Prepare Your Comic, Manga or Graphic Novel For Print

1. Introduction: Hi, My name's Jeffrey Jacobs and I love comics. I love manga and I love graphic novels. I'm also a comic illustrated myself, and he is an example of my work. Whether you make your own comics, graphic novels and manga or you want to, you need to understand the printing process. It is absolutely essential because it will affect how you put together your artwork from the very beginning. Now my background is in graphic design. I've studied the printing process. I've worked in marketing. I've had a lot of products professionally printed. I'm going to combine this with my knowledge of comics. I'm gonna take you how to get the most professional looking product that you possibly can. We're going to cover a number of different things in this course, including color resolution, how to set up you fall for print and much, much more 2. Overview of the comic/manga production process: before we get started, I'm going to cover the traditional comic book production process. This is just so that everything light and makes perfect sense. The first stage of drawing a comic is the thumbnail stage. This is where you jot down ideas for page layouts. The drawings are rough, this small, and they don't have much daito now. This year is an example off a thumbnail. Usually they're much smaller. The name thumbnail actually comes from the nail on the thumb, meaning that it's a very small drawing. And these ones don't go to print the reason why I've used a large on policies because I find the small ones restrictive and partly also that it shows up better on the camera. The next stage of drawing a comic page is during the pencils, and this is what people usually think of when they think off, drawing a comic. But we call it pencilling, and this is the stage where you basically as you would expect you do the final pencil drawings. We'll talk a bit more about this later. Thinking is the stage where the pencil work is finalized with black ink. Some Incas used black ink pens some use black ink brushes. Most Incas use a bit of both. More recently, some thinking is done completely digitally. I recommend inking a fader copy of the pencils rather than the original cause. You don't know when you're gonna make a mistake, and you really don't want ruin your original pencil work. Now you can say I've done this in a much larger scale than the pencils. We'll talk a bit more about that later on as well. And the final stage of the comic book production process is the coloring stage. This stage is optional, obviously, because a lot of comics air in black and white, and it's obviously cheaper to get you work printed if it's just in black and white. But it isn't necessarily is impressive. It really depends on your tastes. And the kind of artwork you doing with most coloring these days is done digitally. Now that you know about the production process, let's take a look at what you need to know before you start drawing anything 3. How large should I draw my pages?: All right. So one of the first things you need to know before you start drawing your comic is how large you're going to draw it out. It often pays to draw your pages larger than they will actually be printed out. This makes the line work. Look more data held and final, and you can also help cover up small mistakes. But you don't want to go to big because the thin lines will disappear when the picture is shrunk down to final sites. Now he you can see my inks. Pages are a lot larger than the final artwork. If you just compare the size of your head here to the size of his head here, my daily. You should be doing the pencils and the inks larger than the final work. Now I think what I've done here was this was about 150% of the size of this. So 1.5 times the size artists will generally work at 133% to 150% of the final page sauce. Just keep in mind that if your printer supplies you with comic page template, it's probably going to be the same size as the final print out, which is this here. So you don't necessarily want to be working at the size of the template that your printed gives you. You probably want to be working at 133 to 150% of that sauce. So, in other words, quite a bit larger now, as you no doubt aware, American comics have a standard size and shape. I've got an example here to show you. All right, so this is an American style comic and, as is typical for an American style comic, it is 6.625 inches wide and 10.25 inches tall. Now, if you're like me and you live in a country where you sent tomatoes instead of inches, that is about 16.83 centimeters wide and 26 centimeters. Talk Manga, on the other hand, does not come in the standard size. You have this small among you here. This is quite a common size with manga, and this is Japanese Bay six. So Japanese Baby six is 12.8 centimeters by 18.2 centimeters and if you're using inches, that is 5.4 inches by 7.17 inches. A larger format, which you also find commonly used in Japanese manga, is a five nuts like this one. Here, a five is 14.8 centimeters wide by 21 centimeters tall, or 5.83 inches wide by 8.2 inches tall. And an interesting thing about I thought that is exactly half of an a four sheet of paper. So if you have a four sheet of paper, it could be a lot easier to figure out the proportions of this Japanese manga artists. Often where could be four size? And I believe that would be for a basics. Probably ask the same proportion so you can shrink it down proportionately. You have to be careful that different paper sizes don't necessarily have the same proportion. So you can't just shrink this down to this size if they don't have the same proportions. So it's you have to get the size and the proportions right? So you got a basic idea how large to draw your comic pages now, but it doesn't mean we're ready to start drawing yet. We still have a little bit more to go through before you can do that. So let's move on to the next video. 