Mastorism - Terror in Sector Five - Page 52 1/2

So there you have it!  A week from today, we should resume our normal schedule.  I thank all of you for letting me take some time off, I have put it to good use!    And, YES, I have a bit of an ulterior motive for posting an "inbetweener" page, as I have a few announcements:

For those of you fans who also like to enjoy Mastorism in PRINT, the first 36 or so pages of this story (Terror in Sector Five) have been published in Earthbound Comics' "SPACEBBOUND! Double Feature" anthology book, along with an Alibi Jones story by fellow Drunk Ducker, Mike Luoma (Brother Zag).  While, I'm not totally sure why you'd pay to own the print version if you can read it here for free, I can tell you that if you do enjoy the comic, its a great way to support it.  Also, there's a great cover in color, with art by me, colors by my regular colorist, the fantastic Mr. Norman Wong.  ALSO also, the tones look REALLY good in print!  You can get that here:
 

http://indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4223

And of course, the entire story leading up to this one is available in one volume (with additional chapter lead in art) for a mere ten smackers:
 

http://indyplanet.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3361

Aaaannnndd, while I'm plugging away here (ha, get it?) its' worth noting that I will be at the Alternative Press Expo at the Concourse in San Francisco this coming weekend (Oct 16 & 17).  I will be at table #617, if you're in the area, or going, please come and stop by the booth, I would love to shoot the poop with you. Looks like its going to be a pretty big event this year - the expanded the exhibiting space.  So, should be lots of fun!

Anyhow, barring any weird events, we should be back on track with Mastorism next week!  can't wait to see you then, and thank you for your patience while I took some much needed personal time. 

--matt

Productive Comicking = Sparse Blogging

So, originally much of this was part of my Links Outside the Bottle feature for this last week, but the post turned out so long, I though I out to break it in two.  The original post (as written) started out as an explanation for a slow blogging week (hmm.. The irony of that causing me to have two posts come out of one).  ANYhow the point was I had a busy comicking week, so here’s what I had to say about it (and then some):

On the home front, I’ve actually been fairly productive (hence the lack of blogification).  I’ve been fighting the tough I-want-to-be-drawing-but-I-have-lots-o-production-work-to-do battle (which is pretty much a battle even to type out, what with all those dashes), and winning.  All of my story pages are formatted for both Mastorism #6 as well as for the trade. 

Oh and shhh, top secret, but I think I’m going to be going through Lulu to print my trade in order to get an ISBN and some distro to Amazon.  It will still be an Earthbound production, no worries there, and I’ll probably also offer the trade on IndyPlanet as well, to be consistent  with the rest of the Earthbound books. But, a little bit of forum convo and subsequent research discovered for me the fact that Lulu, at least for the size trade I’m working on, is fairly competitive with Ka-Blam’s pricing (within pennies)  and offers free ISBN/passive distro (again, basically just to Amazon, but still very cool).  So, I’m going to try it out and see how it works out for me.

So, I had to explain that in order to make sense when I tell you that my other triumph for the week was getting all of the trade story pages, AND chapter lead ins, set up in InDesign-- ready to go!   So now, for both books, its just a matter of getting the editorial content completed. 

I’ve also already got my covers for both books being colored by the fantastic Norman Wong right now.  So, a happily productive week, even if I never really drew or wrote anything….

Viva La Resolution!

I don't intend this to be a be-all end-all post about resolution, but something to give you what you need to understand what it is, determine what resolution you should be working in, and what resolution your final output should be.  Resolution questions seem to be common on message boards.   So I thought it might be a good subject to attack.

What is Resolution?

To put it simply resolution is how many pixels wide by how many pixels high an image is.  This is typically measured by inch, as in PPI (pixels per inch), or as it correlates to the print world as DPI (dots per inch).  Since a lot of digital work is done with print in mind, people typically refer to resolutions in DPI no matter what the final output is, and so will I.

Why do we need to even refer to resolutions "per inch" in the first place?  Well, if we were only looking at the image on a screen, we wouldn't.  Since we like to print stuff, though, we need to know how many pixels correlate to how much space on a page.  So an image can be 1000 x 1000 pixels, and then we can choose to give it any DPI, which will effect its size when printed.  Which leads us to the all important topic of:

Screen Resolution Vs. Print Resolution

Here's something definite:  Screen resolution (the resolution of your computer monitor) is 72dpi.  Even if there's a higher resolution assigned to the image, it will still display on screen at 72dpi.  That's not saying it shrinks:   a 1000 x 1000 pixel image will display on screen at 1000 x 1000  whether it was assigned 72dpi or 1200dpi.  It's a good habit, though, always to save things intended for screen at 72dpi.

Less definite is print resolution.  Why? Because the optimal DPI for print can depend on what you're printing.  Its also dependent upon the capabilities and limitations of the print house.  Since we're talking about comic books here, let's look at some good rules of thumb for comic books, and various printed publications (keep in mind these rules may not apply to, say, billboards).

The basic rule for print is 300dpi minimum.  This is generally considered the point where there is no pixelation visible to the naked eye.  What I'm talking about here is 300dpi at print size.  That is, if you wanted to print a 5" x 5" page, at 300dpi, that would be 1500 x 1500 pixels.  Get it?  Got it? Good!

There are a lot of folks out there who, I'm sure, are ready to flame me for suggesting 300dpi as a minimum.  But I can say, in good faith, as a graphic designer working a lot in print, 300dpi is usually all you need for your final files.  An exception would be straight black and white linework, which tends to show off some jagged edge pixeliation at 300dpi.  There I would suggest shooting for 600dpi if at all possible. 

In any case, if you can work/save/print at higher resolutions than these, I say go for it.  Operating at a higher resolution leaves options open for other applications.  Forethought can save you a lot of trouble.  I know a lot of webcomics artists who've saved all their work at a good size for screen display, but are mortified when they find out they can't use those same files to print!  Its a good idea to work at a high resolution, and save new files with different names at the smaller sizes as needed.  Which leads me to the next point: