So, firstly, there’s this long-time digital artist named Kez. Now, this Kez person, she has never really made anything for print. Her main comic cannot even BE printed, because she designed it that way, because it’s meant to be a webcomic only (infinite canvas and all that jazz!).  But, Kez wanted something to sell. How could she go to a comic convention, or in her case an arts festival, AS a comic artist, if she did not have comics to sell or show? (She couldn’t, because then she’d be a poser, and no one buys anything from posers, unless she had a mad-cool digital set up with a projector, which she can’t afford, so that doesn’t matter anyways.)

Well, Kez had this convenient little short-story with which to experiment in print called Not Alone. Not Alone capped out at 49 pages, with a 3 page epilogue. It was grayscale. It was a stand-alone comic that also was related to her other, longer, work, The War of Winds.

So, Kez headed over to Ka-Blam because she wanted an on-demand printing, no minimum. She wanted people who handled COMICS. On a regular basis. Kez got what she asked for!

Enough of the third person.  Overall, I had a very positive experience with Ka-Blam. There were a couple problems starting off though. First, there was some really ODD quirk on the order page. No matter what I ordered, it said I ordered something ELSE. After a day of biting my nails, “Holy heck, do they know what I want? Was I sent the wrong invoice, but they got the right one?” I grabbed hold of myself. Rule one of spending money: you have a right to have your fears allayed.

So I sent in an email asking what was up using their message center. I guess I was the first one to mention this problem, because they had me order everything AGAIN, asked again if I followed their instructions, and then finally they just let me SEND them a message for what I wanted. That whole process took about a week. Since I was on a tight schedule, I began to freak out a bit.  They want 4-5 weeks for normal printing costs, and all the sudden, I was down to THREE. And Kez realized this, and Kez spazzed.  So, if you’re considering your own print run, give yourself a good 6 weeks of room.  Good news, they get back to emails within a day, sometimes multiple times a day. That’s good service at a small company!

But the Ka-Blam folks realized this was their goof, and offered a rushed printing job at no cost to me. Which I appreciated, because I would have asked them if they had not offered. It wasn’t my fault, even if I should have given myself more time in case something went wrong. I assume they have since corrected this ordering goof.

Kez will now admit to some REALLY STUPID GOOFS she made in ordering. First, the order sheet at Ka-Blam. I went for the Trade Paperback, Standard Sized, Perfect Binding. Now, I’ve always had issues filling out paperwork. Ka-Blam was no different.

Okay, I swear I stared at that field for 10 full minutes. By 2-page increments, I took this to mean “sheets.” Okay, number of pages divided by 2= how many sheets of paper you are going to need. Keep in mind that the more paper you need, the more expensive the final order, obviously. But nooooooo. This means actual PAGES.  Numbered pages. Uh duh. The 2-page increment thing REALLY tripped me up (I don’t even want to think about how many emails were sent with me sounding like a dumbass about that!). I would suggest that be changed to an extremely simple “If each page, not counting the covers, were numbered, how many pages would you have?” Obviously if it’s an odd number, the back of that page will still be there, it’ll just be blank. Feel free to ignore me if I’m just being totally dense. Yes, I was one of those kids who always over-thought questions. It’s a habit I’m trying to break. The Ka-blam staff dealt with my idiocy however and refrained from yelling at me. I know they wanted to. I could feel it. I don’t feel too bad though, since I dropped a bucket-load of money off at their place. Dealing with customers, regardless of their intelligence, paranoia or neurotic tendencies, is part of the business. I deal with it myself on a daily basis. If one more person asks me how to insert a link into a post, I swear I will scream.

ANYWAYS.  So, I received my books today! I ordered them June 14, they arrived July 8th. I received a digital proof of the page order and set up on June 24. For 50 paperback books, 56 pages long, color cover with lamination, blank inside covers, Ka-Blam full page ad, and 70# glossy paper inside with grayscale comic pages, the price was $349.43 ($324.25 Printing Cost + $25.18 S&H -$20.00 in credits, I think for the ordering goof, but I’m not going to count that here since I don’t think anyone else would get the credits when they ordered), meaning each book cost me ~$7.00.  I actually had my math wrong before when I was calculating price per book (to sell) on my end. I was going to sell it for $10 even. I may go for $9 now, maybe even $8.50. Not sure!  I still don’t know myself how much people will spend on this little book of mine. I will have to sleep on it.