4. Printer's marks: All right. Well, now I'm going to explain some basic printing concepts that you need to know. These are called crop marks, blade and live area. So let's start with the crop marks now, say those little lines in the corners of circled them in red. These are called crop marks. They tell the printer where the edge of the paper will bay. So this red area that you're looking at now is what will appear on the final page. Notice how the crop marks are all positioned so that they won't actually appear on the final artwork. And when your pages of printed they will actually be a printed on a larger pace of Piper. That's so the color can come all the way to the edge of the page. Which brings me to the next point blade. Because printers can print all the way to the edge of a pace of pipe. All we have blade of highlighted that area in blue. If you want your artwork to come all the way to the edge of the page, then it should come all the way to the outside edge of this blue area. Usually the blade is only a few millimeters thick. This part of the page will get trimmed off the final comic, and you never know exactly where the edge of the comic is actually going to bait. So it's best to have a few millimeters around every edge of the page, say, five millimeter blade around all sides. The only exception to this is on the inside, off two pages that made the spine. But we'll talk about that a bit later. Now a word of warning. If you try to do outward to the edge of the paper without filling the bleed area, you could end up with this ugly looking sliver of white around some of the edges of your paper, and that really won't look professional. So the bleed area is actually quite important for making your comic look professional, especially if you have color and out. We're coming to the edge of the page. And finally, there's the live area have shown that here in purple, this is where all of the really important content guys. As I said, you never know exactly where the edge of the paper will end up. So just to be safe, all text and important pictures should be inside the life area. This includes the logo on the front cover of your comic, so let's take a look at a collar. Example. Because this is more like what you would actually print out. All right, now, let's lay the printers marks over the top of that. This red area is the part that will appear in the final comic, so the final comic would look like this so you can see there are those parts around the age that got trimmed off. Those parts are the blade, so if we just go back and look at the bleed area, it's outside the red overlay. Notice how the colors in the line work filled the blade area that's all going to get trimmed off. And finally we have the live area. Notice how the main characters, the word balloon and the logo all fit within the live area. That box is useful toe have on a template, but make sure it isn't on the final out work. Unlike the crop marks, this area does not get trimmed off the final artwork, and you don't want that ugly looking box ruining your art. Now you can buy special paper with comic book page templates already printed on them. Typically, the template is printed in blue so that in theory it doesn't show up when you scan your on . Unfortunately, this kind of pipe, it can be a bit pricey, so I often just drop my own templates in Friday shop and work from that. 5. What you need to know about page count: the final page count on your comic will always need to be a multiple of four. And a lot of people don't understand this. When they go and get a book printed, they want Teoh. They say I can't We just get one extra page out it in or two extra pages added, and it doesn't work like that because of physical restrictions. So I'll show you what I mean. Imagine if this is your comic here. Now we've got a few pages in this comic, all right, and those would be the center two pages. Now let's just take a look at these center two pages here. Imagine if we just removed these two pages. We have two pages there and if you flip it over another two pages here. So one sheet of paper, which gets folded in half into two pages during the printing process, is actually four pages, so one sheet of paper is four pages. That's why the number of pages in your comic needs to be a multiple of four. Now. If your comic has a page number, which is not a multiple of four, that's okay. There are lots of things you can do to fill up the spare pages. You can put a page about the author, or if it's a monthly comic, you could put, you know, page at the back with letters in it. Or you could use a page as over here. This could be like the opening page could have the logo again and maybe a copyright down there, which without much on the page so that what you can do to Philip additional pages traditional American comics would actually try and Philip extra pages with adverts. So not only with that Philip Extra page space would also help to pay for the comic. So there a lot of things you can do that. But just remember, when you're setting up your comic for print, the final page number needs to be a multiple of four. 6. Resolution explained: Now let's take a look at resolution because this is another thing that's really important to the quality of your final comic. If you call me cause low resolution, it's gonna look dodgy and it's gonna look amateur. So the first thing you need to know about Resolution is that it's measured in DP I, which dance for dots per inch. So if you look at this square here, the sides of wanting to H within each side we have three smaller squares on those squares represent the dots. So we've got three dots per inch. Ch side of the square has three dots. We're including them. Black and white squares is dots here, so that would be considered very, very low resolution. In a square that's one inch by one inch, you can only fit nine dots. Now if we increase the number of dots to nine dots per inch or nine dp I you now see that we have a lot more squares in that large block, and if we increase it again to 27 dp, I increases further so effectively when you're increasing the DP I The dots are actually getting small because you're feeling more dots into each inch. So here we have an example off the same picture to different resolutions. The one on the left is high resolution and the one on the right as a lower resolution so that one on the left would have ah hired a P I than the one on the right standard screen