Where do I print books?

Hi Folks!

My book “Parts of Us” is here! I finally got the chance to take some silly photos. I used my old Nikon d90 for this, like all of merchandising photography, and did some quick gentle color balancing to fix some of the colors. But I’m stunned! The blues came out so vibrant, which I did not expect with a digital printer. Maybe technology and paper has been getting better, or maybe I never use very bright colors in my work! (The latter is very true.)

Parts of Us book sitting on a table
Interior shot of the Parts of Us book

Printing!

This is my third time printing through this company, and I’m happy with the quality again! They’re on top of things in terms of making books, and they provide a nice low quantity for independent artists.

The company is called MIXAM and they have locations in the UK and in the US from my knowledge. They have a great turn around time, and amazing paper stock options. Things to note however: I have a decent library of printing knowledge and have experience with printing books. So I typically have a good time with any printer, but I think MIXAM excels at having a print on demand calculator which includes shipping estimates. This way, people can figure out what days they have to turn in their files in order for them to get their books on time for a convention or an online store. (This is called Lead Time.)

I do use my comics template when I print through them, however I also use Photoshop for Prepress and InDesign for Page Layout.

This is the technical part of the blog: For those of you wondering, printing is the main reason why I tell folks to be cautious with my template. It is a slightly bigger size than your typical 8.5x5.5” format, which gives some wiggle room, but can lead to some extra drawing that wont show up if you don’t pay attention. I think the template has an issue with calculating gutter space.

Here’s an example of a page in InDesign.

The brownish boarder indicates the full page size, and you can see it extending slightly past the bleed on the left, but extends into the other page pretty far.

It’s because the way the inDesign document is formatted doesn’t account for gutter bleed. Which is so tricky and depends on the individual printer if they include it or not.

But I’m still in the process of tinkering with this template, and it’s all very very technical!

TLDR: Be careful toward the edges of the comic template if you ever use it! Or you might regret it!

Thanks for reading!

August Books and Cons

Hi folks!

Things have been slow due to that big heat wave that has been happening. At least on my end, I really wanted to get another blog post out before the end of July, but I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep when I can.

Convention Season

I’m so afraid of cons still, but I’m taking my precautions. I will be at:

  • ECCC - August 18 - 21

  • BCAF - September 16 - 18

  • MICE - October 22 - 23

  • SHORTRUN - November 5

These conventions I have purposefully selected to be about 1.5 to 2 weeks apart, this way I can test and quarantine properly between each show and make sure that I wont be endangering anyone else in case I do catch COVID. I’ll have hand sanitizer at my table and will be equipped with my new Flo Mask (this is an external link)!!!

Artist with glasses wearing Flo Mask

Little review on the mask: My limited use of it so far has been extremely great. This is the first mask that felt like I could both breathe in and feel completely secure due to the mini suction from the soft silicone lining. It was mighty expensive, with the added Halo strap accessory since my head is small… but it’s been fairly worth it. I’m no longer breathing directly into my filters and being heard isn’t difficult either because there’s space between your mouth and the filter! Also the little notches that hold your glasses?! So amazing…

My zine version of Parts of Us will be arriving in the next few days! I will take a few pictures and probably talk about the process of printing the book (and who I get them printed through). I will also be hopefully updating my frequently with some convention merch I’ll be producing. Maybe I can make a members only store for people to purchase some exclusive stuff??? I’ll hopefully get to see the full potential of this Members Only Area!

Hope you all have been hanging in there. Let me know here or in the comments if there’s anything particular you’d like to see more of!

Parts of Us is getting Printed and Life Update!

Hi folks!

A little blog update about how things have been going! Thank you to everyone who has subscribed so far, I hope you have been enjoying the gentle updates this month. I’m still figuring out new tutorial material for the next month, but I have been making some artwork while the month of July has been chugging along.

Here are the UPDATES!

There is a new, tiny timelapse in the downloads section! Check that out!

Parts of Us is getting a print run! It’s been so long, but I’ve finally had a chance to set up my book for self publishing. It’s crazy to think that a few years have already passed since I made this short for ELEMENTS: EARTH, and I had already forgotten how to draw the main character, Aviva. I haven’t colored in what feels like a long time, so this was a great exercise to get back into it.

These are just some process pictures (which you can kind of see how my previous tutorial influences my covers too), hope you enjoy!

Glad that square space allows a slideshow view, because it’s awesome to see how a piece progresses without having to upload a timelapse! Yeehaw!

Other than this, I am going to be working on some new stickers soon and a SECRET PROJECT! This secret project will take up some of my time the next few months on top of doing this blog and other odd jobs, but if everything works out, it could be life changing for me. I hope you all will cheer me on if it ever works out. I’ll also see if I can work with my client to allow you all to get first looks and exclusive updates!

How I tone my comics - Composition and Balance

Hi folks,


Following up on the last post, this post is more specifically geared toward how I balance my pages in my comics. This kind of thinking can also be applied to illustration work as well, but the examples I have below are pieces from my most recent comic pages, because I feel that my comics require a little more complexity in flow and legibility than my single illustrations needs to convey.

What am I looking at?

My brain! Sort of! When working on a page, I always imagine my work in large blocks of black and white, and then after, I add tones to further push the composition and give areas some additional clarity. This preplanning allows me to not worry so much about balancing my pages toward the finishing stages.

So what kind of large blocks of black and white do I think of? Well, these are some of the basic shapes I find myself drawn to!

As you can see, each box has a different focus, and it’s not necessarily based on lighting. It’s more about the silhouette and composition. Here are some quick sketches that utilize some of these ideas.

