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Playing with Fashion in “Gates of Midnight”

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By D. Lynn Smith

All of the art and lettering for Gates of Midnight #5 is complete! Paul, my wonderful husband and production editor, is busy putting it together into a book form and getting it ready to submit to comiXology Submit and the printer. Amelia Woo is working on the cover for Issue #6.

Issue #6 features a charity ball at the Belvedere Castle in New York. And that means I get to play dress-up with all of my characters! When I was writing for television, we could suggest what people were wearing, but the actual “costume” was in the hands of the costume department and the director. When writing prose, you can describe what a person is wearing if it’s important, but otherwise you don’t want to stop the flow of the story for lengthy descriptions that readers are simply going to scan. But in comics, I get to dress my characters, and I’m having a ball doing it.

What a character wears gives the reader as much information as anything else. For instance, Raven’s favorite pair of shoes are her Prada combat boots. Even in a fight. She’s simply comfortable in these boots. Symbolically they combine the two parts of her character, the combat medic with the high fashion girl. Her signature look is designer jeans, Prada boots, some kind of nice T-shirt and either a leather jacket or her deceased boyfriend’s army jacket. Which one do you think she wears when she’s depressed or out of sorts? See you already are learning something about the characters simply from how she’s dressed.

However, Raven also loves to attend all kinds of high society functions. She doesn’t buy into the rich and famous thing, but she loves to play dress up and mingle with all the other dressed-up people. Her mother, Marie, facilitates this, since she comes from money. You’ll learn more about Marie’s background in issue #5. Marie is always dressed in classy clothes, but she has a rebellious side that she’s been suppressing. Now that Eddy’s gone, however, I think she may start letting that side emerge.

Now Constance LOVES fashion, but she dresses mostly in Egyptian-inspired fashions. You’ll never catch her in jeans, or even a pant suit. She likes showing off her body and her legs, and she has a real passion for Jimmy Choo shoes. Is it any surprise that in the other world she is the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet?

Alex is a bit more complicated. He’s hiding who he is. His signature look, if he has one, is jeans, T and leather jacket. Sounds like Raven, right? Alex is a reflection of this world. He tries not to have his own presence; he’s flying under the radar.

In Issue #6, I wanted to play dress-up with my characters, so I decided Marie was going to put on a charity ball for the Wounded Warrior’s Project. I needed gowns, jewelry, and tuxes. Luckily, I’d been preparing for this kind of event with my Pinterest pages.

I need to back up just a moment. I’m not a fashionista. I don’t want to spend huge sums of money on clothes and I’m most comfortable either in leggings or a summer dress. No fuss. So when fashion magazines starting coming in the mail, Paul came to me and said, “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?”

I’m having the most fun with these magazines because I’m not trying to dress myself. It can be frustrating to look at fashions you know in no way will ever fit you. But it’s exhilarating to rip out the pages and scan them, then put them up on Pinterest under the character page to which I think they belong. When I was a little girl I used to love to play with paper dolls and this is a little like that.

So I look at fashion magazines, search the Internet, and look at other Pinterest pages for fashions I might want to use for future issues of Gates. Each character has his or her own page with different fashions that they might wear. And this is where I find the clothes for my characters for each issue of Gates.

If you want a preview of the fashions in Issue #6, just go to the Kymera Press Pinterest page and look at the folder entitled Issue 6. Actually, just click here and you can see the different fashions for each of my characters.

The problem with this method is that I really can’t spend as much time as I would like looking for fashions for my characters. Would you like to help? Just send me an email here and I’ll add you to my Pinterest page so you can post fashions you find for each of the Gates characters. You might end up seeing something you pinned in future pages of Gates of Midnight.

For those of you who will be attending San Diego Comic-Con International next week, be sure to stop by the Kymera Press booth in the Small Press Pavilion. We’ll be debuting our second title, Pet Noir, with a special Comic-Con-only cover. We’ll also have the new Gates of Midnight graphic novel available for sale. I’ll be there to sign copies of Gates of Midnight and Pet Noir artist Anna Giovannini will be there to sign copies of Pet Noir.

A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office – Part 3

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By Paul Daughetee

At the end of the second part of this article on the Production Office, we had created an Adobe InDesign document that contained all 32 pages of your comic. Your comic book is almost done—isn’t it!?

THE BEGINNING OF THE END – It’s critical that before you go any further, you verify that everything about your comic is as you want it to be. Use the EXPORT feature of InDesign to export a PDF of your comic for review. When exporting, set the Adobe PDF Preset option to High Quality Print. Use the defaults for this preset and hit the Export button. The result is a PDF file that your local printer will be able to use to run off a small number of proofs for you and your team to review.

PROOFREADING – Realistically, you’ve been all over this book from the beginning and you’re sure that everything is perfect—and it may very well be. But this is the document you’re going to be sending off to be printed or for online distribution. My advice is to take your new proofs and proofread them forwards and backwards and then give it to others so that you can get some fresh eyes on it. If it’s NOT perfect, now is the time to find out—not after you had 4000 copies printed and shipped.