resolution is 72 pp. I, which stands full pixels per inch. It's essentially the same as dots page. So if you print out something that 72 DP, I it's actually gonna look really low. Resolution Standard printing resolution is 300 day PR. Just because something looks good on the screen doesn't mean it's gonna look good. When you print it out, you should scan you're out working a 300 day Pioli minimum 300 day P. I is the minimum print resolution for a professional looking product. Once your artist scanned, you cannot increase the resolution. Photo shop lets you increase the number of pixels in a document. But if that our work is scared at a low resolution like the above example, it will still look like this when you increase the number of pixels. On the other hand, If you decrease the number of pixels and fighter shop, it will decrease the resolution. So just remember, scan, you're working a 300 day P I it's probably gonna need to be printed at 300 DPR. 7. Bitmaps vs. Vectors: When it comes to comics, you'll generally work with one of two types of graphic programs. The first Arbit map programs and the second are victor programs. A bit map file basically codes the color for every single pixel in your picture. A good example of this is a Diaby fight. I shall dp on resolution are important to understand if you're going to be using bit. Map falls as we discussed in the last video, and I prefer to use bit map faster. Comics. I think most comic. I just do also. But if you have a certain type of our work that favors vectors or you've used vectors and you're skilled with them, then you might prefer using them. Victor files don't remember the hue, color and saturation for every single pixel on your page the same way that bit mapped filed us. Instead, Victor Files use mathematical formulas to draw all the lines and feeling the colors to think back to high school. Remember, doing maths equations for lines like y equals MX plus bay. Well, those kinds of formulas of what vector programs use a good example of this is a Diaby illustrator because these programs use formulas instead of recording every pixel that I could be blown up to any sauce without losing resolution, you can imagine if you're gonna have your logo on the front of you. Comey. It only needs to be a certain size, but if you want to go to a comic convention and promote your comic and you have enough spare change, you might wanna have that logo printed really large on a banner. So if you haven't a PS or an illustrator file or some other vector format file of your logo , you can blow it up really large printed onto a banner, and you won't have any issues with resolution or the quality of the logo. It will come out looking great. Victor Files also have a small file size, generally a lot smaller than bit Map Falls sounds really good, but unfortunately, creating art invective program tends to be more restrictive and is not good for data. All that, at least that's my opinion. 8. Colour modes: if you want the colors in your comic toe, look their best. You need to know about different column oats, and we're gonna talk about two different color modes. RGB and see him like a RG based what your computer screen uses all colors on your screen or some combination of red, green and blue. And that's what RJ Bay stands for. R stands for Red J stands for grain and bay stands for blue. Printers, on the other hand, used four different colors. Everything that comes out of the printer will be a combination of those four colors. There are exceptions to this. You can get additional colors, such as metallic colors or spot colors, but that's more advanced. You probably don't really need to know about that for the sake of this course. Now, the reason why professional printers use four colors is because if I wanna mix red grain and blue like actually can't get a problem black out of that. So instead, printers use cyan, magenta, yellow and black. And that's what seeing why K stands for safe Asai in In for Magenta y Feeler and Keifer Black. Don't ask me why they use K for black, and I have no idea. Maybe it's the same. Like I is less confusing with R J Bay, So the name sound completely different? I don't know. I'm just guessing. The main thing you need to make sure off is that your files are set to see him like a Callum owed before you send them through to the print up. You may want to color all of your artwork while the file is and seem like a also will give you a more accurate idea of what the colors are gonna look like when you print them out. But, I mean, I've created out working RGB and then changed to see him like a and I've never really had any issues with it. So it's not as critical is getting the DP I right. Having said that, you don't want to keep switching back and forward between RGB and seem like a because you will get a deterioration in the colors if you do that. And some colors do look better on screen the night look when that printed out involves best . So some colors actually looked better when that printed out. They're not gonna always look exactly the same in your computer file is I will when they're printed out. But a good printer should be able to give you something as close as possible. Another variable factor. Those If your screen is not properly calibrated, then no matter how good the printer is, the colors that they print out and never gonna look quite like what they looked like on your screen. All right, I think we've been staring at that slide for too long. Let's move onto the next one. Here is just some quick instructions on how to change the Callum Odin photo shop If you don't know what color mode, your filers and you can also go the image menu and go to mode, and there should be a little tick next to the mode that you're currently in. You might see a bunch of different maids there, but the two that you really need to know about RG Bay and seem like if your pages are going to be in black and white, the best color mode is actually grayscale that you want to check with you print of first, whether they prefer, you know, having grayscale or Sam like I 9. Questions to ask yourself before going to print: going to print is going to cost you money. So there are a few questions