So how about the quality? It’s….good. Not top quality, but rather good. I’ve heard complaints that pages fall out on perfect bound books. I personally have not had that experience. I own another book from Ka-Blam, Kate Sweet’s Juathuur Vol 1 actually. It is 100+ pages, and all of the pages are in there quite solidly.  I even pulled on a couple to be sure. I could easily see volumes a couple of hundred pages long have that issue, however. I have paperback novels that do that, but only the big ones. Barb Jacobs mentioned that people are much more satisfied with their saddle-stitch comics (staples).

My biggest issue with Ka-Blam is their lamination on the covers. It comes off, starts to peel after a bit. I personally like to play with covers, fiddle with them as I read, so that does not help matters. On Kate  Sweet’s book that I own, the lamination also started to come up a bit around the spine.  This does not affect readability, but it greatly irks me as an artist. I think next time, I will go with hardcover. It is also important to note that upon closer inspection, not all books are the same size, and the trim area can differ between books by a margin of 1/8 inch. So, some books are taller than others, and some are wider. Make sure your bleed area is uniform, or at the very least, that you have no unfinished art IN the bleed area. Sometimes it can show up.

The box I received was also battered to hell. It was basically ROUND when it arrived. No more corners. The top 5 books in the pile all had their spines squished. I guess I’ll keep those as give-aways? However, the books were nicely packed in bubble wrap inside, with some extra shredded paper padding.  Care was obviously taken, though I would have greatly appreciated a sturdier box, or a “do not drop-kick me into an airplane” tag.

In conclusion, for the customer service and quality, Ka-Blam gets an 8/10. They held up their end of the deal, corrected and took responsibility for their goof, dealt with ME, and earned my respect as a great place for the beginner/self-publishing comic creator. I think they still have some real issues to work out with quality, but for their prices and exemplary service, I would highly recommend them.

Here’s a few more important things I learned doing this:

1) Design for print from the beginning if that is your goal. Frankly, I’m one of them “weirdos” who thinks the web has far more to offer a comic creator than print. I had never tailored my pages to print dimensions before.  I didn’t even decide to print Not Alone until I was more than half-way through. This meant I had to REFORMAT all the pages, which took 16 hours a day for 8 days straight. Now, imagine doing that with a longer work. It was quite horrible, and I don’t recommend that.

2) If printing in color, keep in mind the colors will be DARKER in print. Lighten them up a bit from what you see on your screen to get them the right lightness in print.

3) Work between 300-600 dpi. 150 dpi is the so-called minimum, but it will probably look horrible, especially if you’ve got color or gradients of any sort. Gradients look best at 600dpi or above in print or else you’ll get “stepping (visible bands).”

4) Get friends to proof read for you. Sarah Sawyer of The Gods’ Pack was the only one of three to catch a typo I missed myself–after reading the whole thing through about 50 times.

5) Give yourself PLENTY of time in case something goes wrong. If Ka-Blam wants 4-5 weeks, next time I want to be done with 6-8 weeks to spare. Keep in mind the second printing job goes faster if they already have your files though.

6) Read the technical specs VERY carefully to make sure you are doing everything right. Ka-Blam provides templates. Download them. They are invaluable. Pay special attention to the file format they want. Ka-Blam wants LZW-compressed TIFF files in RGB mode. Most places want PDFs in CMYK. Keep this mind!

I’ll be posting a video on youtube tonight that has a bit more about the books, as well as other stuff I’m doing to prepare for the festival. My youtube account is here. If you have any questions, let me know!

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Okay, a short follow-up here. I started sending out my books about a week ago, and have noticed a few issues/received a few complaints. First, I’ve found 2 misprints in my order of 50 books. If each book cost me $7, that $14 down the tube (and I WILL be asking for credits, as these misprints were not my fault).  This misprint was, for example, page 12, blank page, half of page 32 upside-down, blank page, blank page, page 13.  Second, it seems there is an issue with the perfect binding and pages falling out. One reader let me know that because of how he holds the books (thumb in the inside binding) it has caused some splitting. Because of these issues, I’m revising my score of Ka-Blam from 8/10 to 7/10, and highly recommending them for saddle-stitch binding, but only moderately recommending them for perfect binding.

Second, a VERY IMPORTANT TIP FOR PEOPLE AUTOGRAPHING THEIR BOOKS: Do NOT use gel pens. They smear and can ruin a copy. Use sharpies.

