penciller – Kymera Press, Inc.

What Do I Look For in a Comic Book Artist?

August 28, 2015 By Paul Leave a Comment

By D. Lynn Smith

I recently answered some interview questions, and one of them was something like what advice would I give to artists wanting to work for Kymera Press. I talked about getting your work up on sites like Deviant Art and not being shy about displaying your work. But I thought it might be helpful to tell you what I look for when searching for an artist.

Kymera Press is a new publisher and we want to support young artists so they can continue to grow and develop. This does not mean, however, that we are going to hire an artist just because they can draw. Yes, drawing is important. But more important is if you can tell a story with pictures.

My previous entries about the writer made the point that, for the most part, the writer of the comic book is invisible. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of narration. I’m constantly trying to cut back on the number of words that appear on my pages. That’s really difficult, but if you have a good artist, it’s much easier.

When I go to sites like Deviant Art, I’m looking for an artist who has posted more than just illustrations. I want to see sequential pages. I want to see how you arrange your panels, if your art tells a story that flows from one panel to the next, if you left some room for dialog bubbles.

I really like to see artists experiment with panel arrangements. A comic that plays with this is Gotham Academy, written by Becky Cloonan and Brendan Fletcher with art by Karl Kiershl. I’m continually delighted by the creative panel arrangement in this comic. So play with the panels: maybe have a full-page illustration with panels arching across the page from the top left to the bottom right. Or have a two-page spread where the panels go across the top of two pages instead of just one.

Something different and interesting always catches my eye. I’m also looking to see if the artist draws a background. Many young artists draw the action, but forget that the characters are somewhere, not standing in the middle of a cloud of nothing. If they are in a restaurant, are there tables, people, wait staff? Is there food on the table, pictures on the wall?

So if you’d like a job as a penciller or inker on a comic book, post some pages of sequential art. If you don’t have your own story, ask a writer friend, or look for a script online and draw up one of the pages just as a sample. Show me you can tell a story in pictures.

One of my favorite comics is Bitch Planet written by Kelly Sue Deconnick and drawn by Valentina De Landro. In one of the issues, the action is happening in the foreground while a whole different action, the beginning of a prison riot, is happening in the background. It’s absolutely brilliant. And yes, Kelly Sue wrote it that way, but that’s because she also fills in the background, something I’m working on learning to do. The point is, the background can be as important as the foreground.

Many young artists post a lot of fan art. While these are usually interesting to see, it doesn’t show me that these artists are able to conceptualize their own characters. Building a character is a very important part of the storytelling process. I may post reference pictures for a character, but it is the artist who actually brings that character to the page. When I’m searching for an artist, I want to see if they can create original characters. Fan art simply doesn’t do that.

Finally I’m looking for consistency. When I’m doing a series, I expect my character in Issue #30 to look like she looked in Issue #1. Some artists have a problem recreating a face from one panel to the next.

These are the main things I look for in an artist. Of course there are other things as well, like professionalism, price and just plain niceness! Don’t underestimate the value of being easy to work with.

Translation of Comics

August 21, 2015 By Paul Leave a Comment

By D. Lynn Smith

Earlier this year, my friend Lorraine Watson started a discussion on Facebook about dialog. Since it was very interesting, I thought I’d give a synopsis of that conversation here.

Lorraine asked, “Do you know if word and/or bubble placement changes for comics written in languages read right to left?” I had to admit that I had no idea, but when you think about the popularity of Manga, it makes sense that the bubbles would be placed differently. Mary McFarland chimed in and said that Arabic and Hebrew were also read right to left. Mary describes herself as an Aramaic amateur researcher and a girl geek, so she was very interested in the answer to this question as well.

I went out to a board I’m on and that very same day, I had the answer courtesy of Laura Sneddon. She said, “Manhua, Hebrew and Arabic comics/cartoons are all read from right to left. Japanese, Chinese and Korean were all traditional right to left vertical languages, though left to right is now more popular, and Hebrew and Arabic are of course, right to left too—all comics and cartoons in these languages are right to left.”

