By Kevin Yong,
Reprinted from Alpha-Omega #100

In the summer of 1999, I began work on the New Crew comic book project. First came the brainstorming of story proposals. Then came the character design, plotting, and scripting. Once the artists had finished their work, the "prepress" work began: how to turn these pages of artwork and scripts into camera-ready material for printing?

We had two options: manual paste-up of the word balloons using scissors and rubber cement... or we could "go digital", using scanners and computer software to prepare the book for print. I chose the latter option, as I had been studying that very subject for the past year in school and was eager to put my "digital prepress" skills to the test.

For those who want to venture down this electronic path, I have compiled this brief list of the steps I took while working on the New Crew. While hardly a definitive guide to the process of desktop publishing, I hope it will serve as an introduction to how much work is involved in getting a comic off to the press.

During the time of the New Crew, my home computer was a trusty/rusty Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 8390 PC, with a 450 MHz Pentium II processor and 128 megabytes of RAM, running Windows 98. The computer was also equipped with a program called "Mac Drive", allowing Windows to read information off of Macintosh disks. This way, I could save my work to a disk and work on the project both at home on my PC and at my school's Mac lab, without worrying about compatibility problems.

For my New Crew work, I used my home flatbed scanner, a 30-bit model from Mustek, offering 600 dpi (dots per inch). It was a low-end bargain model that cost me less than $50, and its cheapness shows. Its color scans are of very low quality, but its B&W scans were sufficient for my comic book work.

For "rough draft" printouts, I used an HP inkjet printer. For the "camera ready" printouts of the book, I printed the pages on a Xerox laser printer.

The software used to make the books were the standard programs for the printing and graphic arts industry. They include:

• Illustrator: A "vector" image program, using computer-generated shapes and curves to create line art. Other comic artists often use this program for lettering their books, but I only used it for the New Crew's logo design.
• Photoshop: A "raster" image program, where pictures are composed of a mosaic of tiny dots. I used photoshop for scanning in the B&W interior comic pages, as well as colorizing the cover artwork.
• QuarkXpress: A layout program where text and image elements can be positioned within measurements of one-thousandth of an inch. Other comic publishers use it simply to print the pages which were already lettered in Illustrator, but I actually prefer to letter my pages directly in Quark before printing.

Scanning

The New Crew pages were drawn on the usual 11"x17" bristol board. Unfortunately, my scanner was made for standard 8½"x11" sheets. I had two choices: (1) Scan the pages in two sections and then merge them in Photoshop, or (2) use a photocopy machine to reduce the artwork in size and then scan it in as one piece. I chose the latter option. (There was also a third option, which was to buy a bigger scanner, but I was too poor to even consider it.)

I scanned in these photocopies as 600 DPI grayscale images. I chose 256-tone grayscale rather than a 2-tone "black and white" bitmap because Photoshop allows many more editing options for grayscale images than it does for B&W. Thus, I can scan the artwork, touch-up any ink smudges or other areas in need of corrections, adjust the contrast of the black and white artwork, and then convert the grayscale image down to the much smaller 2-color B&W format once I'm finished.

While 300 DPI is usually sufficient image resolution for offset color printing (or even grayscale halftones), I have heard that it is recommended to have at least 600 DPI for B&W line art. Otherwise, the edges of the lines will look pixilated and "jaggie". For printing the New Crew, I saved the images as 800 DPI B&W bitmaps in the "TIFF" image format.

(A problem I discovered later was when someone tampered with the Photoshop settings and I inadvertently saved my images at 800 dots per centimeter. It took me awhile to discover why the file size of the images were so many times larger than they should have been.)

When it came to sizing the picture to fit a comic page, I used Photoshop to crop the margins and reduce it to a 6"x9" image area.

After the pages were been scanned and the images were ready, I had to letter them and prepare them to print as camera-ready art.

In QuarkXpress, I created a new document with a custom page size of 7"x10". I set the margins of the page to give me a 6"x9" image area. I made sure that the "automatic text box" option was turned off (because these pages will be filled with pictures, not text.)