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A second follow-up (Dec 2009): I ordered a second batch of books from Ka-Blam, again with short notice, since I seem incapable of planning things out. I used the “reorder” option, and was flabbergasted to find the books were all on the wrong paper! I had to email to find out they could NO LONGER PRINT on the thicker paper stock that I loved in my original order. Not only did they not notify me of their inability to print on the paper that I wanted, but I had to notice this myself and ask for a refund on the price difference–which was sizable. I worry that I might never have received the refund if I had not asked. The Ka-Blam folks are VERY nice and helpful, but seemingly very disorganized. I do not think I will be ordering from them again. I do want to order more books if they can’t print on the right paper for my book.

Option 1 is usually better. Interested visitors see a higher quality image, and even though there is LESS to see, it is tantalizing in its…lack…of the entire image.  It’s saying “see more! Click here!” without actually saying it.  If you do it right, that is.

Option 2 is what most people seem to go with. What happens though is that the art loses quality, looks squashed, gets blurry and becomes…unattractive.  The only time I’ve seen this done right is on LARGE banners, like 160×600 towers or 728×90 leaderboards. If you have enough room, you can fit more. But if you don’t have enough room, don’t try to fit the 14 co-eds into the telephone booth.

How about some examples? I’m going to go with a middle-size, popular-size banner for linking (200x40px) and a random panel from a recent Not Alone page of mine (last panel).  I need more banners for that comic anyways.

First, I’m going to draw upon my 8 elements of a banner discussed in the first article about this. I’m going to choose a “facial feature” and use my personal logo.  I’m not going to include my URL because Not Alone doesn’t have its own site. I will include a border, action/movement is part of the panel, I’ll be using a monochromatic color scheme, and since this is a panel straight from my comic, the advertising is truthful. If there is room for a tag-line, I will include it.
Option 1, small piece of larger art done wrong, then right:

Why is the first one wrong and the second one right? The first has art that is TOO large on a canvas that is TOO small. It should only take one short glance to discern what is being shown to you.  You shouldn’t have to pause and ask, “what is that supposed to be?”  The second one is “right” because you can easily tell what it is, yet it’s still large enough that it’s only a PIECE of the entire image.

Option 2, “zoom out” done wrong and then done better:

Again, what makes the first wrong and the second right? In the first, the image is so SMALL it is you can’t tell what it is without squinting, the same kind of problem that the bad option 1 banner had, but in the opposite way. The second version of this type of banner is better because you can still see what it is without compromised quality. I don’t call this one “right” because to do a far-zoomed-out banner, you need to choose the right dimensions for the job. This image could not be placed in a way that satisfied me. It is only better, not “right.”

Some other things:

When the image that you choose is facing a certain way (for example, the character on the banner faces to the right), it should face your logo on the other side. The two should face each other, drawing attention INWARD. If the elements faced opposite directions, attention would be focused OUTWARD. Draw the person in. People will look where the character in the banner is looking. So, focus that attention on you, not away from you.

Second, another common mistake I see with small banners is people not wanting to include text at all. It is amazing how small text can be and still be readable. You need at least your comic’s title or logo on every banner advertising your comic. If you can fit a tag line it, do so. The phrase, “fate is a choice” on these banners is set at only 10px high. It was still readable at 8px high, but there was no reason to make it that small.

Making Banners: Animations to come after the holidays are over.

Making Good Banners 1 dealt with 8 technical elements of banner-making: facial features/eyes, tag-lines, URL, separation, action, color, more than tag-lines, and sexual attraction. I also touched on the importance of having a recognizable logo and ended talking about the dangers of “false” advertising.

This article is going to touch on MAKING tag lines and targeting demographics, placement of images, and when/how to use animations.

1) Tag-line, motto, etc: If you don’t have one, it’s time to sit down and make one. It is one thing to have good art on your banner, but good art alone will get you only half the clicks good art AND a catchy tag line will get you. A tag-line should be short, about 10 words.  In this case, less is better, so if you can get under 10 words and still get your point across, you’re golden.

When you make one of these, what you should do is transmit the overall FEEL of your comic to someone who has never read, seen or heard of your work before. You are not necessarily trying to give them the plot synopsis (that’s what your about page is for!), you are trying to make people click to see your site first, to get them excited, to make them think, “that sounds like something I would like.” Plot-schmot. You are the hunter, they are the prey, your tag line is the bait.  The bait isn’t the whole animal, just a small, tantalizing piece. Now go and get ‘em, Sparky!

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Examples! I’ll (yet again) start with my own stuff. I had to make a 600x29px banner for the new, narrower, SpiderForest rotating header for my comic Not Alone.  I already had a short, tight synopsis, which is what I recommend starting with first if you’re having trouble thinking of a tag line. After all, if you can’t even condense your story into a paragraph, you’re going to have quite the time condensing it into 10 words or less!