OOPS, FOUND MISTAKES – Okay, it happens. But aren’t you glad you found them? If you’ve gotten to this point using Adobe InDesign, it’s relatively easy to fix the mistakes. Simply address the issues on a page by page basis and copy the corrected pages into your document’s working folder. InDesign will see that files have been changed when you open your InDesign document and you will be asked if you want to update the links that link to those files. Simply answer yes. Now it’s time to export to a PDF and proofread your book one more time to verify that all of your changes were picked up in your new PDF. When you’re satisfied that your book is error free and as close to finished as you can make it, it’s time to get the product out the door.

THE PRODUCT – It’s time to decide what the product is going to be. Are you going to do a small run of 100 issues or less? Are you looking to distribute your comic book online? Maybe you have an outlet for your books and you’re ready to run off 1,000 copies or more. Each of these options have different requirements for the final product and it will take some research on your part to nail down exactly what your next step is going to be.

ONLINE DISTRIBUTION – There are a lot of outlets these days for online distribution of your comics. Kymera Press uses comiXology Submit to distribute our books. Go here to find out how to format your book so that it meets their criteria. The primary difference to what we’ve covered up to this point and the format for comiXology Submit is that all of your pages should be in RGB mode rather than CMYK. Before you do submit to someone for online distribution, thoroughly investigate the site to make sure that you retain ALL rights to your materials. It’s also in your best interest to verify that any distribution deal you make is non-exclusive so that when opportunity knocks, you’re free to answer the door.

PRINT DISTRIBUTION – If you’re hoping to get your book in your local comic book store, you don’t have a lot of options. You can go it alone and hit the road with a trunk full of your books and personally visit comic book stores in and around your area. If you go this route, you’ll be selling directly to store owners. Otherwise, you’ll need to get distribution through Diamond Comic Distributors. They’re the only game in town for worldwide distribution.

It’s possible to submit directly to Diamond. If they like what they see, they will add your book to their monthly catalog PREVIEWS which goes to all the comic book outlets. If you’re interested in reading more about their process check out this link.

The other route to distribution through Diamond is to submit to one of the independent publishers such as Image Comics. You can check out Image’s submission guidelines here. They’ll be handling your distribution through Diamond if they pick up your book.

PRINTING – So you’ve got your book finished and have decided to get it printed. The next step is to figure out how many books you want printed. If you’re handling distribution yourself, you may want to print a small quantity until you see how the book is selling. You’ll pay significantly more per copy going this route but your initial cash outlay will be much smaller. Once you’ve identified a company to print your small quantity, work directly with them to identify how they want your book formatted. Generally, they’ll be fine with the PDF format we’ve discussed but they may want it in an RGB mode rather than CMYK.

If you’re looking at larger quantities, you’ll need to find a commercial offset printing firm to print your books. Look for one that has experience printing comic books and work directly with them to identify how to prepare your book for their presses. Typically, they’ll want a PDF prepared in CMYK mode, but each company will have their own requirements which you’ll need to follow to the letter.

Kymera Press is using Marquis (formerly LeBonfon) and we’re very satisfied with the results to this date. One advantage of using a firm like Marquis is that they have an existing relationship with Diamond. When Diamond has orders for your book, they’ll contact Marquis and have the books printed and drop-shipped directly from Marquis. If you would like to get a quote from them, go here and submit your PDF for evaluation.

CONGRATULATIONS! – So you made it this far and you’re holding a printed copy of your creation. Nothing left to do but promotion, publicity, packaging, building the brand and of course… finishing the next one.

A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office – Part 2

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By Paul Daughetee

Last week I went over the hardware a production office needs to put a comic book together. Today we’ll be covering the software and processes involved in getting your comic ready to print or to submit to an online publisher.

SOFTWARE

Here at Kymera Press, we use Adobe products almost exclusively in the production of our comics. However, for all of the Adobe products I list below, there are applications from other companies that can do the job equally well.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CC – All of our freelance artists submit their finished artwork in a digital format—typically either Photoshop’s native PSD format or the TIFF format. Photoshop will likely be what you use to verify the submitted art meets your specifications. If it does not, you may need to use it to get the art to meet your specs . You’ll also need this if your production office is creating ads or other content for your book.

ADOBE INDESIGN CC – InDesign is the application you’ll be using to pull all of your art together in book form. It’s forte is the creation and layout of digital projects such as your comic book. When you’re done with your layout, you’ll use InDesign to export your book to a PDF document; a PDF being the preferred file format for most printers and digital publishers.

ADOBE INCOPY CC – InCopy is software used for copy editing. It feeds your copy directly into the layout you’ve created with InDesign. Although it’s not strictly necessary, it is quite useful as it allows copy editing without directly modifying the InDesign files; the InCopy files will simply be links that appear in your InDesign layout.