The actual task of lettering would have been more streamlined using Illustrator (or Adobe's new page layout program, InDesign) because it would allow the image, the balloons, and the text to each be on different "layers" of the image. However, I chose to letter it in Quark because (a) I'm comfortable with Quark's tools, whereas I dislike the user interface controls of Illustrator, and (b) I couldn't print Illustrator EPS files (Encapsulated PostScript) on my home computer because of the hardware/software setup of its system. For me, the difficulties in lettering with Quark were easier than the technical hassles of Illustrator.

I then imported the scanned images into a 6"x9" Quark "picture box". It should fit perfectly, if cropped correctly in Photoshop. If not (and mine often didn't fit, because this was my inexperienced first try) then I had to adjust the size and placement using Quark's various tools.

For those pages where I had already written a full script, I imported the text into a separate text box in the margins of Quark. I then "cut and pasted" each line of dialog into its respective speech bubble. For those pages which were scripted "Marvel style", I had to sit down and type each new line of dialog. But first, let me explain how I made the speech bubbles...

Lettering

As I mentioned previously, Illustrator is a supposedly "easier" program to do comic book lettering in... unless you dislike Illustrator, in which case you can do what I did, and letter the whole thing in Quark. Here's how I created the various lettering elements, with visual examples...

Speech Balloons: First, I created an oval picture box. (Yes, I know it's an oxymoron. Humor me.) Next, go to the Item>Shape> menu and then select the "irregular" shape. Then go to Item>Edit>Shape, and you will be able to edit each individual "anchor point" of the shape rather than merely stretch the object by the outer points of its boundary "box". I added an extra three anchor points to the oval, and "pulled" the middle one outward. Presto! An oval balloon with a "tail". Give it a background of white, and a black border or 1 point or less.
(As a unit of measurement, a "point" is 1/₇₂ of an inch.)

Thought Bubbles: First I drew dozens of overlapping circular picture boxes, then I merged them together with the Item>Merge>Union tool. I gave it a white background and a one point border.

Shout Balloons (not pictured): These are similar to creating the speech balloons, but instead of merely adding one "tail" to the balloon, I created many. I added dozens of anchor points on the oval picture box, and then pulled them all out, creating a "spiky" effect.

To have text appear "within" any of these balloons, I drew a text box on top of the balloon, and set the color of the text box to "none". This gave me greater control over the text than if I had created balloon-shaped text boxes and tried typing inside their irregular borders.

It was too time-consuming to keep creating each stylized balloon by hand. Instead, I created a "library" file in Quark so I could store a template of my frequently used objects (thought bubbles, speech balloons, etc.) and then drop them onto the page with the click of a button. It was much faster for me to adjust these pre-made objects to fit the page, rather than to recreate them each from scratch.

I used Quark's menu tool of Item>Merge>Difference to crop off the sides of word balloons when they overlapped the side of the panels. Likewise, I merged multiple word balloons together when a character had more than one balloon's worth of dialog.

Typography

A standard size for typeset text is 10 point type with 12 point "leading" (that is, vertical space between lines of text). However, with the unusual size and style of comic book lettering fonts, the actual text in the balloons tended to be anywhere from 12 point type with 12 point leading to 8 point type with 7 point leading.

In addition to checking the space between the lines of text, I also needed to check the space around the text. This measurement is called "inset". Text boxes in Quark give an automatic text inset of a mere one point, which is fine for typesetting a normal page of text, but won't work very well if you're trying to create a comic book caption box. I had to go in to each caption box and adjust the inset using the Item>Modify menu.

Comic book lettering generally uses capital letters at all times. However, many comic lettering fonts nevertheless come with two different versions of the capital letter "I". A plain vertical line "i" for general use, and a crossed letter "I" for use as a personal pronoun. This isn't normal typography, but it makes the hand-drawn capital letters more readable.

There are other minor details to consider while lettering by computer. Remember that the rules for typing on a typewriter don't apply to typing comic text on a computer. You don't need two spaces after the end of every sentence, and you don't need to insert five spaces at the start of every paragraph.

Also, if possible, avoid using two hyphens to indicate a break in the sentence--like this--when what you really need is an "em-dash". These "hidden" characters are available on Windows and Macs by pressing various key coombinations (ALT plus four numbers in Windows, Option and/or Shift plus a regular key on Macs). Note that not every font includes such hidden characters... especially the free fonts downloaded from the internet.