Ignoring that synopsis for now, Not Alone is a story about self-discovery, leaving home, trusting yourself and having an adventure. It’s fluff, really, and I’m not afraid to say that. It’s short, it’s cliche, but it’s the stuff people like, especially young women between the ages of 14 and 21, my target audience for that comic.  My tag line is, “Who were you meant to be?” (I like tag-lines that directly ask a question. I find them to be more interactive.)

Pretty much a fluffy tag-line, just like the comic. (I’m considering, “Fate is a choice, not a destination,” but…eeehhhh…..)

What it was meant to evoke: a sense of fate, adventure and discovery. Much like the story of Harry Potter, perhaps you are simply waiting to be discovered. You deserve more in life than you have.  There’s something out there, and you’re missing it!

Targeted demographic: Teens and dreamers.

Here are some more examples, better than mine:

Abandon: First Vampire “The Past Will Bite You.”

SkyFall: “1000 years of war, 6 magical devices, 1 last hope.”

Dreadnought Invasion Six: “Existence to Extinction in One Short Trip.”

Fortune’s Fools: “There are Epic Tales of Chivalry, Honor and Love Undying… This is Not One of Them.” (Could easily be shortened up a bit, but works as is.)

Utukki: “Some People Can’t Let Sleeping Demons Lie.”

Looking For Group is basically a tag line and title in one!

You’ll notice in each of these either a distinct crescendo or a forceful OOMPH at the end.  None of these patter out. They’re almost sharp, like a warning, harsh, like a dark whisper, exciting, or amusing. They are meant to stick in your head, and perhaps (especially Utukki’s) play off something else you may have heard before.  Think of WHOM these tag-lines target. What age ranges? What backgrounds? People who watch what type of TV or play what type of games? You do the same thing. Consider who reads your comic, and then make a tag-line to get more people like them.  If you are going to advertise to people who are NOT like them, you’ll need a tag-line that appeals to another audience.  Always always always market to your audience, because your banners will have poor results if you don’t. Would you ever advertise a minivan to a guy looking for a corvette? No! But you would advertise that minivan to, say, a couple with kids, and perhaps, if you gave that minivan a pimpin’ make-over, flames on the side and rims, you COULD market to the guy looking for a corvette.  But you need to remember, no matter how much you package a minivan to look like a corvette, it’s still a minivan. Changing the packaging may just make the one guy think that hey, maybe he would like a minivan TOO.

(Please note, by minivan and corvette in this example, I am not talking about comic quality. I just wanted two extremely different cars, owned by usually two very different kinds of people.)

Here’s a game for you, to see how well prospective tag-lines can work: NAME THE MOVIE!

“The World Isn’t Ending…We Are.”

“Why So Serious?”

“A Hero Is Unleashed.”

This article is getting longer than desired, and I don’t want to cram more information here. It’s better if these are shorter and to the point.  Animations and image placements in banners will be discussed tomorrow! And as always, my disclaimer: I don’t claim to be a professional or even moderately talented in any of these areas. This is food for thought, based on what successful comics (and or games and movies) already have been doing!  Take what you can use, and put your own spin on it.

Well, I said I would post excerpts here, so here one is. For the first excerpt, I chose the introductory chapter for Relan and Fen Aya Zen. I figured this would be popular-ish due to Not Alone. I’m not going to include a spoiler warning here mostly because it’s obvious how Not Alone is going to work out. I’ve already said both characters appear in the comic rather soon, so it’s obvious they at least LIVE. Enjoy, but please note this chapter has not been edited since writing it…oh…2 years ago. :3 I’m probably going to take out some of the detail, as I wrote this in a slightly maximalist stage.

Here’s an old sketch of the two also:

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Chapter 10 – Face to Face – part III

Domain West: Ci’Endis: Seshen’a Tsa

The leaves softly crunched beneath Relan’s doeskin boots as she tightened the single bracer on her right wrist, trying to pull it back into place with her teeth. With a soft grunt at her failure, she sat lightly down on one of the many furred, moss-lathered rocks next to her, a boulder that had been warming in the streams of golden sunlight since the red dawn.  After admiring the great trees that surrounded her in an ageless beauty, born down with the weight of spider-webbed vines and leaves the size of a man’s head, Relan relaxed slightly, taking a deep breath of the jungle air.  The magnificence of the Seshen’a Tsa, the Forest of Stones, would never cease to amaze her, but the stones hid secrets, deadly secrets, and Relan refused to be caught unawares.  To do so would mean her death.

