An Experimental Life

So we're ready to scan now, right? Nope. Sorry, not yet. First we need to put together our photoshop template.

Organization
Create a directory someplace on your hard drive with the name of your comic. Inside this directory, make a subdirectory called "raw," and another one called, "strips."

Making your webcomic template
If you're using Photoshop you can follow the exact same process we do. Otherwise, most graphics programs will have some similar features, so you should be able to adjust these instructions to suit your needs.

First, decide how wide your comic will be when you post it. I recommend 700 pixels wide and then however tall you need it, but you're probably fine going up to 900 pixels wide as long as you don't plan on putting anything down the side of the page. So open a new grayscale document (even if you plan to do color) and make it however many pixels wide at 72 DPI.

Why are we going to scan at 300 DPI if we're posting at 72? Scanning and working at 300 DPI means you have a print quality image in case you decide to do books, and it will just look better in the long run if you do any cleanup work at high-res.

Why post at 72 DPI? Anything higher-res than 72 or 94 DPI does nothing but take up bandwidth. For printing or retouching files, higher resolutions are great, but on a monitor 300 DPI looks no better than 72, and in some cases it's worse.

Now switch the resolution to 300 DPI and save it to your "raw" directory with a name like 000template.psd or zzztemplate.psd or something like that. This'll keep it either near the top or bottom of your directory and make it easier to find.

Why build our template at 72 DPI if we're switching it to 300 before we save? Because even though we'll be scanning at 300 DPI, having initially built the template at 72 DPI before switching it to 300 DPI will let you accurately gauge how large the finished product will be once you've shrunk it down for the web and simplify your downsizing later.

Trust me on this one. When we get to that step, you'll see.

Create layers in your template
First off, if your background layer isnt' already white, make it that way.

Create your balloon layer
Then create a new layer. Double click to the right of the layer name in your layers menu. Then go down and click on "stroke." You will set the stroke color to black, the width to 6 pixels, and set it to inside stroke. Name it something like "word balloons."

Creating your frame layer
Now duplicate this layer and leave the original in place. Name this new layer something like "frame one."

On your frame layer, draw a rectangle about the size you'll want your frames (don't worry about being exact at this point) with the marquis tool and fill it with white. This will give you a white box with a black border. Simple, eh? Then under the layer menu, render the layer. Using the magic wand, click the middle of the box to select all the white, and hit delete. Now you have a clear layer with a black box. You can duplicate this layer as many times as you wish and move the copies around to add additional frames.

Now you'll want to make some text layers for your title and stuff like that. Don't worry about fonts for now. We're covering that later because you'll want to look at your comic and experiment with which ones look best with your work. Just getting the information in there is good enough for now.

In the template you just saved, go to Edit and scroll down to canvas size. Not image size, but canvas size. Add about half an inch to the top of the document and about a quarter inch to the bottom. Then above your frame box(es) to the far left, type in the title of your comic. Then you'll want to type in your copyright notice at the lower right on a seperate layer, and the url (if you don't have hosting yet, just type in something like, "www.mycomicsite.com.") in a layer to the lower left. You can of course play around with placement and text, for instance, you may want to put something like=, "My Comic, by so and so," instead of just the title, or put the URL at the upper right instead of the lower left. I'm just giving the placements I chose for our comic.

Don't do anything more with your balloon layer yet. For now it just needs to be there. Save the document, and you've got your template! Now we're ready to scan your first comic!