If we are in fact doing this will we be posting the pages as we make them in this thread? Or would we just make the entire thing and send it to whoever is organizing it?
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Hypothetical exclusive comic for DD fundraiser discussion and volunteer thread.
bravo1102 wrote:
I support a black and white edition with maybe a limited color "premium" edition once this whole thing is set up.
Aside from knowing page dimensions, we should quickly establish if it's going to be black and white, colour, or a combination of both. If colour work is printed in black and white it usually looks like sludge, so potentially two versions of each strip would be needed.
Ironscarf wrote:bravo1102 wrote:
I support a black and white edition with maybe a limited color "premium" edition once this whole thing is set up.
Aside from knowing page dimensions, we should quickly establish if it's going to be black and white, colour, or a combination of both. If colour work is printed in black and white it usually looks like sludge, so potentially two versions of each strip would be needed.
I'd say colour myself. Do you know if black and white pages suffer for being printed as colour? Does it muddy the greys or anything?
I asked this question to a group I'm in and these were the answers I received:
"since printers usually do 300dpi files for full color… while for B&W screentones, 500-600dpi seems more common. And with the entire book technically being CMYK for the printer, I don't know if they would even take dpi higher than 300. That seems like something you might wanna ask the printer."
"If it's mixed, CMYK will be the choice I think, and even if there is black and white, CMYK is usually the best bet because it allows "rich black" which will print closest to pure, whereas true black will read as a deep grey tone.
So CMYK will work better for both and won't need separating."
So if anyone wants to do black and white then seems like it can be done.
But it's still something we would want to double check with the printer.
Half the problem is that a lot of pure online artists work in really dark tones, meaning really high k values, so colour often looks muddy because people don't think about value in print and how it looks. Lots of k (black ink) on the page muddies you real quick. You can technically convert colour to b/w easily (prepress specialists would be able to handle it probably), but like damehelshing mentioned they need to be in a much higher resolution - up to the thousands of dpi isn't unheard of for delicate pencil lines in b/w. They'll have to be in CMYK as well to print with most printers I think - it's a bit rare to get ones that print from RBG because of the way offset plates work, right? Or a digital printer might be better anyway.
I personally think we should do a B/W book first, just for cost reasons? I prefer colour books myself to hold in my hands, but if costs ovverrun then you're potentially less out of pocket. It's no unheard of either; Iron Circus does most of their anthologies in black and white for example and they look stellar.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself - we might not be doing this (but I still think it's a great idea).
Those are all really valid, solid questions to ask and think about- regarding the colour and costs etc.
Whatever we do I think all those who're going to have a story printed will have to be prepared to provide art in the right format and sizes, so we're not flubbing around with low res stuff here and there and trying to make strange dimensions fit.
Basically you'd get a standard template and a set number of pages allocated and each person would have to align their work up on it in the best, most efficient way possible.
One of us could take on the task of adjusting the colour levels for everyone for printing… Conventing RGB art to CMYK and getting the look just right.
-Personally I'm for colour in that it looks more special, it's something I'm willing to pay more for and it's easier to make that look great than it is when you convert it to greyscale…
Like bluecuts34 says, cost is definitely a factor! But for that maybe if the thing was pre-sold like they do with a kickstarter then that becomes less of a problem because at a certain level all the printing and distribution is already paid for, which could become even easier if it's print on demand?
I love the idea of printing a full color comic, but i've heard it can get pretty costly and handling / shipping books can be a nightmare. What service were you guys considering?
My idea is a digital comic anthology / art zine with a pay what you want business model with a low bar to entry ($1-$5). The goal would be mostly to raise funds for the site, not so much for the creators to make money. This way you could see how many people were seriously interested in supporting this project.
Yeah, when I've run little comic book things with a few friends I quickly learnt that the first thing to do is make sure everyone is working in the same size and resolution, working backwards from how you want the finished book to look. Giving everyone a page count is also a good idea, because we might need it in multiples of 4 for the signatures. Talking to the printer first is always a bright idea once you've got the people together. Usually you get a test print copy, so we can check then if the colour looks like shite and go back to fix it.
That, and deciding on a theme quickly and getting everyone's pitches/thumbnails in at a reasonable time. (Someone will always drop out though. Blah.)
S&H is always murder. Most seem to get printed in HK or Canada and ship back to the US, but international stuff is hell. It does mean that if we get physical books someone's gonna have a hundred or so anthology books like, in their house. If someone's chill with that then that's good!
Colour would be killer but it's definitely more appealing to people.
I like the idea of a zine, pay what you want; a buy in to raise money could be fun, too (even if it sounds like a scam whoops). Raffle off some advertising spots or something low-effort for an incentive prize. Special forum username colours maybe. I sound like I'm from 2004.
I'm on Alterna Comics mailing list and they recently started a program for self-publishers/small publishers to piggyback onto their newsprint runs.
Not sure if that's a route this hypothetical project wants to go, but it offers some numbers to consider for publishing or just comparison shopping.
mishi_hime wrote:
I love the idea of printing a full color comic, but i've heard it can get pretty costly and handling / shipping books can be a nightmare. What service were you guys considering?
My idea is a digital comic anthology / art zine with a pay what you want business model with a low bar to entry ($1-$5). The goal would be mostly to raise funds for the site, not so much for the creators to make money. This way you could see how many people were seriously interested in supporting this project.
Yeah ideally I'd like to try both, not everyone will want a printed comic and costs will likely add up a bit. The main aim is to help raise funds for the site so I'm going to price things up and either try a limited run or see if there's some print on demand options that could work.
Bumping this for easy access as it's now under discussion on the DD Discord server - I just joined and it appears to be a delightful venue with the most charming clientelle.
https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS
Does anyone want to collaborate? Willing to draw a short script.
Can be contacted at sleeping_gorilla@outlook.com
Update: Someone got in contact, so I'm no longer looking for a collaborator.
As it stands I want to see what pans out with the new anthology and what direction that takes, I haven't seen the discord, but it sounds like it could be a different beast altogether, but I want to avoid confusion and not compete as the aim is the same, raise funds for Drunkduck. Still if the two are sufficiently different… Who knows.
Genejoke wrote:
Still if the two are sufficiently different… Who knows.
Looking back at the first page of this thread, you suggested the possibility of two anthologies for different age ratings early on. If they have different content then the more the merrier I'd say. Releases could be stepped for maximum fundraising potential.
Personally I liked Banes' suggestion of a horror/Halloween theme.
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