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akitsukino
Jul '22
1

Just pretty curious. Whenever I think about paper size on digital art I’ll usually just make the size of the paper I draw on in real life (ex. 9x12in = 2700x3600px) with a 300ppi to be safe. And sometimes I’ll occasionally draw twice as as big as that so that I can size down later. But I was just thinking of how important it is to to really consider page size when you think about printing in publishing? I know comic floppies are usually 6.875” x 10.438“ but it looks like a lot of graphic novels come in all sizes.

I was also just looking more at the detailed comic printing features in Clip Studio Paint. Seems like Clip actually has a tool where you can put “binding size” and you can tell it what size you want the final page to be and it’ll stretch the bleed part of the page out and crop it when you do a binding preview. So if I was looking for final graphic novel to be 6x9in would it be best to tell the program 304.8 x 457.2 mm (12x18in) and then size down or would that just cause problems down the road?

Also a heard a lot of published graphic novels have “book designers” who help with putting this stuff together, so would any of that other stuff matter as long as you draw at a high enough resolution and don’t draw anything important too close to the edge? If anyone has more experience with this I would really appreciate the advice. Thank you!

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darthmongoose
Jul '22

Very good question to ask! I remember tying to find this information and it was such a pain to get hold of!

So I'll try to go over the facts that I know!

Firstly, a big part of it turns out to be less about the comics format and more about your region. Different countries have their own ideas about what size a book should be, and the printers they work with have certain preferred sizes.
Since all printers print on larger paper and crop the pages down, there's actually a fair bit of flexibility, which is why even the prose books at your local bookshop can vary wildly in size.

Most book publishers outside of comics aren't that bothered about size so long as if the size is something weird and outrageous there's a good reason for it. A book that's about as wide as A4 but a bit shorter in height isn't significantly harder or more expensive to print than A4, and just requires the machinery to be set for that print run, so for the kind of size of runs done on a book for a commercial publisher (thousands of copies), this isn't a big deal. Where a publisher might go "UH....no." is if you decide "I'm printing a long scroll format webtoon, so my pages are really tall and narrow" and print something that requires the cost of A3 size pages to print and bind to fit your comic's sheer height on, while also being really wasteful due to how narrow the pages are. What you'll get is a very expensive novelty book that's also a pain for book shops to put on shelves so they might not stock it!

For self-publishing, looking at what printers will do in your area is generally best. Most printers these days use digital printing for short runs of a hundred or so books like you'd expect a webcomic with a modest following to sell, and that means that yes, so long as your pages are at a nice high resolution, you're pretty much good to go. If you can be a clean unit like "double the print size" or 1.5 times the print size, I've heard that the quality is better but... the difference may only really be discernable if you're looking for it very closely.

The one time where I will say size and resolution 100% matter and you need to pay attention is: SCREENTONES! If you have drawn a manga-style pure black and white comic with dot tones, and you do not print at a size that's exactly full, half or maybe 1.5x size, you run the risk of "moire" on your tones; them turning into strange chequered, lined or tartan-like patterns. Take care, manga peeps!

In the UK, if you're self-publishing, an easy approach is to go with our standard paper sizes: A4 or A5 being most common. We don't have specialist comics printers here, so you're generally printing with companies that mostly print brochures and the like. (Mixam is a popular choice that comes well-recommended). Most of the comics I've made have been A5 for this reason, and the one time I made a Japanese Tankobon sized book was because the comic was originally a Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga entry. It still cost the same as if it was A5 and the binding and cover lamination were a little iffy, so perhaps going very small for what a printer is used to is where problems can happen.

In the US, there are businesses that specialise in comics where I think they do expect files at "comics size" If printers or publishers have preferred sizes, they will typically provide you with a template. You can often find these on their websites in an FAQ, resources or submissions section. US comics size is a fairly safe choice, and plenty of templates exist for it online. If you're submitting to Marvel or similar, ALWAYS draw at US comics size!

Finally, the best thing you can do to "future-proof" your comic if you're undecided is to follow these rules:

  1. Always draw your pages at minimum 300dpi and keep these high res "raw" files safe, then save copies you scaled down to web size for upload.
  2. Always work so that there's a big bleed on full-bleed panels and keep all important stuff like speech bubbles and enclosed panel borders a full centimetre in from the inner edge of the bleed. This way if you need to resize pages to a slightly different ratio, you'll have a lot more space to play with.
TheLemmaLlama
Jul '22

there goes my dream of printing my webtoon onto scrolls ... :weary:

darthmongoose
Jul '22

Noooo! You can definitely do that! Paul Duffield did that with Firelight Ilse! BUT the scrolls were like a special edition thing, a special piece of merch, and he also printed a normal book edition too. I was walking about publishers and printing work as books specifically. Scrolls are fine, but to a shop, they'll be treated as merch, not books.

TheLemmaLlama
Jul '22

It was kind a joke tbh; I kind of gathered you were talking about books XD But someone made a scroll for their webtoon?? Holy heck, I'm going to look that up right now :DD

darthmongoose
Jul '22

Firelight Ilse is a great comic and it's actually on Tapas! You have got to look up his kickstarter campaign, he made animation with voice acting and everything. It's incredible.

11 days later
RobertBMarks
Jul '22

I can speak to the resolution issue with a degree of authority.

Back in the day when I was writing The EverQuest Companion for McGraw-Hill, the guidelines I was given was that photos and paintings have to be 300dpi on the page, and line drawings have to be 600 dpi - anything lower on either would look pixelated.

I've used those guidelines ever since.

akitsukino
Jul '22
darthmongoose

Late reply, but this was so helpful! :heart_eyes: I also appreciated the issue of trying to future proof for printing. And in terms of checking on things like bleeds margins I’ve also seen artists use graphic like this to double check things. Which makes me wonder how useful this is compared to using any binding / bleed tools your software has, but like you said it probably does also matter what printer you decide to use.

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darthmongoose
Jul '22

Specific templates like that are super-useful if you know you're going with a specific printer or publisher. So if you know who will be printing your comic, and you can get a template, then definitely use one!
My advice of just making sure there's plenty of bleed and trim is more for people who don't yet know. There are very few printers who can't make use of a 6mm bleed and a 1cm trim, but it comes with the downside of those numbers potentially being excessive and limiting what you can do with layouts or leading to wasted space.

CosmicLeon
Jul '22

As someone who works at a printing company. You really should use a standard size and read the direction of your publisher. PLeasE ReAd tHe DiRectiOns! Seriously, your printers will love you. Not only will it make their job easier. It will be cheaper for you as well.

1 month later

closed Aug 29, '22

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