She laid at her feet lay a silver-wooded staff nearly as tall a she, and tight, leather wraps encircled the areas where her hand usually rested.  Up its length were a series of engravings, shallow crevasses in the light wood that chronicled her past, her present, and perhaps, her future.  Near the top end, the numeral “three” stood boldly out on the hub, three rings, one inside of the other, just touching at the bottom.  Next to it, climbing vertically, was her name in the same alphabet, and after, her title of Na’shan. Interspersed between, and sometimes in, the carvings were many indentations, forceful dents whose origin could only be from its use as a weapon on its travels.  The woman focused on tightening the straps of her bracer, cautious lest it become too loose during battle and foil her hands.  Relan unconsciously flickered her long, loose hair behind an ear, unaware of its annoying nature in her current struggle as it glowed auburn in the late evening light.  A wide ring of tooled, golden metal gleamed brightly in the misty air of the Seshen’a Tsa, the only real symbol of rank she chose to wear.  The ear cuff proclaimed her to be a protector of the borderlands, a self-professed outcast of cities, and half of a Shan pairing.

A sound tickled the ear she had just freed, and she stilled, slowly sinking off the small boulder to pick up her staff with her left hand.  Brown eyes tinged with green picked her surroundings apart with a trained ferocity, skipping over nothing, and yet, focusing on nothing.  Relan had learned early that putting one’s attention in only a single place meant being oblivious to everywhere else.  A small stream gurgled behind her, and a bird flew overhead, squawking loudly.  The wind blew and the great trees rustled, dropping a few leaves in a quiet, unobtrusive, lazy way.  A twig snapped, and her head whipped to the right, searching the area behind the many, clustered rocks, but deep shadows hid any forms.  Her eyes suddenly shadowed over, a passing flicker of doubt, and she whirled around, her staff at ready.

An enormous beast stood only a body-length behind her, one wide paw above the ground, ready to slowly release its mass to the earth.  Its fur was of a dark, reddish hue that faded first to a light, and then to dark gray in stripes, and a large, curled tail stood prominently white over a wide back.  It wore an odd harness, a metal skeleton that wrapped around the thick neck, underneath a bearish, barrel chest and then around the strong back.  Chain-linked armor filled in the spaces not covered by the harness, and it effectively protected the beast’s vitals from harm. The body shape most closely matched that of a wolf, though its bulk would overshadow two wolves, and a pair of curled horns proudly adorned its immense head.  Neither it nor Relan moved.

Suddenly, it pounced, and Relan brought up her staff as giant forepaws landed on her chest and pushed her to the ground.  She used the momentum to flip the beast behind her, and she then rolled to the left just as a dripping, fanged mouth lunged for her neck, barely missing.  A tendril of hot drool landed on her cheek, and she flinched, but did not pause to wipe it away.  On the ground, she flipped her legs around and tripped the wolf-like creature before it could regain equilibrium from the unsuccessful attack.   It fell heavily to the soft earth, digging a deep trench with its strong muzzle, and coughed as soil invaded a mouth used only to raw, bloody meat.

Neither fighter moved for a moment, until a rich laugh disturbed the aged silence of trees and growing plants.  Relan rolled on the ground, laughing at the beast whose tongue rolled disgustedly in and out of its large, fanged mouth in a clear show of distaste. She had to hold in her sides as laughing cramps became only a slight hindrance to her humor.  The animal moved into a more dignified position, large head arrogantly high and forepaws extended in front rather than embarrassingly behind.  It growled low when Relan refused to stop, but the sound only encouraged the woman to laugh louder.  Finally, her sides worn out and tears leaking from her eyes, she levered herself up with the help of a nearby rock, still chuckling.

“You deserved that, Fenni.”  He seemed to grumble as a clod of moss fell from the roof of his mouth and golden-red eyes scrunched in distaste.  “And I’m not sorry in the slightest.”  To prove her point, she kicked some leaf litter at him, aiming for his shoulders. Her eyes squinted as she held in her mirth in a late, vain attempt to soothe her companion’s sore feelings.  Fen Aya Zen’s eyes narrowed and he sent a thought to her, though it was more of an idea and less of words,

« You’re getting faster. »

She grinned, and the beast did not flinch at her bared fangs.  He had long ago become familiar with human ways, and he instead grinned back, black dirt marring a sinister smile. « For a human anyways, right? »