#it'd easily take 5x as long without the prep I did!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deoidesign · 3 months

Note

if i may ask, is it difficult at all to re-edit/organize the comic pages from the webtoon format to fit the graphic novel format?

on another note, I'm so happy that your kickstarter was funded!!! I love time and time again, im so excited to see this all happen <3

I'll just turn this ask into something of a guide for the process! Because yes, it is difficult, but there are also many ways I have been preparing from the beginning for this very situation to make things easier for me!

I've worked in both print and scroll in the past, and have done this transition once before for a short story, so I already had familiarity both with my goals for print, and struggles with the transition!

How I prepared from the beginning for this transition:

1: My panels are 2500 pixels wide, so they can span my page (which is 8.3x5.8 inches) at 350 DPI (which is print quality)

2: My layers are organized: Text, FX, Foreground, Characters, Background

3: I draw one very large (twice as big as any panel would be, minimum) background for my major locations, as well as drawing furniture assets in isolation. This not only saves me time when making my actual episodes, but it also offers me INCREDIBLE flexibility when making this transition to print.

These 3 things let me pull the character art to the page by itself, scale it up or down to fit my panel, and then fill in the background behind the character.

So, I read the scroll version, decide how many and which panels I want on the page for the pacing (I also keep page spreads and page turns in mind while I am doing this), and then I pull those panels over from the scroll version to the page.

Then, I make the panel borders/page layout that I want, fit the character art into it, paste in the backgrounds, do any art editing that I need, add FX, and then re-do the text!

Sometimes I do need to draw parts that are missing (shoulders or elbows getting cut off is an extremely common one) and sometimes I need to adjust facial expressions, cut panels, or rearrange panels to make things read more clearly. Since it's my comic already, I know how to do these things while maintaining the original intent, but if I were working with someone else's comic I would need to work closely with them to know what can and can't be cut.

(original panel vs an expanded version)

Another common issue is that VERY tall panels will inevitably lose a lot of information when they’re turned to pages. Identify the purpose of the panel (pacing, showing a lot of detail, etc) and then replicate that with your page layout.

examples (in order) are: scene transition, being overwhelmed, suspense, and establishing shot. All of these were a single panel in the scroll version!

Another issue when converting pages is that panel order is a lot less straightforward than when starting from print format. Conversational back and forth that's fine in scroll often messes up the flow of reading in a page (characters facing out, not looking at eachother from panel to panel, etc) and so some creative solutions are necessary to keeping the reading order.

For the first page I had to delete and rearrange some panels, and in the second the dialogue bubbles guide us to read this page in a circle. (dialogue guides through a lot of my pages lol)

And the last really common issue that pops up is that height differences can be really difficult. Usually in print this is solved with clever angles, but I’ve already drawn everything. So, I’ll either resort to vertical shaped panels, panel pop-outs, or editing a character up or down to fit into the panel.

(examples in order)

So, yes, it is difficult! But I have a lot of experience with both formats, and having prepared for this from the beginning I've been able to make the transition a LOT more smoothly than I otherwise could have.

I hope this helps!

And, thank you about the kickstarter! I'm extremely excited I'll be able to print these, the proofs I've received so far look just absolutely stunning and I'm so so so excited to get to send them to people!!!

Obligatory self promo, if you want to see the kickstarter page and get these four books for yourself, then you can check it out here ^^ It's been funded, so at this point we're just reaching stretch goals and placing orders!

#asks #anon #art tips #comic tips #web comics #comic books #comic advice #also this is just my own experience obviously everyone works differently and I cant promise this will work for you too #but doing things this way I've been able to finish about an episode (15 pages or so) every day #so it's been extremely swift (though also of course a ton of work)#thank you past me for making this so easy!!!#it'd easily take 5x as long without the prep I did!!!

167 notes · View notes