Hello, dear reader, I hope you’re having a good day today. A relaxing day. A day where comics are easy to make. A day where the previous sentence fragments don’t matter, international page sizes all match up and everyone knows exactly what size and resolution of page they want for their comic! Well, after doing some research I still don’t know what size of comics page I want for a secret project I’m working on. However, I still wanted to make a log of the current information I found and possibly help other artists make a decision. This will be more of an information dump than a sophisticated manual on creating the perfect comic page.
If you are making a web comic it is important to note that many programs which use layers must be saved in a different file format where the layers are compressed in order to decrease the file size. Photoshop files are .PSD files and can be read by Photoshop as well as other art programs. Computers without these programs, and web browsers, will not be able to open these special files. You will need to go to the top left corner of your screen, click “File”, and go to “save as” or “export” to change the file type. This will not only allow people to read your comic online, it will also make the comic load faster on a website.
Okay so let’s explore the meat of this article. Page size. So in a kind of cool, yet somewhat annoying way, humans like to come up with different ways to do the same thing. In Japan comics are extremely popular and known as manga. One way to stand out from the crowd is to have a different size manga page. Naturally there are several sizes of manga. The most popular to print in America (according to Wikipedia) is the Tokyopop size which is 5” x 7.5”. The most common size in Japan is the Japanese B6 page format (12.8 × 18.2 cm, or 5.04" × 7.17" in). The Wikipedia page has more sizes to look at. These are the ones that I would most likely consider producing for my current project.
I can hear some questions arise in your mind. Yes, sometimes I can guess so well that I am in fact a mind reader. Well, ignoring that creepy thought, what if you want your project to be printed in other countries? What about European printers? A forum post by Max Vaehling, which sounds pretty knowledgeable to me and seems to coincide with some of the other things I found, is a pretty good summary of aspect ratios and page sizes. What’s an aspect ratio, you ask? An aspect ratio describes how the width and length of a 2 dimensional object relate to one another, kind of. It’s the relationship of the page’s width and length to one another. This broad concept is important when you are resizing your pages. This is something you will have to do if you want to print your American comic in Europe because America usually uses page ratios of 1 to 1.5 and Europeans use the A series of page measurements which have a 1 to 1.41 aspect ratio per page. That means that simply resizing an American comic book page will not let it fit a European printer’s guidelines.
Okay, so now I realized if I do print I will probably print my future comic in America. It is far more likely that I will release it as an e-book. The Kindle Comic Creators Guide describes on page 11 that the maximum width or height you can use for an e-book is 1280 pixels. The default aspect ratio is 800 to 1280, or 1 to 1.6. Aargh. So, dear reader, you can now feel my indecision coursing through your mind: what size page do I want? For web comics it really doesn’t matter as much unless you use a specific site (like Tapastic) which has guidelines on page sizes, or plan to physically print your comic. Golden Pigeon is 850 pixels by 1100 pixels at 132 dpi when we post it online. I think Golden Pigeon looks pretty good. It may actually load a little too slowly because of our emphasis on that level of quality. Which is another consideration going forward. I hope this rambling blog will help you decide. Surprisingly I think it actually helped me decide to make a 5 x 7.5in page for my current project. I hope it will see the light of day and that yours will, too. Next time we might talk a little bit about page resolution! That will complicate everything even more. Have a good day, dear reader.
If you are making a web comic it is important to note that many programs which use layers must be saved in a different file format where the layers are compressed in order to decrease the file size. Photoshop files are .PSD files and can be read by Photoshop as well as other art programs. Computers without these programs, and web browsers, will not be able to open these special files. You will need to go to the top left corner of your screen, click “File”, and go to “save as” or “export” to change the file type. This will not only allow people to read your comic online, it will also make the comic load faster on a website.
Okay so let’s explore the meat of this article. Page size. So in a kind of cool, yet somewhat annoying way, humans like to come up with different ways to do the same thing. In Japan comics are extremely popular and known as manga. One way to stand out from the crowd is to have a different size manga page. Naturally there are several sizes of manga. The most popular to print in America (according to Wikipedia) is the Tokyopop size which is 5” x 7.5”. The most common size in Japan is the Japanese B6 page format (12.8 × 18.2 cm, or 5.04" × 7.17" in). The Wikipedia page has more sizes to look at. These are the ones that I would most likely consider producing for my current project.
I can hear some questions arise in your mind. Yes, sometimes I can guess so well that I am in fact a mind reader. Well, ignoring that creepy thought, what if you want your project to be printed in other countries? What about European printers? A forum post by Max Vaehling, which sounds pretty knowledgeable to me and seems to coincide with some of the other things I found, is a pretty good summary of aspect ratios and page sizes. What’s an aspect ratio, you ask? An aspect ratio describes how the width and length of a 2 dimensional object relate to one another, kind of. It’s the relationship of the page’s width and length to one another. This broad concept is important when you are resizing your pages. This is something you will have to do if you want to print your American comic in Europe because America usually uses page ratios of 1 to 1.5 and Europeans use the A series of page measurements which have a 1 to 1.41 aspect ratio per page. That means that simply resizing an American comic book page will not let it fit a European printer’s guidelines.
Okay, so now I realized if I do print I will probably print my future comic in America. It is far more likely that I will release it as an e-book. The Kindle Comic Creators Guide describes on page 11 that the maximum width or height you can use for an e-book is 1280 pixels. The default aspect ratio is 800 to 1280, or 1 to 1.6. Aargh. So, dear reader, you can now feel my indecision coursing through your mind: what size page do I want? For web comics it really doesn’t matter as much unless you use a specific site (like Tapastic) which has guidelines on page sizes, or plan to physically print your comic. Golden Pigeon is 850 pixels by 1100 pixels at 132 dpi when we post it online. I think Golden Pigeon looks pretty good. It may actually load a little too slowly because of our emphasis on that level of quality. Which is another consideration going forward. I hope this rambling blog will help you decide. Surprisingly I think it actually helped me decide to make a 5 x 7.5in page for my current project. I hope it will see the light of day and that yours will, too. Next time we might talk a little bit about page resolution! That will complicate everything even more. Have a good day, dear reader.