One other important factor to my work is that I tend to allow characters and objects blend into the large blocks of black/tones. I don’t mind if details get cut out, and I avoid the “white halo” effect as much as possible. It’s a case by case basis, but it’s very lovely when you have a composition/silhouette built with the spot black in mind.

Practice

Here’s a little exercise that I used to do when I visited Museums frequently. I would take my pen and block out paintings very quickly in my sketchbook to capture their composition in black and white. It helped me figure out not only lighting of a piece, but reimagine the paintings in shapes.

The example piece below is by Thomas Chambers. I thought the artwork was stunning and had amazing shapes, so I wanted to break it down as fast as I could.

There isn’t much to say between each step that I hadn’t already explained, but I hope this helps you all think of your work in shapes! Try this out on your favorite artwork if you’re feeling stuck, or on a movie still that really captured your eye. Keep it simple and fast. Good luck!

How I tone my comics - It's complicated!

Hi folks!

Today, I’m going to cover how I generally do Black and White toning in my comics.

When I was participating in an Original Character Tournament ( abbreviated as OCT ), I had created a quick guide on how I process my tones. It was something to help folks get into comics, but it wasn’t a very comprehensive guide that covered the logic behind my choices. I wasn’t very happy with it, so it has now become this relic that people pass around between friends.

I finally set aside some time to edit this thing, hopefully it looks okay!

The logic between the steps are mostly for printing purposes. In printing, there’s a certain point where a printing past a specific darkness or lightness will end up being black or white. I’ve found that anything under 10% black and over 70% black makes negligible differences on how the printer sees those tones.

When I work, I always think of my art as a product to be printed, even if I don’t. But this kind of thinking gives me a safety net in case I decide to print it, and it allows me to imagine how my comics might look on different monitors. Because every screen is so different, someone with a cheaper monitor might not get to see the full range of tones and hues as other folks, and might make my work look dark or muddy. This is a small prevention measure for myself.

That’s cool, but how do I use this?

If you’re not worried about printing, you could just potentially just use the eyedropper on the provided tones. It will give you a direction on how you should tone your comics by limiting how many steps you get. I do this for a lot of my doodles, because I know I’m not printing it and am simply practicing.

Okay, but I am worried about printing my zine/comic. How should I go about this.

If you’re an indie artist, then even if you don’t prepress your comic entirely correctly, most printers nowadays can handle it. ( Sorry to all my printmaker friends…this is my big opinion. )

It’s not ideal for your quality, but it will get the job done and most readers don’t notice there’s any issues with the comic ( unless it’s too dark, but hopefully this guide will prevent that 😉 ).

Let’s revisit this part of the image, shall we?

Before you tone, you can make separate layers with different percentages. That’s why the numbers are on the guide! It’s the opacity! Doing it this way gives you faster editability, and if you hire a prepress person to touch your files in the future, you’ll make their lives easier.

There’s some more steps to ensure the quality of the print, but maybe a topic for another time…

While I am not an expert at printing or prepress, this book from Iron Circus is an excellent resource for those who want to know how intense book production is. You can learn a lot about how to think in terms of print and taking control over your quality!

I have provided a sample page from my comic SOFTLEAD. I had printing in mind while working on it, and thus I created layers with the techniques I explained in this post!

Clip Studio Paint - How to make a comic page? [Bleed, Trim, Margins, Safe Are

Hi folks!

TO START THIS OFF, THIS IS A VERY OUTDATED TEMPLATE. If you use this template, it will be up to you to adjust it accordingly. Prepress gurus, look away!

CSP has different terminology for setting up their pages, and while some people do not bother putting in all the measurements for their comic pages, I heavily rely on certain features that make my comic making faster. So the set up portion is very important. Regardless if a client provides me a template, I take the time to match the template numbers while making a new project (along with a little trial and error).

So I want to create a quick overview of what certain things mean when creating a new comic page.

I will be using my 8.5 x 5.5” custom template as the example.

Canvas

  • Width and Height here is the entire page size.

  • So imagine if this is your 11x17 piece of paper that you will start marking down the measurements on.

  • I stick to around 450-600 dpi for my comics.

Binding (Finish) Size

  • This is what people consider the trim. This is what the final size of the book (when completed) will be.

  • You can add the bleed in the Bleed section as well! GREAT! However, it only does two digit decimals. Not great. I advise folks who do a 0.125” bleed to round up to .13”

Default Border (Inner) Size

  • This is what people typically call the safe area.

  • Each publicist will have their own idea of margins and safe areas, because every printer operates differently! So if you take your files to one printer, and then to the next, they might have completely different needs. It’s very annoying and very scary, but it’s just how it is!

  • Offsetting X and Y comes in handy because you can make space for the gutter, which CSP will automatically consider when you work in Storymode (an EX feature).

And that’s the basics!

A lot of this wont make sense until you try it out yourself. For good practice, look up a basic comics template and try inputting measurements and tinkering with it yourself.

In my member’s downloads, I’ve also included my very very in “Work In Progress” 8.5 x 5.5” Zine Template. I’ve never released this one to the public because it still has some issues I hope to resolve in the future (example: printing can sometimes result in the art being too close to the gutter, or when importing to inDesign, I can lose some detail along the edges). Overall, I’m confident that if you stay WITHIN the safe area, your printing will work out fine. I can’t guarantee anything though, and ALWAYS consult with your printer.

If you can, please use it with caution as it is not a bullet proof template. So please resist the urge to share this one!


If you have any questions about the template, let me know! Have fun making comics!