I never stopped to think about how my comics would translate into other languages. My new colorist for Gates of Midnight, Sandra Molina, is a Spanish to English translator and has offered to translate Gates into Spanish. But that wouldn’t involve the kind of changes these other languages would entail.

So when Mary asked me how I would go about getting my comics translated into these languages, once again, I had no idea. This is where Chris Krone joined the conversation. Chris said he’d seen some manga which was relettered for English sales, the artwork had been flipped into a mirror-image before the bubbles were added.

So a new letterer would have to be hired to reletter the pages. However, that’s not what really struck me. When I was talking about writing each page, I talked about placement of some of the panels. The penciller does a lot of the arrangement, but the writer has a certain rhythm in mind—meaning I place things inside the panel in certain places for a story reason. To do a mirror image of the page, well wouldn’t that change the flow that the writer established?

I know this seems like a little thing, but it really got me thinking about the integrity of the work. Maybe the mirror image wouldn’t have much of an impact except in the writer’s mind. I mean, the pages would still be read the same way, right. But if you think about the bleed and the safety zone of the pages, how much you leave on the side so that art and words won’t get lost in the fold… I don’t know. I think there’s a lot more to this than simply printing mirror images.

The conversation then moved on to how the deaf and hard of hearing community who use sign language might be depicted in comics. A friend of Chris’ gave him a great link to a web comic that does just that. You can see it here.

You can see that putting together a comic book is much more involved than one might originally think.

I’d also like to say that this conversation was probably the most fun I’ve had on Facebook. It’s amazing how we have all of these connections where we can get answers to questions that stump us in less than 24 hours. Thank you Lorraine, Mary and Chris for expanding my mind!

Kymera Press Celebrates a Triumphant Comic-Con San Diego

July 24, 2015 By Paul Leave a Comment

By Autumn Daughetee

The staff at Kymera Press is back from Comic-Con International: San Diego and I’m pleased to report it was a very successful event. We were able to sell lots of copies of both of our series—Gates of Midnight and Pet Noir. We also connected with other professionals in the comic book industry, sharing the mission of Kymera Press (publishing comics that are written and drawn by women, to be loved and cherished by folks of all sexes).

However, Comic-Con is all about the fans. All of us were pleased to note that several fans of the first two issues of Gates of Midnight made a special trip by our booth to pick up issues #3 and #4. Kymera Press founder and author of Gates of Midnight, D. Lynn Smith, was also on hand to sign copies of issues #1-4 of Gates of Midnight. We were also lucky enough to have Anna Giovaninni, the penciller for Pet Noir, travel all the way from Brazil to sign copies of the comic. Kymera Press had a special early limited edition of Pet Noir with a Comic-Con only cover for sale during the event. It was extremely popular with attendees, who loved the idea of a genetically engineered talking cat who worked as an undercover cop on a space station. Add in Leon’s obsession with film noir and readers seemed to find it irresistible. One of my personal favorite moments of the convention was selling a cosplayer her very first comic book (Pet Noir). All of the evidence indicates that Pet Noir going to be a runaway hit. Stay tuned to this blog for more information on where you can purchase your copy of Pet Noir.

If you didn’t have the chance to visit the Kymera Press booth at this Comic-Con, don’t worry. We plan to return to next year’s convention and hope to have more space, more comics and more signings to offer. Or, if you absolutely can’t wait, visit a con near you. You just might see us there.

I’ll leave you with a few of the photos I snapped at Comic-Con.

A Bane cosplayer and Las Vegas local poses with D. Lynn Smith.

Two Agent Carter cosplayers stopped by the Kymera Press booth.

This cosplayer's first comic was Pet Noir, so she stopped for a photo with the artist Anna Giovanninni. — This cosplayer’s first comic was Pet Noir, so she stopped for a photo with the artist Anna Giovanninni.

