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To avoid this mistake...
Thursday, 3 June 2010 08:23 pmOkay. Apparently I was speaking in riddles the other day. In fact it's a bit of a relief, because it means it was not so odd that I didn't completely get the whole trim/bleed/live area business from the get-go. I thought I had better explain it, so that if any of you feel like preparing a comic for print, you get it right from the first instead of wasting your time as I have been doing.
I used to assume that the page of a comic, as you see it in print, is an exact replica of the artist's original. Then I learnt that the artist's original is actually a few sizes larger than what you see in print. And THEN I found out that the original contains extra space that the reader never gets to see.
The template below is from the Ka-Blam website.
An original comics page - to be scanned and printed - has three frames.
The outer one (here filled up with red) is the trim zone. All of this gets cut off to trim the edges of your book.
The next one (here filled up with yellow) is the bleed zone. This goes all the way to the edge of the printed page. Any art in the bleed zone *is normally visible*, even though the template below covers it up. However, it does risk being cut off a little, so no essential art or lettering should be in it. In a standard European comic, the bleed zone is white.
In the middle of the page, where you can see the art in the sample below, is the live area. All essential art and lettering goes there. If you frame your panels (that is, you don't want them to "bleed"), the frames of the outer panels will border the yellow zone.
As you can see, I have bleeds all around, whereas I thought I had drawn four clearly framed panels. It is very fortunate indeed that I decided to add the speech bubbles in Photoshop, because at least I will be able to move them down and make sure they aren't lost.
Meh. It all seems very obvious now - but I really didn't get it before. Anyway: don't make the same mistake I made!
ETA: Lookit! This is Ka-Blam's all new manga template - it's different from the previous one! ( Read more... )
I used to assume that the page of a comic, as you see it in print, is an exact replica of the artist's original. Then I learnt that the artist's original is actually a few sizes larger than what you see in print. And THEN I found out that the original contains extra space that the reader never gets to see.
The template below is from the Ka-Blam website.
An original comics page - to be scanned and printed - has three frames.
The outer one (here filled up with red) is the trim zone. All of this gets cut off to trim the edges of your book.
The next one (here filled up with yellow) is the bleed zone. This goes all the way to the edge of the printed page. Any art in the bleed zone *is normally visible*, even though the template below covers it up. However, it does risk being cut off a little, so no essential art or lettering should be in it. In a standard European comic, the bleed zone is white.
In the middle of the page, where you can see the art in the sample below, is the live area. All essential art and lettering goes there. If you frame your panels (that is, you don't want them to "bleed"), the frames of the outer panels will border the yellow zone.
As you can see, I have bleeds all around, whereas I thought I had drawn four clearly framed panels. It is very fortunate indeed that I decided to add the speech bubbles in Photoshop, because at least I will be able to move them down and make sure they aren't lost.
Meh. It all seems very obvious now - but I really didn't get it before. Anyway: don't make the same mistake I made!
ETA: Lookit! This is Ka-Blam's all new manga template - it's different from the previous one! ( Read more... )
