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This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
So much of what we talk about here is aimed at improvement — improving the quality of our work, improving the effectiveness of our online business, improving our ability to promote, etc. — that I thought it would be useful to talk about some habits that every cartoonist could adopt to foster that improvement. I think this holds true for beginners as well as veterans. These are all areas of our craft that become crucial as time wears on. And they’re areas that even hardened pros can lose track of.
Set a deadline and stick to itTime management is key. I actually found it easier to manage my time when I had less of it. When I had a day job, the time I had to spend on my comic was clearly defined and severely limited. So, if I was going to have a comic, it was crucial that I exploit every minute that was available to me. Having made the transition to full-time cartooning, I can confirm that my biggest enemy has been procastination. I’ve since become a strong proponent of setting deadlines and adhering to them strongly. This is one of those things in which it’s so easy to let yourself off the hook.
Except… letting yourself off the hook only gets you in over your head.
I saw a strong improvement in my writing when I built time into my work schedule for re-writes. I try to re-write every strip at least twice, making significant changes every time. When I look back at my old writing, I see concepts and gags that could have been pushed so much further — they could have been so much better — if I had just forced myself deeper into the writing process.
I see it in the Hot Seat critiques all of the time. We stop at clever when brilliant is just a couple of drafts away.
After writing itself, I’d say that lettering is the next-most-important aspect of a comic. It’s crucial. If your lettering is illegible — or if the balloons read in the wrong order — you may as well be posting blank comics. If you’re not getting a little obsessive over your lettering, you’re probably making some really dumb mistakes. And it’s those mistakes that are preventing your comic from living up to its full potential.
I chose the wording for the title of this part very carefully. Partly because social media can be a razor-sharp double-edged sword. Certainly, social media has tremendous powers of viral marketing, but it can also be a time sink. The time you spend of social media is an important part of your work day. But all too often, it becomes an obstruction to the workday. Post, promote and engage. But resist the urge to lose yourself for hours in the throes of kitten videos and (often) futile ideological crusades. That’s time (and passion) that’s better funneled into your comics.
Stop comparing yourself to other cartoonists. There’s always going to be someone who draws better than you. There’s always going to be someone who writes better; whose traffic is higher; whose social-media reach is greater; who gets more attention/press; and so on. Their lives are so much better when you read their tweets. They’re making so much more money than you are.
Stop comparing yourself. For two reasons.
First, you’re not getting the whole story. That Big Book Deal that the other person signed? You don’t know whether the advance amounted to much more than minimum wage. And you don’t know what the royalties are going to be like. Don’t be too quick to jump to jealousy. Your $1,000 Kickstarter might have netted you more than their $10,000 campaign, once all the dust settles. And, let’s face it, everyone tweets when they buy their new car. No one tweets about missing a payment. For the most part, your understanding of a person’s life, when taken through social media, is skewed at best – a fun-house mirror at worst.
And secondly, there’s always going to be someone better. Always. Let’s say that you’re quantifiably the best cartoonist on the Web today. I guarantee, there’s somebody better arriving tomorrow. And there is no such thing as “best cartoonist.” No best writer. No best businessperson. No best artist.
There’s only one “best.”
Best you.
If you’re focusing on being the best YOU — and letting all of those other people take their bows (and take their lumps) — I guarantee your work will take a tremendous leap. Because trying to defeat an ever-changing roster of opponents is impossible. Concentrating on yourself rather than others is the truest path towards better work. Let’s face it, it’s the only battle you have a hope to win.
Hiring a colorist is one of the smartest things I ever did. And I’ve worked with two of the best — Ed Ryzowski and Alex Heberling.
Recently a Webcomics.com member asked how he could check his colorist’s work — to make sure it would look good when it was printed. My first impulse was to get a look at the original PSD file — with the layers activated. By colorists are reticent to release their original files — for fear of a well-intentioned collaborator going into the file and trying to change things. So many colorists only release a flattened TIFF file.