you need to ask yourself before you actually decide. Yes, I'm going to print. And 1st 1 is, Why do you want to print your comic? You need to understand that printing doesn't equal sales. Lots of people are doing Web comics these days where it's all online, and it's a good way to test the market with less financial risk. I remember going to a comic convention and saying this artist there who had done a comic, which was around when I was a kid and I kind of looked up to the guy and I said to him, Do you have any tips for people who want to self publish their own comic? And his response was, Don't do it because he had actually lost money on this comment that I have been buying when I was a kid. Now I'm not gonna telling you not to do it. Obviously, this course is all about teaching you how to do it. And compared to 20 years ago, there are ways you can do it. There are a lot chief up, but you don't just go in there without thinking about the costal. You need to take a businesslike approach. Even if you decide not to print your comic and you decide to go with just a Web comic, you should still follow. This course is guidelines because if you have a successful Web comic on your hands, you will probably want to print it at some point, and you don't have to go back and redo all the outwork so that it works the print. So make sure your artwork is future proofed, where you intend on printing it or not, these great guidelines just to follow for putting up a Web comic or any kind of comic. Really. Another question you should ask yourself is, Do you want to go with the traditional printer or the newer type of printing, which is called Print on Demand? Some of the pros and cons associated with traditional printing the traditional printing comes with a large upfront costs. This is where you go to the printer and say, I want 2000 units and you pay for it all in one go or you might give them a deposit before it's printed in and pay the rest afterwards, but it's still a large amount of money in one go. So the up front cost committee large on the upside. The more unity print, the cheaper the cost per unit, and the Pritikin often tourky three questions. The M I have. So this is the great thing. If you have a printer who's actually located somewhere new you and I mean physically, you can actually go in and have a chat to the person and really ask him any questions you may have. Obviously, this course covers the basics, but they're gonna be all kinds of things that might come up where you need to talk to the printer and get more detailed guidelines. Another advantage of using traditional printing is that there are no risk predictions on page size. You can basically get any shape and size you want, and you do often get comics which have unconventional page sizes. I can assure you those were done at traditional printing houses, and finally I would recommend you get quite from various printers before printing anything because quite is gonna vary according to whether you've got a color comic and it's going to vary according to how many pages you haven't always kind of things, but it's also gonna vary from printing to printer. Not old printers have exactly the same charge, and you want to make sure that you're getting good value for your money. And just because the printers more expensive doesn't mean that it's going to be a rip off, you might be getting a better quality products, so you can also ask to look at samples of other things that they've printed before. Print on demand, on the other hand, has a low upfront cost. The books only printed once they have been ordered. One of the downsides of print on demand it because it's supposed to be one size fits all, and they want to turn it out quickly and easily. They tend tohave restriction on certain page sizes. You can't do an unconventional page shape if that's what you want to do. But gentles, I you just want to do it a comic, any conventional paid shape and size anyway, so it's probably not going to be an issue for you. Print on demand supplies often have page templates for comics. As we discussed in those templates are gonna be certainly helpful for laying out your artwork, but they're probably gonna be the size of the final artwork. Note the size of your pencils or inks, and again, you should find out cost from various supplies before printing anything. Another advantage of traditional printing overtime is that you can probably going get paper samples for the different kinds of paper they can use to print out your product. Print on demand is gonna be over the Internet, so you you might be able to ask them to send your paper samples, but I don't know if I will do that kind of thing. 10. Binding options: printers air able to supply a whole bunch of different binding techniques. But the two main ones that you find in comics are saddle stitch and perfect bonding. Saddle Stitch is what you typically find in an American magazine stall comic, and it's effectively in magazine with Staples along the Spawn. Now this kind of binding, you end up with a magazine that looks quite disposable. It's difficult to maintain these over time. In fact, American comics especially have these slaves design so that you can putting some backing cardboard and slip in the comic magazine. And that should help preservative Aton. You can't just put it on a bookshelf and hope that is gonna stay well, well preserved over time. And you'll say that this particular example as crazies along the spine, which is quite common with this kind of printing. The advantage of this kind of printing day is that if I open it up, you'll see that it lies flat on the table and you can see the artwork all the way into the spine. So it's quite good if you have artwork across two pages like this. Now, another type of binding that is used is perfect binding, and this is what you tend to find with graphic novels like this. This is a graphic novel and manga tanker bonds like this and also uses perfect bonding now the perfect binding. If you look at the spawn, I guess you could consider each of these little Bunches of pages here, like the saddle stitch. They're like little magazines, and they stuck back to back with each other. And then