The Comic industry

Use official comic boards when creating comic book storyboards and cover art!

If you want to be a comic book artist be like a pro and use comic boards, especially if you want to sell your work.

I have had the pleasure of working and creating comics for a lot of years and I will never forget walking into the comic store and seeing a set of Blue Line Pro comic boards and thinking, what the heck are these? I researched it an was very poor at the time, but the next day bought all they had, why?

Have you ever looked at a comic page and went, damn look at the detail! This is because they don’t draw on 8×11 or A4 paper they draw on a type of bristol paper called comic boards at 11×17, which has the defined lines to guide the artist to proper North American art size of 10×15 . The art is drawn at this large size then shrunk down to fit a comic page, giving it great detail. I would never use any other type of paper for storyboards.

Comic art boards are important because….

  • They are way more durable, meant to absorb ink and deal with erasing better.
  • It takes a bit to get use too, but you will create better more detailed art.
  • The boards have no printable blue lines to guide you. I have dealt with a ton of artist and when I pay for work and get art not fitting correctly it cost me time to fix, and gives you a bad reputation.
  • When you present your art it will give it more of a wow factor and fans like to buy artist boards.
  • You can use the same boards to create 11×17 art for your posters or cover art. For cover art always think of where the comics logo and details will go, a good rule of thumb is to have a space of 3.5 inches at the top with no primary art details.

I use to have to run all over to comic shops and order boards. We are all so lucky you can buy stuff online. Here are some links on amazon. When you click and buy via the links below you help WhiteFire comics it is win for us both…

Premiere (Strathmore 300) Smooth Comic Book Art Boards. Not available in Canada.

Premiere (Strathmore 300) Smooth Comic Book Art Boards.
Click to view on Amazon

Canson Comic Book Art Boards Pad with Preprinted, Non-Reproducible, Blue Lines, 150 Pound, 11 x 17 Inch, 24 Sheets.

Click to view on Amazon

My favorite portfolio holder for my boards, I have one for each comics art. Keeps my art organized, safe and displays well at cons.

My favorite portfolio holder for boards.
Click to view on Amazon

Canson Foundation Series Create Your Own Comic Book Kit: 10 Art Boards, 2 Cover, 2 Sketch, 4 Layout, 20 Trading cards, and 3 Sakura Pens, 11 17 Inch.

Click to view on Amazon

My Experience with publishing digital comics… so far… Part 1: Comixology

NOTE: Comixology has now been absorbed into amazon.

It is a popular topic out there, all us interdependent comics creators trying to understand where to focus and what can we do with the digital version of our comic boos and what can you expect in the experience. This article is all about Comixology.

The most popular, well known choice I think is .to publish your comics to Comixology, we think.. our comic book will be show cased to the world, with Marvel and DC ones, WOOT! The reality is that the Submit part of Comixology is amazing, yet is all about them ONLY accepting quality comic books. Because of this you may end up wasting your time or can take a long time to get approved (it took 6 months in my case). Here are a few surprises I ran into trying to meet their standards…

  • There are PDF quality guidelines, requiring you to provide a high quality PDF. I always like to say “I am a Graphics Technician by trade.” (got the Collage certificates on my wall.) But even with this knowledge I still submitted a few comic frames not meeting the Comixology standards. This caused the delay of the product getting published. But they provided great detail on the issues.
  • Writing and text quality, they actually check your use of grammar and text quality and care about the font used. Of course I got caught here too.
  • Marketing, the are not gonna push your comic book, you have to do it! Your happiness about being in the same place as Marvel and DC could make you cry as Comixology is a sea of comics, people need to know what they are looking for, odds are they know Spiderman, The Avengers, Batman… not “Jimmy the Mighty”.

Now take a deep breath… here is a link to their submission requirements… https://support.comixology.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1302915-please-read-prior-to-submitting-your-pdf-file-

Some other things to take away that could be subjective….

  • I am not a fan of their tech support. I asked some simple questions about how I get paid and it was a waste of time as I am in Canada and they seemed to say what I found on the support forum over and over, not actually answering my question. For your leaning pleasure, here is their details… https://support.comixology.com/customer/portal/articles/1021464-how-will-i-get-paid-and-how-often-
  • You need to create a “Series” and “Company” profile containing Graphics and text. An example of my Forsaken Future one …
    https://www.comixology.com/The-Forsaken-Future/comics-series/81718?ref=cHVibGlzaGVyL3ZpZXcvZGVza3RvcC9saXN0L3Nlcmllc0xpc3Q
  • You do get sales information under “Submit’ in the form an Excel file. Took me forever to figure this out. The link is top right when signed into “Submit”.
  • In a year of doing NO Marketing on my side, Comixology did not sell one issue on its own.
  • It was a lot of work to meet their standards but now I can create a PDF I can submit to any other place like Indy Planet.
  • They offer a DMZ option, still researching this stuff, but I selected it as on as it would protect my comics from theft. Not sure if that makes readers mad ;-).

As well here is the authority on Comixology talking about “Submit” …

Comment below so I know to continue on with these types of posts!

WhiteFire Comics at Hal-Con 2016 photos and review.

1

I had a big goal this last year to shrink my booth and make it portable and scale, I think the mission is accomplished, It was tight behind but I pulled it off!

After a few years of setting up shop at Ottawa Comic Con I had decided it was time to mix things up and try a new convention. My new challenge? Take on the biggest geek-fest in the Atlantic provinces Hal-Con, which just happens to be located in my home province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The “Hal” part of Hal-Con is a take on the the city I was born in “Halifax”. I planned for a year with the task shrinking my booth to not be as grand(but still cool) being critical, then invested a ton of time to get 3 of my comics published. After teaching a local print company about color calibration, I was armed with the “The Forsaken Future” number one and two and a flip comic of “Gabriel – Hand of God” and “Quint”, To get me to my promised land I rented a Grand Caravan as my trusted warhorse and loaded my gear, and hit the road. The sixteen hour drive from Ottawa, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia went well as we broke the trip up with with what seems to be the most popular stop-over spot of Edmustron, New Brunswick.

I ended up with a great deal on a Hilton Suites & something in Halifax that was blocks away from the Scotiabank Centre, and after transporting my gear. Finally I got to setting up my booth with the help of my sister and nephew…then I noticed something was missing at my booth… The power outlets to plug in the 47 inch TV. I had just lugged cross country with a huge stand. It was the main reason I had drove(16 hours each way) over flying(1.5 hours each way). I had confirmed I as suppose to have power via email multiple times, so I continued to set-up with my side-kicks help(suspecting villainy). Then stalked Hal-con staff and tracked down someone in “charge” (power joke) not it was no it was not Electro!. The all powerful one told me I would have power by the morning and refuted if I will not have power “please let me know so I could remove the TV from being in the way”, as it was tight behind the booth(and I am a heavy weight not a lightweight), I then again was promised I would have it. The morning of the convention came and guess what, I had no power. This was very disappointing as I had put great effort to get the TV to the convention and significant effort in to creating a slide show(that nobody would see). I counted on the TV to create interest. Of course the Hal-con staff member explained they had unexpected issues and then added a Canadian “Sorry” multiple times. All good!   Continue reading →