issues with perspective, finalize all of the designs for everything that appears in the panel, and settle on the final composition for the scene. Also, this is the part where I need to be able to draw. Since this is such a big step in the process I may take several posts to cover it all. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

There are a few ways to go about doing this. One of them, which works only seldom, is to just go ahead and use your thumbnail sketch. Every other blue moon I spend enough time on a particular thumbnail study with my trusty Bic that I grow attached to it. This can be bad.

Oscar Wilde once said, "Sometimes you have to kill your little darlings." I think that often holds true with sketches, at any stage of the process. You can easily become attached to a sketch that has a good characteristic about it but is not compositionally sound or is not right for the scene. At these times, as much as you love your pretty little thumbnail, you have to take it out behind the shed with a shotgun. It's a tough choice, but that's what artists do. Artists make choices.

Every now and then you don't have to do this thing, and when one of those times comes around it is a kind day. I take this stellar pen study and I scan it onto my computer at home. Then I import it into Photoshop and I blow it up to the size that the panel will be. After this step I print it out and just use it in place of a sketch. All of my sketches wind up on computer paper one way or another. I then get to use my three-hole-punch (for future reference abbreviated 3HP) to collect them in a binder, the nefarious purpose of which we have already spoken.

Before I use my trusty 3HP though, I usually tape my sketches to the back of a sheet of bristol board, on which I have already drawn out my panel borders, and I place them on a light-box to be inked. After all that is what they are there for. But I digress.

In most cases I don't have that perfect thumbnail to work from. In truth you can only use thumbnails in panels where the subject matter may allow. You could not, for instance, use a thumbnail for an establishing shot. The reason for this is elementary. An establishing shot has far too much detail to be captured properly by a thumbnail. Thumbnails work well for figures or actions that are drawn in close, emphasizing character and motion over texture and detail. I also find myself using them for scenes of chaos, aka explosions, crashes, etc... because what you want for those images, more than anything, is dynamism. In order to get this effect you have to surrender some control, which is exactly what thumbnails take away.

In most cases, however, these specialized circumstances do not occur and it's time to bust out the pencils. I really didn't mean to run on this long about using thumbnails in stead of pencil sketches but there you have it. Welcome to the land where the tangent is king. Next time. I promise we'll get there next time.