Fixed cover

[Mr. Cryptic]

Hi all - In the free previews, I changed the cover for Victory City #26, which comes out tomorrow. I corrected the issue number, and I also edited Ultra Maxima out and put in Maria Jones. The content of #26 is a little different than I had originally planned, so I cahnged the cover to reflect that. I don't want people to think this is the Soviet Union, so the original defective cover is now in the free previews .

[MacroLass]

I don't want people to think this is the Soviet Union, so the original defective cover is now in the free previews .

<chuckles> That's a good one. Looking forward to the new issue tomorrow.

[Hector2]

To those who didn't get that reference to the Soviet Union, this is an interesting link:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Unperson

[Mr. Cryptic]

Thanks for the link. I didn't realize my off the cuff joke would draw this much attention .

[Tony]

I always wondered why you post the covers at 1250 x 1750 and your normal pages at 800 x 1000? I'd love to see the artwork at a larger size.
And then you post a huge frame using 2000 x 1500.

I'd think it would be better to pick 1200 or 1400 as the normal length of all your pages...

[Mr. Cryptic]

Those are good questions, Tony.

When I first started doing comics at HIP Comix, Timo guided me through the process. One of the things he told me was that I should make my covers bigger, so I just looked at the covers for his comics and made mine the same size (1250X1750). He never told me to make my pages bigger, so I've kind of stuck with what I was doing. My pages in Ring of Domination were all square (800X800), but I decided I could do more and make things look more exciting if I used rectangles (either vertical or horizontal). I basically chose 800 and 1000 as my dimensions because that was about as big a picture as I can fit on my laptop screen without having to zoom out to see the overall picture. E.g., when I read Uroboros' comics, I read the dialogue at full size, but usually zoom out to see the whole picture.

I occasionally do a "splash page" that is bigger than my usual page size. The last page of Victory City #26 is like that, as is the last page of Victory City #9. I accidently made the first page of Adventures of Ishtar #4 bigger than usual, and didn't realize until months after I posted it .

If people would like me to do bigger pages, I can. It would mean longer rendering times, but if enough people want it I could do that. I have basically no formal training in art or computer graphics, so if I do anything that makes my comics less accessible, please let me know .

[Tony]

My current desktop display is 2560 x 1440 with an aspect ratio of 16x9 which is longer than 3x2 picture format. The original iPad is 1024 x 768 and the new iPad is 2048 x 1536 both using a 3x4 aspect ratio. A 1080p standard HD TV is 1920 x 1080 with an aspect ratio of 16x9.
Most laptops are much smaller and I personally hate working on laptops with less than 900 pixels vertically even if they are wide because so little of a normal vertical page can be presented. BTW, 1024x768 is the old VGA standard started in the mid 80's for use on IBM pc's.

Old style comic books were 6.75" x 10.25" making them very close to a 3x2 vertical aspect ratio. The old standard for a portrait size picture is 8" x 10" or a 4x5 aspect ratio. And a standard typed page (in the US) is 8.5" x 11" and is very close to a 4x5 aspect ratio.

I mention these because I'd think you'd want your work to look good now and for a good number of years into the future. And unless something changes a lot in the near future one thing is true of all jpgs, they downsize better than they upsize. (That's also true of current movie formats too!) You might even want your comics printed and preserved and all of that should be in your thinking when you size the pages. Standard size printed pages come from art history with years of figuring out what looks best to the normal person. So there is something to be said for sticking with the common aspect ratios.

In going through various comics on this site, there are lots of things in common. Many use a 3x4 vertical aspect ratio for both cover pages and content with the majority choosing 900x1200. This is very reminiscent of printed comic books though as mentioned above, those tended to be closer to a 3x2 ratio. Those using this standard size include most of Finster's work including his current work like Wicked Fun Park and Visual Contact. Others include The Arrival, MCChannel, ChainReaction, Catatonic Kitty, Tinkering with Nature, Monkey Business and a many other older comics. One interesting one using the 3x4 ratio is Queen's reign. That uses only a 768x1024 cover compared to its 900x1200 sized pages. All of these comics work very well when made into pdf's for viewing on an iPad using iBooks and they would look similarly well if the jpgs were displayed in its photo displayer. An interesting side note about 900x1200 is that it will print at 4.5" x 6" using 200 DPI and needs to drop the DPI to 120 to print a 7.5" x 10" image. For comic art, that might be right on the edge for needed resolution.

Some others work in a 4x5 ratio. Certainly Drake's work does including one of my all time favorites, Maxine Midnight. He presents a 800x1000 and I've always thought Drake needed to increase the size of his comics a bit as the images seem quite small on larger displays and HD TV screens. If you try to bring them up to screen size, they started suffering from upsizing issues. The current artist Dumbtime takes the 4x5 ratio into almost a 1x1 (or square) ratio in his various comics. Brainwashed is currently using 900 x 1024.