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CC – You’ll use Illustrator for creating illustrations using vector graphics that are scalable without any loss of resolution. This is very useful if you’re publishing online and need that ability to scale. You may find some artists prefer Illustrator as their primary drawing/painting tool and it is often used by comic book letterers.

PROCESSES

SPECIFICATIONS – You’re going to be taking art that’s passed through the systems of numerous creative types and trying to fit it into your book’s format. To ease that process, it’s imperative that you provide your artists with a detailed specification that delineates exactly what you want from them when they deliver their files to you.

ART PAGE SIZES AND RESOLUTIONS – For Gates of Midnight, we specified that we want our pencils and inks drawn/scanned at 300/600 dpi and at 150 percent of the finished size. For us, that corresponds to a page as follows:

• BLEED: 10.3125” x 15.75” (6188 x 9450 pixels @ 600 dpi)
• TRIM: 9.9375” x 15.375 (5963 x 9225 pixels @ 600 dpi)
• SAFE: 9.1875” x 14.625” (5513 x 8775 pixels @ 600 dpi)

Our “Final Page Format” that will be sent to our printer for offset printing of the comic is as follows:

• Bleed:  6.875” x 10.5”  (2063 x 3150 pixels @ 300 dpi)
• Trim:  6.625” x 10.25”  (1988 x 3075 pixels @ 300 dpi)
• Safe:  6.125” x 9.75”  (1838 x 2925 pixels @ 300 dpi)

FILE FORMATS – Our artists typically are working in Photoshop so all artwork is in Photoshop’s PSD file format typically. As an alternative, files can be saved and uploaded as TIFF files with NO file compression.

LAYERS – The artists should be consistent with your policies concerning layered art. Ours are as follows:

• Pencil/Inked pages will have their layers flattened prior to submission.
• Colored pages may have their layers flattened prior to submission at the discretion of the colorist.
• Lettered pages will have all lettering in a single layer separate from the art to aid in changes, corrections and the translation of the comic into other languages.
• Cover art that is submitted should always include the various graphics (art, credits, titles, etc.) in separate layers. During the production process changes and corrections are much easier if the separate layers are intact.

COLOR CALIBRATION – We urge the use of a color calibrated monitor as we here at Kymera Press use color calibrated monitors and printers when reviewing submitted art.

COLOR MODE – Our artists work in either RGB or CMYK mode but we require all art to be submitted in CMYK. We recommended that the Gamut Warning tool be used in Photoshop prior to submitting the CMYK files for review. We use the tool and art that has out-of-gamut colors is returned to the artist to have the color corrected.

COLOR SETTINGS – We provide our artists with a color settings file (.csf) to be used with Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) when creating art for Kymera Press. The color settings file is based on the color settings advocated by Hi-Fi Colour Design in their book Hi-Fi Colour for Comics.

ASSEMBLY – So the creative team is done and now some assembly is required. Besides the twenty two or so pages of your comic, you’ve got a front cover, a back cover, a credits page and whatever pages you need to fill your comic book. The total number of pages must be a multiple of four as commercial printers assemble a comic book out of sheets that have two pages printed on one side and two pages printed on the other.

INSPECTION – The first step in the assembly process is to open each and every page and verify that it meets your specifications. If a page does not, either make the adjustments yourself or return the art to the creative team and let them decide how best to fix the issue.

DOCUMENT SETUP – Open Adobe InDesign and create and save a new document. Our setup is as follows:

Intent: Print
Number of Pages: 32
Start Page #: 1
Page Size: Custom
Width: 6.625 in
Height: 10.25 in
Orientation: Portrait
Margins: 0.5 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)
Bleed: 0.125 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)
Slug: 0.75 in (Top/Bottom/Left/Right)

DOCUMENT BUILD – At this point I have all of the art that’s going to go into the book in a single folder on our Dropbox site. All of the artwork at this point is in the TIFF format (no compression/no layers) and in the CMYK color space required by commercial printers. The content of this folder is a copy of all of the art that has passed the inspection process. I do not work with the original artwork as it might be altered in later printings and I want to be able to archive exactly what is going into this printing.

Open the folder containing your art and drag and drop the issue’s cover from the folder to the first page of the InDesign document. It should completely cover the white page and extend out to precisely fit the red lines that indicate the document’s bleed edge. If not, then there is a mismatch between the cover’s size and your documents settings. Go back and inspect your artwork and your specifications and adjust your InDesign document and/or artwork until there’s a perfect fit.

Repeat this step with each and every finished page that’s been created for your comic book. Save your work along the way and pat yourself on the back when you’re done. You’re close to having a finished book.

 

Next week we’ll  have the final installment of our series, How Many Artists does it take to Make a Comic Book, with part three of A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office.  Don’t miss it.

A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office

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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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