By Paul Daughetee
Simply put, the production office’s role is to take what the creative team has produced and put it into a format suitable for consumption. In the past, that would have involved scissors, knives, light boxes, glue, film, expletives, etc. Now, with the comics industry having embraced the digital age, we’ve rid ourselves of all that with the possible exception of the expletives.
Before we get started with a description of what it is production does, let me tell you how I assumed the role as head of production here at Kymera Press. Debbie, our editor-in-chief (and my spouse) had decided to take a pilot she had written for television and convert it to a comic book series. She spent more than a year studying the industry and its crafts before launching Kymera Press. When she was ready to launch Gates of Midnight, she hired an artist for the pencil and inks, a colorist to color the inked pages, a letterer to pen the dialog and commissioned a cover.
The creative team all did a wonderful job and before you know it, Issue #1 was done—or so Debbie believed. It seems that it had never occurred to her that something else was required. That’s when I stepped up and showed her the PDF mockup I had prepared for that day when it finally dawned on her that someone had to massage all that marvelous art into a readable format. And so that’s how, with a bit of chagrin on her part, I became the head of production.
So the question I’ll try to answer is this—what did I do to get to the point where we had a PDF file that I could send to our commercial printer?
HARDWARE
Putting together a production office starts with assembling the right tools for the job. Over the course of this series, we’ll cover the hardware, software, processes and procedures that go into the successful creation of a printable comic book.
COMPUTER – We’re in the digital age now so of course you’ll need a computer. Most any relatively new computer will work, but check the system requirements for any software you intend to use before you buy. You may need to update your equipment. If you’re a gamer, watch video online or use the system for digital photography, you’re probably good to go. It may be that all you need is to add enough RAM to satisfy the software’s system requirements.
MONITOR – Invest in a quality monitor. It’s well worth the investment and surprisingly affordable these days. Any LCD monitor with LED backlighting will give good results. For color calibration, you’ll need to ensure that you can set the monitor’s gamma, white point, brightness and contrast either through the monitor itself or through your system’s OS. You can find a current article on LCD monitors here. If you already have a good LCD monitor you might want to consider adding a second monitor as having the extra screen space can ease the production process.
SCANNER – Your production process may not require a scanner but chances are you’ll find a use for it. If your creative team produces analog art (think paper and ink), you’ll be scanning that art to get it into the digital world in which the rest of us live. Color flatbed scanners priced in the $100 to $200 USD price range will have all the features you’re likely to need. You’ll need a minimum optical resolution of 600 x 600 dpi and a minimum of 24-bit color recognition.
PRINTER(S) – A color printer is necessary for inspecting the art before assembling your book. You may also want one to print off mockups to pass around for comments and critiques. There are any number of inexpensive color printers out there—the trick is to find the right one for the job. You’ll likely be choosing between a color laser printer and an inkjet printer.
INKJET – An inkjet printer’s initial cost will likely be lower but if you’re doing a lot of printing, the cost of inkjet ink cartridges adds up quickly. However, if you’re looking to get really accurate CMYK color, a high-end inkjet printer like a Canon Pro-10 is worth looking into.
LASER – A color laser printer’s initial cost is much higher than an inexpensive inkjet printer but you’ll need to replace the toner cartridge less frequently—maybe once a year. So the laser printer’s cost per page is usually lower that an inkjet’s and they produce a page quicker than an inkjet printer can.
SOLID INK – There is a third alternative out there. Xerox is producing a line of solid ink printers (ColorQube 8570) that use crayon like blocks of ink rather than liquid inks or powdered toners. Try one and if you like what the solid-ink technology offers—convenience, economy, and low environmental impact—and you can tolerate the middling speed and print quality.
None of these types of printer will give you a 100 percent accurate representation of what your book will look like when printed on a commercial printing press. You’ll have to decide for yourself which type works best for you, but I’ll admit to having several types in our production office.
COLOR CALIBRATION – So you’re sitting in front of your screen and like what you see. How do you ensure that your printer will print something that resembles the colors in front of you? That can only happen if you establish a color-managed workflow. There are best practices that you can use to get you close to a calibrated system. Do a search on the term COLOR CALIBRATION and review some of the articles that explain how to adjust your devices.
Your best bet for getting accurate color reproduction is to use a spectrophotometer or colorimeter calibration device to calibrate your system. At Kymera Press we use a ColorMunki spectrophotometer from Xrite that allows us to calibrate all of our monitors, scanners and printers so that we get accurate color reproduction across all of our devices. Once you’ve done this, chances are that the book you get back from your printer will be a good approximation of what you’ve been seeing on your screen.
That pretty much covers the hardware you’ll be needing to put together your comic book. Next week, we’ll delve into the software.
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