Comic Genesis Forums

Now, I know Dunn Boyz is only 2 strips long, but I had a question.

It doesn't seem Real Life or RPGWorld have the storage limits and they have their own domains. Now is it because they are old-school KeenSpotters or is it because they are so widely popular or both?

Just curious because at 130 KB a strip, 25 MB might not last longer than two years for me.

From the FAQ:
HOW MUCH SPACE DO I GET?
As much as you need. Keenspace accounts start with a quota of 25 Megs. This is usually more than enough to run a comic strip site. Your account should be used only to set up a comic strip website, and should not be used for storage, such as backups of your TIFF or Photoshop files, nor should it be used to store or distribute large files such as warez or mp3s. If you need more than 25 Megs, we will gladly increase your quota after we have determined that you are not abusing your account.

Domain names can be purchased from many places, and keen will let you use them. You can go get one now if you wanted to.

Real-life has its own domain because it is no longer keenspace, it has gone to Keenspot! They host the site now...

RPGWorld is also on KeenPpot now. KeenSpot comics are seperate from KeenSpace comics in a few ways. However, you can get more space and use names with your keenspace accounts.

Alright, thanks a lot. I was doing the math and was like...wait a minute...only two years worth of storage? :p

DunnBoyz wrote: Just curious because at 130 KB a strip, 25 MB might not last longer than two years for me.

Also, 130KB is pretty large for a single strip. I grabbed your latest strip and monkeyed around with it, and by converting it from GIF to PNG I got it down to about 88K... It may be possible to squeeze them down even more.

It sure is, PNGcrush usually stomps out a few more KB.

So we can post the comics in PNG? Ha, I didn't know that. I used PNG formats a lot during my RPGMaker 2000 days and yeah, they compress stuff nicely but can throw color off every once and a while.

I recommend GIF's. PNG's are good and small,but some people have old browers that load the things like crap. But,most are with the program,so go ahead,it not gonna make a real diiferance in how many hits you get to your site.

I reccomend PNGs unless you make comics with 'noisy' pics (i.e. heavy details or photographs)... PNG does not do a good job with those. JPEG works better in that case. PNGs work better for smooth shading or solid colors, whereas JPEG's lossy compression starts to show a bit. High-detail or 'noise' tends to increase PNG's filesize drastically, but JPEG's lossy compression isn't as noticeable.

As for GIF... throw PNG into indexed mode, and it beats GIF in size nearly every time. Of course, then you're limited to 256 colors. :-)

However, it is true, older browsers don't like PNG. It's relatively new. Plus, last I checked, IE seems to blatantly refuse to take advantage of PNG's alpha channel support (Anything Mozilla-derived won't skip a beat and just lay down alpha channels easy). And Quicktime... egads, don't get me started on Quicktime and PNGs. Why does it default to taking over PNG control? (/me stops himself quick before he rambles on about QT and PNG)

But, that's me. I reccomend PNG. :-)

I tried PNG last night. Didn't help much with the compression (shaved maybe 10 KB off) and really...intensified some of the colors. I'll try JPGCompression tomorrow. If not, I'll bit the bullet for now.

Using Photoshop alot can also jack up the file size. Or so I'm told...

Damned if I do, I guess. Thats alright. I still have plenty of space...for now.

If you can get into some of the specific bits of the format of the PNG image, you can probably chop down the size quite a bit... turning off interlacing (i.e. loading a fuzzier version of the image and gradually making it finer) chops some space off, for example. I'd suggest trying palette-based (or indexed) mode, but your comic seems to use gradients that would get mauled apart when reducing colors to 256...

I know you can throw in optimization options before saving in Paint Shop Pro, and GIMP will follow orders when you tell it what you want to save with. Photoshop probably has options like that somewhere.

PNGcrush allows you to set everything, and determines the best compression mode.