there's this soft blue. It's hated upto that it's soft and the magazines stuck in against that glue and kept there until the glue hardens and the pages are stuck in there. And you end up with this kind of format, which this kind of comic looks a lot more durable than what you have with standard magazine style. You say that the spine here is far more durable, and one of the downsides with perfect binding is you'll find that if you open it up very often, it won't actually stay open. And what this can also mean is that artwork down the middle of the spine and you can actually get lost. So if you have a double page spread, you don't want to put the really important stuff in the spine there. I mean, the I work in the spine there would be outside of the live area anyway. But it's something to keep in mind that if you do want this nicely, kind of cover with a more durable failed to it. There are still some downsides relative to the settle stick. Now the thinnest book that I've ever seen in perfect binding, I think, is probably about 64 pages. Um, the stickers that I've seen in Saddle Stitch probably about 80 pages. So it's a general rule. Perfect binding is for thicker books and saddle stitchers for thinner books. You might want to talk to your printer about what they would advise, but I think you'll generally find that 64 pages or less. You can go with the saddle stitch and 80 pages arm, or you can go with the perfect bonding between 64 80 pages. Then it's probably up to you, and it may depend on the quite because perfect bindings probably gonna cost a little bit more 11. Creating impositions for saddle stitch: imagine again that this is your comic. This is the cover here. The front cover anyway. All right, and you've got the inside front cover. This is gonna be a page one Page two, Page three for five. Six, seven ice. No, I'm and the funeral. 10 and 11 and 12. I just out. It's a multiple of full. And then you've got the inside and you have the inside back cover and they back cover itself. Now, what happens when I take these pages apart? Take a look at this we've got here. The first page in the last page are on the same sheet of paper. And if I flip that over, you got page two and page 11 on the same share of paper next to each other. So if you're going to set up the outwork with printers marks so that the printed can just print everything straight on here and cut out the pieces will cut the the artwork out of the piece of paper. You're gonna have to put Page two next to page 11. And that's only if you have 12 pages in your comic. If you've got a saddle stitch comic with a different number of pages, then you're gonna have to set it up differently. So it actually helps Teoh do like a little mark up like this and figure out where exactly you need to be putting your pages so you can set them up for the print up. But just keep him on. This is only for saddle Stitch. If you're gonna do perfect binding, remember that the perfect binding is kind of made up of a whole bunch of these. And you don't know how many pages air going to go inside each of those little magazines that the printer put into your graphic novel or Munger. So when it comes to impositions for perfect binding, the printer will probably do it for you. But the saddle stitch, they may I ask you to do it? And if you need to do it, then you need to do it this way to Just remember, just because the pages going next to each other when they put together as a book doesn't mean they're gonna go together when you're preparing them for print. All right, so I'm gonna show you an example now of a saddle stitch imposition that I put together many , many years ago. This one doesn't have a nice beyond on it because I didn't actually use this comic for commercial purposes. It was for an assignment. This here is the outwork for the front and back cover. It wasn't a very professional job off the printers marks that I've done here, the edges of the artwork, which is where the bleeders, some of it's too large and the edges are not consistent. They're all over the place. The crop marks or not neatly in the right place. But luckily the printer was able to work with what I gave him, and I managed to create professional looking product for me. This here is really the outwork that I should have given them. It looks a lot more slick and professional. It's harder to misinterpret, which is the important thing. You don't want the printer misinterpreting the outwork that give them and cutting it in the wrong place and all these kinds of things. Now just notice in the middle. There we have those dotted lines which is circled in red on the ages. You can see you have those crop marks We say cut here but the dotted line does not mean cut that actually made fold. So that is a folding mark, and that basically shows the printer that that's gonna be the spine of the book the Farley looking at. He was called front and back cover, so the printer would have known this is going to go on the outside and they know which way to fold it. But just to be safe, I actually printed out version on my own printer, put it all together and gave a sample to the printer so that they could not get it wrong. And that's actually great piece of advice. If you really want to make sure the printed does the right thing, print out a little sample of yourself, put it all together and give it to the printer. It doesn't need to look professional. You can glue the pages together or whatever, as long as they can see where the page is supposed to be and what the finished product is supposed to look like. Now this artwork is from the inside of the comic, and it's a great example of how the pages the guy next to each other in the imposition Don't always going next to each other in the comic. So this here is the actual comic when it was printed out and I'll show you that little double page spread. There were the pages and next to each other in the imposition, but they're not next to each other in the actual coming. So you're saying that this is the page that was on the left hand side of the imposition and this is the page was on the right hand side of the imposition. Now, you may have noticed that because of the fold marks in the middle