Finding Fonts

The professional fonts from Comicraft are superb, but they can cost you hundreds of dollars. I know many others who recommend the cheaper "Whiz Bang" font, but even that may be above the price range of a starving artist. If you can get the fonts to work (and that can be a big "if"), free fonts are the answer!

The "Comic Sans MS" font comes free with most Microsoft products. Those who have read my early work will notice that I used it in lettering my first Marking The Trail comics tract. The ComicSans font is clear and readable, but I think it is too bland in comparison with almost any other comic lettering font available.

There were various fonts which I used when lettering the New Crew, depending on how I needed the speech to look. The main lettering fonts (wbxkomix and vtc letterer pro) were freebies from the now-defunct website of "WolfbainX's Vigilante Type Corporation". The font files can still be found on various free font archives across the world wide web. Just enter the names in an internet search engine.

I also used various other typefaces from Blambot Fonts, a website offering free comic fonts specifically made for small self-publishers. Yay for them! You can find them online at http://www.blambot.com

Color

In colorizing the cover art, I first followed much the same procedure as scanning the interior pages. The original art by Devin Parker was on oversized paper, so I had to reduce it with a photocopier to the size of 11"x17", and then scan it in two pieces to be recombined into a single image in Photoshop. Whew!

Usually, 300 DPI would be the standard resolution for color printing. However, since I would be printing the cover on a dye-sublimation Rainbow printer instead of a four-color process offset press, I was able to get away with using a lower resolution of only 150 DPI.

I scanned the cover art as grayscale images, merged them into a single flattened image, adjusted the contrast, then converted it into CMYK format. (Many graphic artists prefer to work in the "RGB" color space, as it allows for more effects and smaller file size. However, I generally prefer the "CMYK" color space, because those are the colors which it will ultimately be printed in. This way, I avoid unforeseen changes when converting color formats halfway through the process.)

I used Photoshop's "channel mixer" to set the grey CMYK image to a dark "monochrome". Then I duplicated the black color channel as a new "alpha channel" selection and saved it. (This is a very important step for after the coloring process is complete.)

Using layers and channels to isolate areas of the cover, I used the "magic wand", "fill", and "paintbucket" tools to fill in the image with areas of flat color. Then, using the "quick mask", "magic wand", "gradient", and variations of the "paintbrush" tool, I began adding highlights and midtones to the areas of flat color. Slowly, I was able to build up the colors to add a sense of depth and shading. I also used various special effects filters in Photoshop to add textures to areas of the background, and to make the back cover look like a grainy photograph. (The "fire" in the background of the back cover was added with a separate image editing program called Painter, which provides a greater range of artistic effects than Photoshop does.)

The coloring process "painted over" many of the black outlines which were part of the original image. This is where the copy of the black color channel came in handy. I simply loaded the "line art" channel as a selection. I then filled the selection with 100% black, thus restoring the outlines on top of the image.

The Illustrator images of the front and back logos were then opened in Photoshop and "cut and pasted" as separate layers onto the cover art. With "preserve transparency" checked, these logos were given a gradient fill.

The entire image was then flattened, saved in the CMYK TIFF format, and imported to QuarkXpress for printing.

Printing

With the cover artwork completed, it was time to output the interior pages. I printed out the 6"x9" images centered on my laser printer's standard 8½"x11" paper. This give me "camera ready" artwork which I then sent to Harold Buchholz to be printed using conventional means. For more info on Harold's comic printing services, you can visit his website at http://www.icomics.com/hbps/

Other printing services may give the option of printing directly from a computer disk (no "camera ready" printouts required) but this method may increases the odds of technical problems. If you haven't set up the disk properly, you may encounter computer errors such as incompatible formats, missing fonts, corrupted files, and other digital troubleshooting woes. It is a can of worms which I would not recommend opening if you are still a novice in the area of desktop publishing. Find yourself a class and/or training manual and learn more about the various programs and processes involved in digital prepress if you wish to pursue this as an option for professional self-publishing.

Recommended Reading List

Digital Prepress for Comic Books
by Kevin Tinsley. Stickman Graphics. ISBN 0967542308

How To Color For Comics
by Antarctic Press.

Pocket Guide to Digital Prepress
by Frank Romano, Delmar Publishers, ISBN 0827371985

Pocket Guide to Color With Digital Applications
by Thomas E. Schildgen, Delmar Publishers, ISBN 0827372981