Fallen Star by Firstborn leaves the old comic book style furthest behind by doing something entirely different for the covers versus the content. The covers use a 3x4 ratio at a mere 768x1024 yet goes to a super wide 2x1 aspect ratio for content at a stunning 1920x1028. Certainly there is something to be said for having small cover art with LOTS of detail in the content! I haven't gotten "the new iPad" yet but I'd bet his will look wonderful on the display.

Uzobono in the Free area is currently presenting the Division in an almost square format that varies slightly from 6x7 because each page varies slightly in size. The work is presented with images at 1176x1400, 1274x1445, 1274x1300 and 1400x1117 looking at only 4 random pages. I think the size of the images are fine and will display will slightly reduced on most current displays though I don't understand why each page needs to be a slightly different aspect ratio and size. I'm not sure what would happen if we tried to print this comic as the pages are also slightly different. I'd think it would serve him better long term if he standardized on the aspect ratio and only varied in splash pages or to make a statement.

So finally we come down to your comic. It uses a 7x10 aspect ratio for the cover at a stunning 1250x1750. The content pages are a 4x5 ratio presented at a below VGA size of 800x1000. Then you have the occasional splash page like the last one in the current issue generated at a 3x4 ratio and presented at 1500x2000. It's almost the opposite of Firstborn. You have small content and big title pages. Firstborn has small titles and big content pages. So I'll ask the question, which do you think a normal reader will be more impressed with?

Your flashy title pages are good for capturing interest but will your content that is that much smaller hold that interest? Your present style is similar to old comic books that had color covers and were black and white inside. To me those tended to show that the publisher wanted to save money and that the artist was ok with lack of color for the story. (some even were!) I always thought the cover shouldn't be any better than the content so as not to mislead the buyer on what they will eventually get.

I also don't think the decision should be based on what the general population of reader wants but what the artist wants to present. And I think you've already gotten a good idea from my presentation what I think.

[Uzobono]

Just to answer your question Tony, (good thing I browse here from time to time) I literally only learned Poser about 2 months or so ago, so I'm still working out pretty much everything about it, best ways to present scenes (why I flip flop between sizes so much )

But that's a really great analysis of the different artists and the way they present their works, and also of course bigger is better , something I'll personally strive for in the future for render sizes.

[Tony]

One thing I forgot to mention in that long write up is that I feel that comics should be readable when displayed at full page size. Having to enlarge a comic to make out the text is a pain. There can be reasons that this won't work for a page but, in my opinion, they need to be kept to rare pages and special exceptions.

As for bigger being better, most of the villains on this site certainly think so!

[Mr. Cryptic]

Thank you for all this information, Tony. You might want to repost this to the Art and Writing forum since I think it would be useful for
other artists and aspiring artists.

I have recently done some formal studying relating to issues of graphics presentation on the net, and they confirm what you say.
I should be making my comic pages bigger. I will have to think a bit about what the ratio should be, but I will probably follow what most of the
other artist do, 900X1200. When I want to do wide pages, I think I will make them like two regular pages side by side.

I thought about what size and dimensions to make my comics when I first started doing this around five years ago,
and hadn't thought about it much since then. I changed from square pages to rectangular pages because I read that square pages are less exciting (seems to be true).
I knew that making pages that were sometimes horizontal and sometimes vertical would be a poor choice if I was ever going to try to convert these into hardcopy comics, but I figured I probably would never do that anyway, and decided I'd just focus on making the best webcomics I could. This is mainly my own bias,
since I am pretty private about my superheroine fetishes in real life, so I restrict my work in this area entirely to the world of electrons.

I had not realized that this choice might cause problems in other electronic formats (like PDF).
Also, I know almost nothing about the different devices other than computers on which people might view my comics (iPads and whatever).

This is a topic on which I will need to be continually educating myself.

[Tony]

If there is an Art and Writing forum, I do not have access to it. If the powers that be would allow that access, I'd gladly contribute. Although I'm a computer programer by day, my nights and weekends are spent doing photography. Many of the aspect of displaying photos are similar to the issue with presenting comics.

In my opinion, the iPad (new or old) is the best way of presenting photos as a portfolio. This is mostly because of its ability to zoom in if the photo is large enough and the ability to rotate the device to best present the image. It also is an excellent device for reading comics for the same reason.

Tony

[Mr. Cryptic]

I should have said the "Making Comix" forum. I would have double-checked, but my internet connection was so twitchy when I made that post that I didn't try .

At hipcomix.com, it is called the "Art and Writing" forum. You could post it there too if you like.