| Breaking In | Collaboration | Coloring | Desktop Publishing |
Breaking In |
How can I get work as a comics writer? |
Same answer for both [writing and art] questions. Get together a good portfolio of your work, and begin to submit it to companies. If you want to work on a specific project, study it carefully, so you know you're offering them something they want. --Donna Barr, A Fine Line |
[Art and writing] Learn your craft first by making small press comics for yourself. If you are not a writer/artist hook up with someone who can do what you cannot. Just have fun and enjoy making these comics for friends and family. Trade and sell these comics with others who make their own comics and anyone else who enjoys these types of comics. Making your own comics has a lot less hassles than trying to working professionally in the field. Once you are ready to try and make some money with your talents you will be able to use the experience you have gained and the comics that you have created as examples of your work. Several creators have turned professional after starting out in small press field including Scott McCleod and Donna Barr. - Dave A. Law, DEGA Studios/Creating Comics |
The best way to show how well your writing works on a comics page is to team up with an artist and illustrate some of your scripts. Let's face it, scripts are kind of boring to read, and it's easy for an editor to miss just how nicely your story will work on the printed page. Do try to avoid the common trap of putting a lot of entertaining asides, directions, etc. in your script. You don't want those asides to be more entertaining than the story, and they often are. Aside from proving your awareness of the visual aspect of comics storytelling, the rest of the advice is pretty standard for any sort of writing submission:
-- Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout Comics |
How can I get work as a comics artist? |
Same answer for both [writing and art] questions. Get together a good portfolio of your work, and begin to submit it to companies. If you want to work on a specific project, study it carefully, so you know you're offering them something they want. --Donna Barr, A Fine Line |
Work on your craft, and don't limit yourself to comics alone, draw other things. Have an awareness of what publishers are looking for, and don't get discouraged if they aren't looking for you. What I look for from an artist is a self-consistant style, something that's done on purpose, not hit-or-miss. Raw skill isn't the issue for me -- it can be cartoony, it can be realistic, it can be primitive, long as it hangs together for the stories you're trying to tell. And, storytelling ability is definitely something you need to demonstrate. Have at least a couple of pieces, one without dialogue, which tell a coherent story. Pinups don't mean jack when you need a script illustrated. Also, do your homework before asking for a portfolio review or making a submission-- for a humor publisher, I still find myself looking at a lot of portfolios full of horror and superhero art. Rather than send an expensive package of drawings to me, if you don't know what I'm looking for, write a note and ask. At a convention, stop for a minute and page through my books before you ask for a portfolio review; if your work would look at home in one of our books, then talk to me; otherwise, save your time. Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout |
How do you submit a script to a comics company? |
| As with screenwriting, script format is a very important part of the submission process. The following sites have examples: |
Contact the company; request script guidelines. Include an SASE. Follow these guidelines scrupulously! --Donna Barr, A Fine Line |
Script Examples: Dark Horse Comics - http://www.dhorse.com/Help.html?CART=29600562863722918&subsec=Subm&DOC=submPRIME Bebe Williams - http://www.artcomic.com/zombies.html Marv Wolfman - http://www.primenet.com/~marvw/script.html The unfortunate truth in the industry is that you are morely likely to find work if you send an illustrated sample of your writing rather than a plain text script. This is a must if you are trying to sell a project to a publisher. - Dave A. Law, DEGA Studios/Creating Comics |
Where can I find comics work? |
Check out the ads in the CBG, Digital Webbing's Talent Search page, Creator Ads, and newsgroups for messages of companies looking for submissions. Also, Dave A. Law's Creating Comics has links to over 2 dozen companies who have their submission guidelines online. http://www.cadvision.com/dega/creating.htm - Dave A. Law, DEGA Studios/Creating Comics |
How do I keep a publisher from stealing my ideas? |
Don't worry about it. If this were an issue -- there wouldn't have been two asteroid movies this summer, and two volcano movies last summer. Remember the year when everyone was doing a vampire movie? Ideas on their own aren't worth anything, it's the execution which matters. If your execution of an idea is good, a publisher stands far more to gain by paying you to do the work than to steal the idea and have someone else do it. People seem to use this as an excuse to not finish their stuff more than anything else -- after all, why should I finish my story if someone can steal it? Get over it, I've personally come up with the ideas for the universal remote control, the solar flashlight, and Baywatch, among others. Thing is, so did someone else, and they did something about it. Do something about your ideas, and let the other guy growse about it. -- Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout |
You can't. Ideas aren't copyrightable. You can only copyright specific handling of an idea, specific images and order of words. But if you're going to be working on a project whose copyright is already owned by the publisher, you don't care about copyright, anyway. --Donna Barr |
Self-publish. In any case you always can add a few twists and turns to your original idea and turn around and sell your idea to another company. Personally, I would be more concerned about a publisher printing one of my scripts and not paying me or worse yet putting their name on my work. - Dave A. Law, DEGA Studios/Creating Comics |
Are there any online resources for people who want to write/draw comics? |
