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I also recommend the Cerebus book. If you can't find it, Sim may still have some copies available. He offered me a free copy a few years back when I thought I had lost mine. There are parts I don't agree with, but overall it's a great book.
At a convention I saw him at, I mentioned how I had been submitting work to the local newspaper. He said that it's really important to see your work in print, since it rarely looks like you'd imagine it. When you see the difference between the original and the printed version, even with just a photocopy, you can tinker with your art to make it work.
This is especially important in lettering. If you're doing your own, whether by hand or on the computer, take at least a few days to study other perople's lettering and work on it and figure out proper sizing. I've emphasized this in every other post about Jenny and Everywhere, and contributors still hand in sloppy lettering.
Good for you in drawing it yourself. That's great. Just remember that if you don't have the chops, your writing samples might be hurt by bad art. The reason I rarely agree to draw a script written by someone else is because the writer very rarely has a visual-centric way of writing. Too many words crammed into small panels, no flow in the arrangement, lack of proper pacing, etc. That, and the artist tends to take at least 10 times the amount of time and effort drawing a comic, so they may want some kind of say or investment, and they may get bored if it's not something they dig personally. If you expect someone to be "professional", shut up and spend weeks of their free time to draw your script, then you better damn well pay them professionally.
Like Ray mentioned, the more copies of something you print, the less it costs per copy. You may want to go the mini-comic/ashcan route if it's just to hand out samples. The field on the 11x17 inch board that you should work in is 10x15 inches. This can be larger or smaller, but the proportions remain the same. The height is 50% larger then the width, or the width is 2/3rds the height. Art Spiegelman drew Maus on typewriting paper, Jack Kirby and most of the old-timers drew on HUGE pieces of three-ply bristol. Once again, like the lettering, do at least a few test pages to see how your lines look shrunk down. Like Ray said, standard comic size is different in dimension from an 8 1/2x11, though if you're thinking of making a mini-comic instead it doesn't matter much.
By the way, what are you inking with?
Lastly, listen to Ray. He's walked the walk. |
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