there where those two pages and make, there's not gonna be room for bleed because gonna be printed directly next to each other. So if I was gonna take these two pages here these two pages, we're not actually going next to each other in the imposition, because I'll probably be next to each other in the comic, but just doesn't example. You can see that the out work on these two pages has been created with separate crop marks . And I do that for every single page because you never know how the layout of the final book is gonna be even if the page layout is one way in your first printing, Maybe gonna print it again at some other point, and the page is gonna be on opposite sides of the book or something like that. So I really like to keep the original artwork each in its own file with its own printer marks. And then before I prepare the imposition, then I'll put out work together. So if you put these two pages together, you'll end up with this. So I removed the bleed from the right hand side of the left page in the left hand side of the right page. So basically that area where the two pages of meeting there's no bleed, they're gonna actually be printed like that. And it's going to appear like that inside the spine of the Comey. And then you put the fold marks at the top of the bottom. Make sure the fold marks won't appear in the final artwork. Once the papers been cropped into size 12. ISBN's and barcodes: something you also want to look into when you're gonna print a comic. Mangalore graphic novel is an international standard book number and the corresponding barcode now international standard book numbers usually referred to as an eye spn. The ESPN is a 13 digit number that you find printed on the back of the book and also on the copyright page. The ESPN is a unique identifying feel book. If you're gonna have a hardcover version, soft cover version and a book version, they're all going to require separate I S P N's. Now it's absolutely essential to have a nice be in if you want to do this commercially, because vendors like Amazon and Diamond Comics will only pick up your book if you have in the last being. If you take a close up look at the back of this book here, you can see it. The ESPN is over here. The same ice being number is also underneath the barcode in manga. The copyright page tends to bait the back of the book, which is over here, and you can see the ESPN numbers over here in the fine print. In books from English speaking countries, the I, ESPN and Copyright page tense debate the front of the book and here to even printed on the inside of the couple. So whether it's an English speaking book or a Japanese book, the the ESPN and the copyright page tend to be on the left hand side of the book, the rules around ESPN and where you purchase it from very according to your country. And I know that some print on demand companies can supply you with an ally, ESPN and the corresponding barcode. So there are a lot of variables. You really want to do your research and find out. Do you want an eye ESPN on your book? And if you do, then you need to have a spot where you're gonna have to bar coat. But if you do one on ESPN, then you need to do a bit of your own research into it, because the very building he's that come into it, because the variability is that come into it really going to depend on which country you're in and exactly what approach you want attack a good place to start your research would be Visit i ESPN dot org's, and they have frequently asked questions section on their website 13. Sending your files to print: Now let's look at a couple of best practices that you should be using when you're preparing your files for print. I highly recommend that you have two versions of the file. You have the full size edit herbal file for your own records because you never know when you're going to need to use it again in the future or editor or used for some other purpose . And you have the print ready file for the printer, which is gonna be small as possible but still high quality. And because it's gonna be a smallest possible, it's gonna be nice and streamline. But it's not gonna be easy to edit and change if you need to, so you're creditable. Files should be full size. Remember, we said that the outwork should be between 100 and 33 100 and 50% of your final page sauce , so the outwardly keeping for yourself is gonna beat this largest scale. And if it's a multi layered file, I can photo shop or something. You want to preserve those layers. Obviously, if they're redundant layers, you can get rid of them anyway. But they're gonna be lies in there which are there for a purpose. And if you ever need to come back and edit the file for whatever reason, you want to make it easy for yourself. I remember 20 years ago buying comics that were published by Marvel Comics, and today you can actually get the same comics in graphic novel form. But the format is larger than the original comics, and the reason why that's possible is because they kept outwork. It'll largest size than they needed to print it. Who knows? Maybe that'll be you one day. Now, in terms of the file that you gonna send to print, that file needs to be the same size as you want it actually printed, so it's gonna be smaller than your artwork. You wanted to be in final print size, and that's going to help reduce the number of mega bots that are required for this far. You also want to make sure that you text has turned into images. Well, just look at that in a little bit more data, so your printer won't always have the same Fontas you, and there's a risk that if you send them file, which has unique fronting it they're gonna open it up. Their computer is going to replace those fronts with some other front that is on their computer. And your artwork is gonna end up looking much different from what you wanted. In fact, the front may not even fit in the word balloons. So it's important that you follow this step now the way in which you're going to preserve the funds, and this is going to be something that you want to do differently in your own fall. You can keep it as a front in your own force. You can edit it. But once you do this to the funds in the file, extend