Luckily, Alex Heberling, who does a marvelous job of coloring my stuff, stepped in to share her expertise. With her permission, I’m publishing that information here for the greater membership who may not have been following the forum discussion.
 This post has been submitted by Webcomics.com member Alex Heberling, creator of The Hues and colorist for Evil Inc. |
From Alex:
I can offer some tips for checking over the flattened files. First, if you open this TIFF in Photoshop, you’ll see in the little document tab that it’s saved in CMYK color. So far, so good.
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Does this happen to you as often as it happens to me? You drag a bunch of files to the Preview app so you can view them all at the same time, and it opens them up in the wrong order.
It’s actually an easy fix, but you have to know where to look!
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
This is the first installment in the current Hot Seat series. This time, we’re focusing on greeting cards — including, but not limited to, holiday cards.
As always, this is only the beginning of the discussion. Members are encouraged to share their thoughts on the matter in the comments below.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
One of the things I hate about making files for my readers to download on their Kindle Fire tablets is that they look awful! For some reason, Kindle doesn’t take the first page of the PDF (or MOBI file) and make it the default cover — the way iOS handles it. Nah, they just give you a generic, white file icon, with the beginning of the filename, written unceremoniously across it.
Blurg.
Luckily, there’s a snazzy workaround.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
You don’t need a subscription to read today’s post!
This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
So, what does aliasing mean, anyway? Strictly speaking, thisa digital method of making graphics and text (especially text) appear smoother and sharper by resampling the edges at a lower resolution. Here’s an example (click on it to see the image enlarged):
• The line on the left is aliased — meaning it is solely comprised of solid pixels (black, in this case).
• The line on the right is anti-aliased — meaning the edge has been slightly obscured with grey pixels.
As in the case, the answer is subjective — provided the resolution is high enough.
That’s key, by the way. Aliased lines (and type) don’t look so hot at low resolutions. They tend to look jagged.
The same goes for type. If you remove the anti-aliasing from type, it will look very jagged on your screen. Provides you’re working at a high enough resolution, however, it will print fine. Many of the Evil Inc graphic novels were printed using aliased (jagged) type at 300 dpi. The only time the jaggedness became noticeable was when I enlarged the files. At 100% — and even reduced — the type and lines looked perfectly sharp. In the cases in which I used anti-aliased lines and art, I didn’t notice a loss of sharpness — and I was able to get away with a little bit of enlargement (again, at 300 dpi).
ANALOG ART, USING ALIASED ART
If you’re scanning in black-and-white lineart, you’ll want to make your initial scan at least 600 dpi. Higher, if you can manage.
Scan in bitmap, black-and-white or lineart mode. If these aren’t available, scan in Grayscale mode and do the following:
• Do the original scan in grayscale (or, barring that, color mode — and then in Photoshop, switch to grayscale).
• Once you’ve completed the initial scan, open the file in Photoshop.
• Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold
• You can play with the slider, but I generally set mine between 110 and 130.
What Threshold does is assign every pixel one of two values: 100% black or 100% white. As of now — technically — you have a bitmap image. That slider merely sets the value of gray that will be used as the cut-off point between the two values. In other words, all of the grays that are lighter than that point will become white and everything that is darker will become black.
It looks jaggy on your screen, but as long as you’re working at a high resolution, it will print just fine.
By the way, if you want to save this file as a master copy of the b&w lineart, do a Save As, go to Image -> Mode -> Bitmap and save as a TIFF. Like I said, you basically created a bitmap file, saving in bitmap mode crunches that file size down to practically nothing, and makes it easy to archive your b&w master files without taking up much space. Just remember to convert it back to grayscale if you ever go back to it to edit it or add color.
To color these kinds of files:
• Switch to RGB or CMYK mode — depending on your process.
• Duplicate the lineart and save that on a higher level. Choose Darken for that level and lock it. That’s your lineart level.
• Name the lower clone “Color” and do your coloring there. If you turn off anti-aliasing on the fill bucket tool, you’ll see that the colors run right up to the edge of the line (with no unsightly border between the two).