In an essay about writing for comics, Peter David suggests that you simply write for everything you can get your hands on. It's not bad advice -- to write comics well and sell your stories, you have to know how to write well and sell your stories. In this spirit, any publications, books, etc. about writing will help you with comics writing. The following sources are somewhat more specific: James Hudnall, writer of Age of Heroes, Espers, and Shut up and
Die, has a page with excerpts from his forthcoming book, "Secrets
of Comics Writing." The page includes a sample script, too. Marc Fleury's "Writing for Comics," a site of essays
and resources on writing for comics. Comics Writers Forum: a network of comics writers online who critique
each others work, share tips, etc. Jerry Stratton's Negative Space has numerous comic creator resources: Resources for Drawing Comics: GUTTERS Resources for finding collaborators: Comic Ground Also, http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Creators/ for other links to creator-oriented sites. Dave Law's Creating Comics site is another extensive collection
of advice and links. -- Links contributed by Jerry Stratton, Marc Fleury, and Mike Meyer |
Collaboration |
How can I find an artist to illustrate my scripts (or a writer to provide scripts to illustrate)? | ||||||||||
-- Mike Meyer | ||||||||||
A hard one. This one takes lots of negotiation, and possible upfront payment, and hair-pulling. -- Donna Barr | ||||||||||
Check out creative samples on these sites: Colorists Unite - Catalogue of Comic Artists - http://www.lab-retriever.com/coloristsunite/sections/catalogues.html This is a place includes samples from for all artists not only colorists. Comic Writer/Artist Connection - http://www.thewww.com/conection/mainpage1.html Hydraski's Cesspool - http://www.dnai.com/~jgriffin/hydra/index.html This is a well established and nicely designed site. This is a good place to check out and post your samples. This site is updated very regularly.
You can also place online ads at these places:
or in Newsgroups:
-- Dave Law, Creating Comics | ||||||||||
How should the proceeds be split between the artist and the writer? | ||||||||||
That's a question of negotiation. You each have to decide what you want, and compromise. -- Donna Barr | ||||||||||
It's for you to decide. Whatever you do decide to do, you should spell it out in writing. You needn't go overboard with a fancy contract, just document the whats, whens, and how much. Just the act of writing it down will help prevent misunderstanding later on, and the agreement will be legally enforceable as a bonus. -- Mike Meyer |
Coloring |
Desktop Publishing |
What kind of computer should I use? |
| Whichever one you have, or like. Macintosh is best for graphics, but Photoshop
works nice on a PC, too. -- Donna Bar |
Despite the continued spirited bickering over the issue, this question has become less and less relevant over the years. Where at one time there was a substantial price difference between PC and Macintosh machines, and the bulk of the new graphics-oriented software was only available on the Macintosh, these days the competition is somewhat more even. Most graphics programs are now available on both platforms, and both platforms can boast perfectly serviceable machines for comics publishing at a $1500 or so price point. Moreover, PC and Mac machines now use common graphics cards, hard disk interfaces, and multi-sync monitors. The Macintosh may have a slight graphics edge still, but it has narrowed. My advice: buy the cheapest computer which will support the peripherals or cards you want to use, then stuff it with as big a disk and as much memory as you can afford. Big hard drives are faster than smaller ones, and memory is dirt cheap; both things will make much more difference in your system performance than processor speed. In today's computer architectures, the processors are so much faster than the memory devices that there is a miniscule difference in performance between a 200MHz and 300 MHz machine. Why? Because memory is clocked at 25 - 33 MHz, and the processors have to literally wait for the memory to return results. As far as marketing wars go, don't worry about the Mac disappearing if you really prefer it -- its demise has been predicted for 14 years now, and they're still around. Even if Apple disappeared tomorrow, there will be someone popping up to support the machines the rest of their usable life. And remember, the usable life of a computer is nothing like a car -- three or four years from now, you'll be doing this all over again anyway, just so you can run the cool new stuff that's come out. There are some differences in the ease of use, expandibility, and maintainability of Mac and Windows machines; try them both, see which one you prefer. Then, don't worry about it -- you'll have a dozen comics out, and people will still be arguing which is better. Mike Meyer, Twist and Shout comics |
What software is needed for comics pubishing? |
| Pagemaker, FrameMaker (Both Adobe, I believe. FrameMaker is more
Professional level -- in other words, more likely to drive you nuts). -- Donna Barr |
I think it's important to remember that you can produce a comic book without a computer at all, and as a corollary, you can use a computer for as many or as few of the steps in preparing a book for a printer as you want, all the way up to direct(plateless) printing from your disk. If you want to do your own color separations, you'll need an image editor capable of CMYK output. Industry standard for that is Adobe Photoshop. Note that the Photoshop LE that is bundled with many scanners does not include the CMYK mode-- only the full version does. If you want to do your own lettering and logo design, you'll probably want a vector-based graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand. A program like Macromedia Fontographer will allow you to design your own fonts, if you need to do this. As far as laying out pages, or combining lettering, text, with images -- you can do anything from strictly manual paste-up to a fully digital paste-up capable of taking advantage of high resolutions typesetters. You can do typesetting with any word processing program, as long as you are willing to live with very basic page layouts. Most