to the printer, it's going to be very difficult to edit any of the text. What you're doing is you're actually turning the text into an image so that their computer will read it, and it will get the exact shape of the text. It won't understand that text the same way that a human brain does. So one way in which photo shop allows you to turn text into images are by flattening the image. You can also merge lies and rast arise layers in photo shop, but when you're sending it to the printer and you want to make the file size as small as possible without losing quality, you may as well be flattening the image anyway. In Adobe Illustrator, you can turn text into part of the image by creating outlines. So I had a flatten your image and fight. I shop you got in the lion menu and you select flatten image in a dive illustrator. You will select the text, and you will go to the top menu and select Create out lawns. The best file format to give you printer is pdf. Most graphics programs should give you the option as saving as a PdF. Your file should be large enough that the printed product looks awesome, but no larger if you're using Photoshopped. A good way to reduce false eyes, as we discussed, is to flatten the image in this white, reduce the quality of the image. It'll The thing is, layers will remain in your pdf when you export it. So by flattening your Photoshopped file, you're also gonna be flattening the pdf that you export from it. Remember, this is not your original file that you flattening. It's one that especially using for the printer. Now the printer might tell you what resolution they need, but chances are it's going to be a 300 DPL. I would recommend not going overboard. You might think 1200 dp I even better. But the fire size will be enormous, and you might not be able to see the difference when it's printed out and might look a little bit better. But I recommend you don't do that. Still, it can't hurt to check what dp I your printer recommends if they need a 600 DP I file and your document is only 300. I honestly wouldn't worry about it as long as the final page sizes. Correct. If your document is that 300 dp I, then the resolution should still come out looking good. If you really need to, you can add in those extra pixels to keep them happy, and your 300 dp I document will still look like a 300 dp I document, but it will meet their requirements. I've only ever had one printer recommend 600 dp i every other printer I've worked with his recommended 300 DPR. If you're gonna send a Pdf. Be very careful about compressing it, because if you compress the pdf to reduce the file size, you can end up reducing the quality of the image. For example, if it's using J peg compression, it will damage your image. J Peg compression is specifically designed to be viewed on the screen, and as we know, screams only have 72 pp. I Resolution J Peg compression might look fine on your screen, but when you print it out, it's not going to look as good. Now I'm told L's that W is a lossless form of compression that you can use on a pdf. I've never used it personally. I've just sent un compressed pdf to my printers and not had an issue. But if you want to look into it, L said, W is apparently the right form of compression. 14. Paper weight & paper finish: when you're getting your comic graphic novel or Munger printed, chances are the print is gonna ask you what paperweight you want to use. They're also gonna ask you if you want glossy or matte paper, so we'll take a quick look at paperweights. Paperweight is measured in grand per square meter, which is more commonly referred to as J. S M. Now, that's not very helpful by itself. You really need to know what numbers are quite toe what paperweight so below 70. Jason, you really don't need to know about because that's gonna be too light for comics. I mean, if you're getting really towards the lighter end of the range, you're talking about stuff that is thin as a tissue. Obviously, you don't want to be using stuff that's gonna tear easily. 70 to 100 GSM is the average paperweight that you're gonna buy for Home printer site. The pages of your comic Mongol graphic novel are gonna fall within that range of 70 to 100 years. Him 100 to 120 J sm is heavy equality piper toe like cod stock. So as Piper gets heavier, it becomes more and more card life. Typically, we think of paper and card stock is being two different things, but they're actually one in the same. It's just the difference is that white and the thickness 122 150 jetsam. You're starting to look a average card stock. This is the kind of card stopped you'll find integrating Card. 150 to 200 GSM is getting to a heavy A card, but and then 200 GSM plus. That's gonna be the range where you're finding your graphic novel covers. 200 GSM plus is approximately. It's because the card that makes up a cereal box now that's all well and good. But you probably need more useful guidelines than that, so recommendations would be for the inside paper of your comic, whether it's ah magazine style comic or graphic novel or something. 90 GSM is a nice white for paper. 120 GSM is good for the magazine style comic cover. You can, in theory, use ah, 90 GSM cover, which is the same as the inside paper if you doing a magazine. But it's nice to have it a little bit thicker in 120 will have that extra weight to it. It'll feel nicer. 