These ladies stopped to pose in front of the Kymera Press booth.

Anna Giovanninni, the artist and penciller for Pet Noir, was on hand to sign copies of the comic.

Kymera Press founder and author of Gates of Midnight, D. Lynn Smith sits in Kymera Press' booth at Comic-Con International: San Diego. — Kymera Press founder and author of Gates of Midnight, D. Lynn Smith sits in Kymera Press’ booth at Comic-Con International: San Diego.

A Glimpse Inside the Comic Book Production Office – Part 2

May 14, 2015 By Paul Leave a Comment

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.

Amelia Woo Talks Gaming and gives Advice to Aspiring Artists

March 13, 2015 By Paul Leave a Comment

By Autumn Daughetee
Over the past few weeks I’ve shared the first and second parts of my interview with Amelia Woo, penciller and inker for Gates of Midnight. In this final installment, Amelia talks about her work as a fledgling video game designer and offers her advice to aspiring comic book creators.

I’ve been told that you are also a game designer and are designing your own video game. Can you tell me about it?

Everything started when I spent two years developing a fictional world called Copernicus Island. This was originally designed to be the basis of a comic book. But in the middle of the creative process, I thought about the possibility of doing a game based on this world. I read a ton of books, practiced a million of the tutorials, chose my engine (UDK) and pushed myself to the limit to discover what I could do. In the end, I had an adventure/stealth genre game.

Being a “green” game designer with a background in art was pretty hard at the beginning of the project. I had to learn how to program and polish my 3D technique. I did some animations as part of my Bachelor of Arts degree and that proved useful when I was polishing up the animations.

Creating a game is one of the hardest things someone could do. It’s a marathon and a mental challenge. Without support, it is almost impossible. UDK forums have been a crucial part of my development process since the very beginning. Indie game developers are very supportive, maybe because we love games.

Does designing video games have much in common with creating a comic book?

Both are a marathon! Comic books and video games also both communicate with the audience via immersive worlds. Well, most of them do. I know some designers would mention Tetris, but I think even this game has a “world” to share, with minimalist scenery in the black background and a lot of geometric shapes. The Tetris world has this aesthetic with a purpose, simple and effective.

Another thing games and comic books have in common are what I call the “filling gap” effect. In comic books, the audience has to complete the thoughts and action between the panels, completing the narrative. It is a kind of interactive process and requires the reader to follow the panels laid out by the comic creators. In video games, the players must complete actions laid out by the game designers. A comic book creator and a game designer both have to make sure that their audience can follow what they have created.

If you could give advice to an aspiring comic book artist, what would it be?

Don’t listen to anyone else! I’m kidding … a little. If you ask two different people to describe the same experience, they will tell you two different stories. Am aspiring comic book creator should decide what is best for them by trying different things. You can keep other artists’ words and advice in mind, but sometimes what is good for one person isn’t good for another. Try various ways of doing things and judge what works best for you.

Just for fun, if you were a comic book character, who would you be?

I think it would be Bulma, from the Dragon Ball Z series. She is intelligent, rich, the “princess of all Sayans” and never gets killed by anyone. Maybe her super power is good luck. But I rarely want to be a comic book character, because they always have a tragic story! My life is hard, but those comic characters have horrible lives.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Yes! For aspiring comic book creators, I’ll skip the advice about never giving up and being persistent, because they hear it all of the time. (It is true. Never give up!) I’d advise that they don’t go along with things they don’t believe in. If you don’t want to change your drawing style to fit this or that publisher, don’t do it. Make what you create for you and your audience, period. Also, don’t wait for your chance; create your chance. If nobody wants to hire you, make your own comic book or team up with someone else to create one. Learn the business part of the industry or team up with someone else who understands it, paying attention on how to make your comic a viable business. Don’t try to fit your plot into the genre of the moment; everything has an audience. Find your audience to make your goals practicable. Be dynamic and make a move or you will stay static.