ANALOG ART, USING ANTI-ALIASED ART
Again, make your initial scan at least 600 dpi. Higher, if you can manage.
You could scan in Grayscale mode and proceed to the coloring step. However, in my own work, I chose to alias the lineart:
• Do the original scan in grayscale (or, barring that, color mode — and then in Photoshop, switch to grayscale).
• Once you’ve completed the initial scan, open the file in Photoshop.
• Go to Image -> Adjustments -> Threshold
• You can play with the slider, but I generally set mine between 110 and 130.
What Threshold does is assign every pixel one of two values: 100% black or 100% white. As of now — technically — you have a bitmap image. That slider merely sets the value of gray that will be used as the cut-off point between the two values. In other words, all of the grays that are lighter than that point will become white and everything that is darker will become black.
Same as before, if you want to save this file as a master copy of the b&w lineart, do a Save As, go to Image -> Mode -> Bitmap and save as a TIFF. Like I said, you basically created a bitmap file, saving in bitmap mode crunches that file size down to practically nothing, and makes it easy to archive your b&w master files without taking up much space. Just remember to convert it back to grayscale if you ever go back to it to edit it or add color.
To color these kinds of files:
• Switch to RGB or CMYK mode — depending on your process.
• Duplicate the lineart and save that on a higher level. Choose Darken for that level and lock it. That’s your lineart level.
• Name the lower clone “Color” and do your coloring there. However, instead of using the Fill Bucket tool, you’ll want to use a version of the Photoshop Action described in this post.
DIGITAL ART, ALIASED
To get an aliased line in a digital piece, choose the pencil tool instead of the brush tool. To color:
• Switch to RGB or CMYK mode — depending on your process.
• Duplicate the lineart and save that on a higher level. Choose Darken for that level and lock it. That’s your lineart level.
• Name the lower clone “Color” and do your coloring there. If you turn off anti-aliasing on the fill bucket tool, you’ll see that the colors run right up to the edge of the line (with no unsightly border between the two).
DIGITAL ART, ANTI-ALIASED
To get an aliased line in a digital piece, choose the brush tool instead of the pencil tool. To color:
• Switch to RGB or CMYK mode — depending on your process.
• Duplicate the lineart and save that on a higher level. Choose Darken for that level and lock it. That’s your lineart level.
• Name the lower clone “Color” and do your coloring there. However, instead of using the Fill Bucket tool, you’ll want to use a version of the Photoshop Action described in this post.
Which is best? That depends on what you’re looking for in the art. For me, since I work digitally, I prefer the anti-aliased look. Remember, those Frenden brushes everybody loves are mostly brush tools — not pencil tools. In other words, they rely on anti-aliasing to deliver the intended effects.
When I was drawing by hand, I definitely favored scanning in at a huge resolution and aliasing the text line art. However, it has to be noted that as soon as I reduced the file to 300 dpi to add the colors, I introduced a certain amount of anti-aliasing. And reducing it for the Web introduced even more anti-aliasing. However, if I was scanning in lineart with the sole intention of print, I would scan in the image at the final resolution — and aliased — and then make use of the speed advantages of filling areas with color using the Fill Bucket tool.
I wanted to make a quick-and-easy PDF with the images I’ve been creating for my Patreon supporters. Of course, I could use this handy trick to do it through Adobe InDesign, but I wanted to know if there was an even easier way to do it!
There were a couple! And one of them opened the door to all kinds of possibilities that I had been unaware of!
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The results of the most recent Webcomics.com poll are in, and it seems that the overwhelming majority of us are choosing against offering special holiday-themed merchandise.
Here are the breakdowns, and a few thoughts:
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
This is the first installment in the current Hot Seat series. This time, we’re focusing on greeting cards — including, but not limited to, holiday-cards.
As always, this is only the beginning of the discussion. Members are encouraged to share their thoughts on the matter in the comments below.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
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