260 to 270 GSM is where you want to be looking at four year old graphic novel cover outside . It's probably the same for Japanese tongue Coban. I think sometimes they might have a thin a couple looking at the Japanese additions. But if you really not sure what you can do is if you're working with a print of that in your local area, you can take in the comical Munger that you like the white salt and give it to the printer and say, Look, what waits do you think they're dealing with you? I would like to do something similar to this. The printer is also going to ask you whether you want a glossy or matte finished glossy finish is probably going to cost you more, but it can also look nicer, and I'm sure you're aware of this. But a glossy finish is that nice kind of shiny finish, which reflects the light. Where's the map? Finished does not reflect the light in the same way Matt is more typical off a normal piece of paper. Now, obviously, there's more to the paper than just that. You can get different finishes on different types of paper on what you can do is you can get paper sample sent you from the major paper companies. So if your printer is unable to supply with samples, what you can do is you can find out what papers the printer users, for example, a print on demand supply. You can find out what paper they use and then go to the paper company that makes those sorts of papers and ask that company to send you sample, and they should be happy to do that. 15. Proofs: So the final part of the printing process before your run actually goes to print is going tobe a. The proofing and proofing is a chance for you to check what the final product is gonna look like before they actually do the whole print run. Now prove convey a the digital or commit physical. If it's digital, it's just gonna be a file that will probably be a mail to your sent to you some other way. Digital is more likely gonna be what you were saved. If you're getting a small print run done. Ah, it doesn't cost the printer anything. And it's not just your own file rehashed and sent back to you. The digital proof has been adjusted toe accurately represent the final print out. But I still prefer physical proofs because nothing can actually replace what it's gonna look like when it's physically printed out. If there was something physically wrong with the printer, which is unlikely to be the case with a professional printer, but let's say there waas, you're not going to say that in the digital fall. Now, the downside of getting a physical proof is if if you don't like it and you have to get it adjusted. If you keep doing more and more physical proofs than it's gonna cost you more and more money because the printer actually has to print something out for you, it's possible they will charge you for repeated proofs in the digital format as well, because it may require extra work from them. There's usually a little bit of leeway built into the quote. They might allow one or two adjustments, but if you really start complaining a lot and making it difficult for them, then they might start charging you. For now, this year is not a proof. This was an actual finished product, but I've got it here to illustrate what you would look for when you check your proof because of the idea of the proof. Is the print ticking at final approval from you saying Yes, I'm happy with that. You can spend my money. Let's go to print. So here are the things that you want to be checking when you get your proof, whether it's physical or digital. Firstly, you want to check that the binding is lined up properly. I remember the place where I worked before someone approved the print job, which should not have been approved in everything. Everything was a little bit skewed, and we ended up with a product that didn't look professional, cost us a lot of money, and we couldn't use it in the end. So that's one of things. You really want a chick. You want to check that the staples in the right place relative to the artwork. You want to check that the pages cut in the right way, and you want to check that the outworks strike, not an accidental angle of view. Five degrees all whatever it can look a bit skew if it's not done right. You also want to check the accuracy of the colors. Depends how pedantic you want to be about this. Some artists, like Chris were very, very careful about getting exactly the right colors for May. If it's slightly different, you it's not going to make a big difference to the feeling of the outwork. I failed, but it really depends on you, as I say. The more proofs you want to get down, the more it's gonna cost you. Probably you also want to check the printing quality and one thing that you might say sometimes is large blocks of color can sometimes have horizontal lines on them. If the printing didn't go according to plan, it's you want to check for that kind of stuff, doesn't look professional? Or does you know that problems with it that you're not quite happy with in terms of the content, like the writing, making sure the text is all correct and no spelling mistakes. You should have checked up before you sent it off to the printed to get approved. Done. But the proof is a second chance for you to check over these things in the content. So if something, if you notice something that you didn't notice the first time and you're really not happy with it, you can change it at this stage. Once it goes to print, you can't. It's too late. And of course, you want to check the D in position is right. You want to check that the pages are in the right places. You want to check that they haven't got pages in the wrong order? Or that you got like a strange white page in there for no reason. In the middle of the book. These things happen sometimes that you really want to check the imposition and the page count. Make sure all the pages are in order. You want to check it very, very carefully. Once you checked everything and you're happy with it, then you can go back to the printer inside. Look, I'm happy with this. You'll sign a copy of the proof or form that they give you, saying I'm happy with the proof from happy to go ahead and then they will go ahead and do you print run? And once you have signed out, there's no going back. If you got the final print job and there is a mistake on the print job, which was also in the proof and you had approved the proof, then you don't have a case. The only exception might be if there was an error in the final print job, which was not in the proof that you approved. Then you may have a case, but you want to keep a good relationship with your printer anyway, so don't go looking for problems. Just try and make sure that your comic Munger or graphic novel looks as professional as possible and make sure that you're really happy with it, because this is your baby going to print and this is what people are going to see. 16. Conclusion: thanks for taking the course. I hope you found it useful. And I want to wish you the best of luck for getting your first comic graphic novel among up printed.