Where is the printed comic?
I know most of you are thinking
(or have actually asked me) “Why is it taking so long to complete the
printed comic book?" The biggest problem was that I didn’t know what I
was doing when I started this comic. I made the same mistake as a lot
of other webcomic artists when they started out. Making the artwork and
comic pages in the wrong format. Before I go on any further, I should
tell all you people out there thinking of starting your own web comic
that your original artwork must be made at a minimum of 300dpi. Not
150dpi. But at least 300dpi! Or you will have the pleasure of redoing
all your artwork to the proper size. Which is not a good feeling at
all. This file format is quite big in size. But you can always shrink
it down to the web comic size, and lower the quality to save on
bandwidth. But you can't stretch low resolution artwork to a larger
size. Well you can, it will just look like crap. All blocky and
pixilated.
That is what I did in my first attempt with the printed comic book.
About one and a half years ago, I started running into financial
trouble running the comic. I just stretched out the bad artwork I had
and quickly slapped something together hoping to sell as fast as I can
to make some money. Fortunately, all the printing houses at that time
were booked for weeks, and thankfully to the fans that donated so
Post-Nuke Comic could continue to move forward. That was the only time
I asked for donations, and I never will ask for donations again.
Because I took a lot of flack from negative people for asking for
donations. Either way, I did what I had to and it bought me some more
time to do the printed comic book properly.
The biggest delay is because I just don’t have the time to work on both
the online comic and the printed comic book at the same time. Remember
I have to rescan all my artwork and recompose them into the proper
format. If I work on the printed comic book, the online comic becomes
late and people start to complain. If try to get ahead with the online
comic, then the printed comic book begins to collect dust.
Anyway, I now had a long time to pick away at the printed comic book
and I’m very pleased how it is turning out. I always considered the
online version to be a draft version, or rough copy. There are a lot of
grammar errors throughout the comic story, and a lot of bad artwork
because I just didn’t have time to do it properly. The online version
is also very amateurish. I want the printed comic book to have more of
a professional feel and look. I'm glad I took the time to do it right.
I did learn from my mistakes however. I learned a lot through the last
three and a half years working on this comic. As some of you may have
noticed, Chapter 8 and 9 comic pages are in a new style format. I
am now making all the comic pages in the correct format so when it
comes time to print that issue it's already done. Well, there is still
some grammar errors and bad art I want to fix, but for the most part it
will really speed up releasing the comic book when I get to chapter 8,
9, and 10. I did start making the artwork at 600dpi on chapter 6.
Unfortunately I lost half of chapter 6, all of chapter 7 and the first
quarter of chapter 8 when my main hard drive died last May. That was
truly devastating to be quite honest. I learnt yet another valuable
lesson, BACKUP YOUR DATA AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN!! Luckily I had
enough sense to backup all of chapters 1 to 6 and printed comic book to
DVD's. Or I'd have the pleasure of redoing it a third time. Yesh!
Well anyway, now you might have some understanding why Post-Nuke hasn't
been much fun for me lately. It is a lot of work and just seems to
increase in work as it goes on. But on the other hand, I'm quite
pleased to the responses I've been getting from fans and I'm happy how
the story is unfolding. In some ways a lot better then I originally
imagined. That is the most important thing I think, to get the story
right.
So the first issue of the printed comic book will hopefully be done in
a month or two. I know that sounds like a long time. But it will
definitely be worth the wait.
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