comic books require little enough typesetting that you might be able to get away with using your vector-based graphics program to generate text layouts, ads, etc. A program like Freehand or Illustrator will let you import raster graphics (Photoshop files) into the layout. If you want to do more sophisticated layouts, are doing complex ads, or you are doing complex publications with mixes of graphics and text, you might want to invest in a page layout program like Adobe Pagemaker or Quark XPress. If you are generating Postscript output for your printer to typeset, you might also consider getting a "Preflight" software package, which will read the Postscript and check for any errors which might confuse the typesetting machinery. In all cases, you should check with your printer or prepress house to see what software formats they can handle. Most large printing companies have all of these applications, or have applications which can read the more common formats. You need to ask about this. |
<Computer Lettering> If you considering doing computer lettering, you could purchase a font from a place such as ComiCraft ( http://www.comicbookfonts.com ), but there are various shareware/freeware fonts that can be acquired for free. Some of these include: Witzworx shareware font that Ron Evry created (http://www.reuben.org/evry/witzworx.html ) There are also some freeware fonts on Hydraski's Cesspool site by W. Allen Montgomery & Kaare Andrews. ( http://www.dnai.com/~jgriffin/hydra/fonts.html ) In addition you could also look at Chankstore freefont archive (http://www.chank.com/freefonts.html ). A final place you might want to try is to make a request on a newsgroup such as alt.binary.fonts (news:alt.binary.fonts ) or comp.fonts ( news:comp.fonts ). -- Dave Law |
What image and disk formats are used in professional publishing? |
For CMYK bitmapped images, the most common format used by printers is 32-bit TIFF. Most service organizations or printers ask that TIFF files be sent uncompressed. This seems to be more of a superstition than a real technical problem with the compressed TIFF format, but disk space is cheap enough to humor them. For vector images or page layouts, Illustrator, Pagemaker, and Quark formats are all accepted. I don't know about Freehand format. When sending a page or pages in one of these formats, you need to make sure that all of the raster graphics are present, as well as all of the fonts for your page. Be sure to ask your printer what they accept, and make sure you follow their directions for preparing the files, such as page size, number of pages per file, bleed specifications, image resolutions, and other program settings. Some printers will not accept improperly-prepared images, or will charge you to fix your errors, usually at a extravagent graphic design rate of $25-$50 an hour. The commercial printing world operates largely on Postscript files, but this isn't common in comics. Only a few years ago, the most common media for shipping large images was SyQuest removable disks. They were expensive and unreliable. These days, the Iomega Zip cartridge seems to be the standard, as the drives are inexpensive and the media can hold a lot of data at a reasonable price. With CD-R drives and media so inexpensive, they are also taking off. As a means of example, Brenner Printing can accept CD-R disks, Zip, Jaz, SyQuest, and 1.3GB MagnetoOptical disks. They've also been shipped an entire Macintosh external floppy drive, and used that. Check with your printer to see what they can read these days (Brenner included...), as this area of technology changes rapidly. |
What resolution should I use for scanning my interior pages? |
Unless you are doing grayscale pages and plan to have a prepress operation create linescreens of these images, you'll get much better image quality by sending original art or camera-ready photocopies, as most image scanner resolutions are far lower than photocopy resolution or film resolution. If you were to scan your artwork at 1200 dpi, your scanner would likely fake that resolution in software, and the resulting files would be huge. Even at 1200 dpi, the image sharpness will suffer over a crisp photocopy. There are techniques which would allow you to vectorize your image for high-resolution phototypesetter output, but employing these techniques would cost more in prepress and printing, with no appreciable gain. The only place where scanning makes sense is when you need to generate line screens, such as color art, or grayscale art. The one advantage of scanning your pages in is that you can then use Illustrator to create an overlay for the lettering and/or logos, which would then be rendered by the typesetting software at the full phototypesetter resolution (typically about 2100 dpi). This is how commercial art logos come out so crisp. |
Why do my logos and text come out so much fuzzier than they do on the big companies' covers? |
Commercial companies generally use Postscript or Illustrator format for typesetting and logos, which describes the shape to be drawn. Scanned artwork, such as a Photoshop image, contains a bit-by-bit description of the image. When you send a Postscript image to a printer or phototypesetter, the printer recreates the shapes from the postscript description, at the devices' resolution. When you send a bit-by-bit image, the device has to dither the grey pixels into a pattern of black and white dots, based on the line screen frequency chosen for the output. Black pixels are generally just output as straight black. The highest resolution you will have for the black lines in your image will be the original image resolution, for example 300 dpi. An Illustrator or Pagemaker file may be a combination of bit-mapped image with an overlay of high-resolution vector (Postscript, Illustrator format, etc.) elements (text, logos, etc.). This gives very sharp graphics on the text, and good quality on the continuous-tone elements of the image. A cover done entirely in Photoshop will be limited to the image resolution and the line screen frequency (usually 110 or 133 lines per inch for glossy paper). The logos will lack the sharpness of Postscript-generated artwork, but color choice and graphic design techniques can minimize any ill effects. |
Last Updated 15 May 1998
Mike Meyer