Fishing for comments... trying to improve my comic!

Suika · Post by **Suika** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:28 pm

Come to think of it, there are artists who use pencil but can make it look like ink (I couldn't even tell the difference). The trick is tracing paper and to press hard.

Swiftbow · Post by **Swiftbow** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:32 pm

Ok, one more before and after to get critiqued on

Incidentally, I think I'm going to "ink" using the computer. I rather like having undo levels to fall back on for when I inevitably mess up

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:04 pm

The coloured versions definitely look better the way you are currently handling them, but both images are still big arsed images. Ideally you'd still want to shrink them down to at least half that size, especially if there's going to be more that size in each update. There's not much detail in the images, so they could be much smaller.

But the colour still kicks seven kinds of shit out of the black and white ones.

Cheers.

Gengar003 · Post by **Gengar003** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:08 pm

Dutch! wrote: But the colour still kicks seven kinds of shit out of the black and white ones.

Wow, I SO want to color my comics now

Got image size problems? Got photoshop? JPEG it! (Save for web gets you the best deal)

There are also some third-party jpeg compression tools out there, some of which are just disgusting (in a good, impressive way) by how much they manage to compress.

Regardless of your setup, however, JPEG is the way to go for detailed color like yours!

JPEG! Get yours today!

Swiftbow · Post by **Swiftbow** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:33 pm

I was trying photoshop's Save for Web last night, but darned if it wasn't giving me what I wanted. At level 70 quality the estimated size was still bigger than my PNGs and I could see definite degradation. I dunno... maybe the estimator was lying to me.

Gengar003 · Post by **Gengar003** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:43 pm

Hmm... by shrinking the dimensions just a little bit (to allow for the sidebar you have on your site to display in 800x600 resolution), and using save for web, I get this:

Barely noticeable quality loss. 33 on "save for web" scale. The slight blurriness of the text could be fixed by reapplying it. I also got a 100k version at 45 quality.

On an unrelated note, I just found your star wars scripts... wow.

Swiftbow · Post by **Swiftbow** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 7:57 pm

Well, that's the kind of dithering (I think its called dithering) I was getting last night and didn't want. I dunno, I guess having big file sizes doesn't bother me all that much, but then again... ooo, I know, maybe a subarchive with smaller versions

Anyway, the comic only requires scrolling over on the main page, its centered and fits an 800x600 screen on the archives. Since I usually run at 800x600 myself, I rather like it like that.

Oh yeah, my Star Wars remake scripts.

This didn't seem like quite the place to pitch those, but hope you enjoy!

Post by **Mercury Hat** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:10 pm

The bigger sizes might not bother you but they'd bother readers. You're going to have some jpg artifacts, yes, but most readers aren't going to notice them. So long as the text is legible, it ought to be fine.

Gengar003 · Post by **Gengar003** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:24 pm

On the subarchive idea... you could do it with a bit of javascript cookie knowledge... have readers choose high or low bandwidth and display comics accordingly... I should write that up and post it... ugh gotta go to bed.

Subarchive thingy has promise.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:42 pm

Mercury Hat wrote:The bigger sizes might not bother you but they'd bother readers. You're going to have some jpg artifacts, yes, but most readers aren't going to notice them. So long as the text is legible, it ought to be fine.

*agrees* I was rather worried about changing over to JPG-format for my comic (it better preserves the hand-shading, compared to GIF), because I saw all the horrid artifacts ... but I was the only one who noticed them. My readers didn't say anything until I asked them what they thought of the transition to the new format - and everyone replied, "What?"

So, yup. I save mine on the "JPEG medium" setting in Photoshop's "save for web" dialogue box (quality=30).

Also, shrinking the dimensions of your comic will help to clean up your inking.

Eunice P · Post by **Eunice P** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:35 am

Before shrinking the image, you need set your image to RGB color and to adjust the linings to a darker tone.

This image is in GIF format saved at 128 colors. The size is approximately 95K only.