Resizing and paneling issues!

[havik0666]

Hi!

I just started a webcomic to motivate me to draw more and the biggest issue so far is that I draw multiples panels on a very large canvas (8000x100000), chop them off and resize them to another canvas that is 800x10000 to fit a more webcomic/mobile style. But, sometime when I try to resize the images on my bigger canvas it ends up being blurry on the smaller canvas!

I haven't found a good solution to this problem so I temporarily switched to make classic comic book page for now.

Also, I only do grayscale but should I wait when all the image are on the long strip to color them? I'd like to have some advices from more experienced webcomic artists.

Thank you for reading!

[IndigoShirtProd]

So what you;re saying is that, you work on a bigger canvas, then copy and paste panels onto a smaller canvas, and then resize them. Is that it?

[havik0666]

yeah, do people just draw straight on their publishing size from the get go?

[AmataLenna]

Well if you're moving it to a smaller canvas you'll lose quality just from the resizing. I'd say don't move canvases so much and resize so often. I start with the correct canvas size if I can help it just to avoid that

[IndigoShirtProd]

You're better of drawing on the bigger canvas then reformatting, rasterizing it, then scaling it down to 800X10000. Then save is as a png. It'll still be blurry but not as much. I think it's always better to draw on a bigger canvas, especially if you plan on printing.

[Kelheor]

Why would you need 8000 pix wide canvas for???

This is not the Sistine chapel, use your normal A4-A3 width, for heaven's sake. Of course they will be blurry, you make them 10 times smaller!
You can make the whole episode on one long page, then duplicate the file, resize it to fit 800 pix wide and then crop to 800x1280, that's it.

[SeraphicMayin]

The easiest way I found is to work at 3x the publishing size so my long canvas is at 2400x50000.

Then when all art is done with CSP you can export as jpeg and resize it AS you save cause of the export settings.

Then it saves as an 800x_____howevermanypix____ and then I run the file through the online croppy tool and it cuts it up into smaller jpeg a for me.

Generally : Work at a higher resolution but not too big. Then export final art and resize that. But yeah you don't need to work at 10x the publishing size. 3x or 4x will do.

Ps: for my main comic I also do pages cause I want to make a print book. I work at a US scale comic book template at 600 dpi. Then when all art is done I make a new layer of all flattened art and copy paste the art and dialogue layers to resize on a long canvas for publishing. Cause the art isn't too big, it resized without blurring.

The blurring here is more a tech limitation than anything else. Gotta make it easy for the computer to process files so they look right.

[Kiweevil]

Use bigger dpi, smaller canvas. 8,000 is very big for webcomics! And the more you save, export, transfer, etc. the image you may be losing pixel info. So my recommendation? Skinny up your canvas so it's not as wide (shorten it, too), and then run your image through a cropper tool if you need to cut it down to smaller ones ^w^ croppy is a viable option.

As far as coloring goes, I'm unconventional and color in pieces as I draw. So at any given time my art might be part sketch, part monochrome, and part color lol! You'll just need to find what works best for you.

[Jenny-Toons]

As others said, you work bigger, but not too big where everything's blurry. I work in 2000 X 15000, and that's more than enough to have several panels for one page. Moreover, use programs that do the resizing, converting, and splicing for you instead of trying to do it manually.

There's Croppy, for example. Works both for Tapas and Webtoons:
https://knicknic.github.io/croppy/

Work smarter, not harder.

[havik0666]

Thanks for all your tips! I'll be sure to put them to use in the future! thanks for the website too, it looks very useful indeed for webcomic