.jpg "Zoe has learned the ancient oriental art of balancing speech bubbles on her head!")
Sep 06
The Pickled Past kicks off where Push the Button ended. Adventure awaits…!
I’ve been working pretty hard for a few months now building up a big buffer of pages and, at the time of writing, I have just finished page 26 of this 34 page story. The reason I have been doing this is so that I have three complete stories drawn up by the time I exhibit at Thought Bubble, a comics Convention in Leeds (England) on 20 November. My hope was that I would be able to combine the first three stories into a book, and it is now starting to look like I will be able to do this.
When I started planning Girls in Space at the end of last year, it was my intention to create the comic is a format that would be easy to turn into a book collection. At that time I looked at production costs. I realised very quickly that colour was significantly more expensive than black and white, but I also knew that I really wanted a colour comic. Therefore the only way I could make an affordable colour book would be to make it smaller than the standard US graphic novel size. Therefore, I designed the comic to work in a Manga-sized format (this is the reason why Girls in Space has quite a large font in comparison to graphic novels).
The book will probably be printed digitally (I’m looking at my options just now) and I’ll keep you posted on progress. I’m very excited to see how it will look. I’m currently thinking about what to put on the cover. Hmm… what would sell? I know – I’ll call it “Harry Potter and Girls in Space”!
Meh. I’ve got eight pages to think about it!
*crash*
I can’t seem to balance speech bubbles correctly. Thought bubbles and narrative boxes, yes, along with just floating text, but the curve of speech bubbles… Very challenging.
Thanks for the comment (and I hope your crash landing didn’t hurt!
)
I use software called Comic Life by Plasq.com to layout the comic before I start drawing it. The software is quite flexible when it comes to speech bubbles. If I was to attempt the same task in Photoshop I think it would take three times as long!
With this story I have been experimenting with laying sections of the artwork on top of the layout (rather than all underneath it). I’ve found it gives me more control over the limited available space. This page was one of my first experiments and it kinda looks like the speech bubbles are resting on Zoe’s head, because her hairdo goes under the bubble but her head goes on top – it looked quite quirky but I didn’t reproduce it on future pages!
For books – check out Lulu – the guy over at Between Failures uses it for his book. They don’t charge you to make the book, they just take the production cost plus some percent whenever your book is sold. Of course, if you want to already have books for the con, that would mean ordering a bunch of them yourself, but for selling off the web, it’s perfect. I’ve used them for some non-comic books and they are pretty good. Easy too, you just make a PDF and they make that into a book.
Thanks Eric, I looked at Lulu but they were pretty expensive for colour. I contacted quite a few printers and so far the best quotes are either Ka-Blam or Sidekick Printing. I’m still weighing up the best choice of the two.
OK, good to know. Either of those specific to Europe or good world-wide? I mean, I know all companies will ship [nearly] anywhere, but there’s usually a cost penalty if you’re shipping out of the home region.
They’re both USA companies as far as I know. However, the current exchange rate seems to make it cheaper to print in the States and ship to the UK.
Darn, I made it to the end of the archive. As I always comment in any comic that has comments, (usually WordPress/Comicpress sites) I am now sad because I can no longer read 10s of pages a day. But, the good news is that, as I’ve commented to you in other places, I really like GiS and I will be adding it to my news reader. I look forward to seeing where you go with this.
Don’t forget to make a note to have Red discover her computer broken whenever they get back to earth. The internets will eat you alive if you forget that.
Speaking of which…..stay tuned for my next comment.
I have a ‘loose ends’ list in my notepad, but I had forgotten to put that in! Well said that man!
It’s easy for me – I just read it all at once. I’m sure I have stuff that I forgot about in INM.
Ok – back in http://www.girlsinspace.co.uk/2010/04/30/the-prototype-page-34/ they said the upgrades were temporary, but Red’s Brother is still all muscular. Then again, the VW is still flying…. Perhaps this is a future plotline?
I cannot comment on future plotlines without compromising agents in the field!
Hehe….fair enough. Wouldn’t want Red and the others to get into trouble!
Trouble finds them surprisingly easily!
This time perhaps a giraffe traveling salesman
Of course! It seems so obvious now!
heheh love the last panel
Thanks Gary! The simultaneous volunteering of the other party was a technique my sister and I perfected during childhood!
Spoke too fast…
who can it be?