Day 12: Bleed suckas! (CC with a little ZF)

Today on the wonderful wily world of weirdness we’re gonna look at the difference between Bleed and Non-Bleed comics. Most of this is going to appeal to those of you that have come for the self-publishing bit, but don’t worry dead-heads, they’ll be some zombie dino action for you gals/guys as well.

To start with most mainstream comics you probably pick up are non-bleed comics.  What this means is the panels are separated from the border of the page (see example below).  It keeps things, neat and tidy. It also raises cost due to the printers set up time, and quite frankly budget is a big factor for a self-publisher (don’t believe me; check out some of the indie comics at your local store/stand). 

Bleed comics, on the other hand, has the art drawn all the way to the outside of the page, in other words it’s drawn to the trim, and some of this art is most likely going to be lost.  (Again, see example below).

I personally work on art boards that are set for comics. These are 11X17 bristol boards that are marked with a light blue that doesn’t reproduce (i.e. show up) if it’s scanned correctly.  You can find these pretty easily. I prefer Blue Line Pro’s or Stathmore’s boards, both have unique qualities in regards to how they accept graphite or ink, so I recommend only buying small quantities of comic art boards until you find one you really like.

Granted you don’t have to buy comic boards to draw.  I prefer to because it’s and industry standard, and as I’m only looking at printers that have output comics in the past, it will avoid confusion. But if you want or need to put your art on regular or a unique sized paper, keep in mind you will need to know what the reproduction ratio is. Also the nice thing about Blue Line and Strathmore is they have set panel blocks you can use quickly if you feel the need.

So a quick (simplified) breakdown of scales you’ll need to know, that I stole out of Digital Prepress for Comic Books by Kevin Tinsley is as follows:

BLEED BOOK	Art Size (inches)	Print Size (in inches)
Dimensions	10 1/8 X 15	7 X 10.375
Trim Boundries	9 37/64 X	6.625 X 10
Bleed Allowance	¼	3/16
Safe Area	9X 13 27/32	6.1875 X 9.5625

Okay, that cleared that up hopefully.  Sorry to belabor a point, but it a really important issue that many comic creators don’t think of until they’re done, and suddenly realize their comics either going to be more expensive, harder to output, or they’re gonna have to figure a way to cheat approx. 24 pages of art.

While I’m on the subject of artboards and blue line, let me quickly pop in on another topic:  Non-photo pencils.  If you’ve never seen these they’re blue (sometimes red) pencils that look like a standard colored pencil, that just like the blue lines on a comic art board will not reproduce if scanned right.  Some people like them, some don’t. I’m fifty fifty on them, only for the reason I still like to ‘manually’ ink my pages (in other words I don’t do it in photoshop) and whatever stuff they put in the blue graphite seems to not want the ink to stick.  So you keep having to go over it to saturate the area, which then becomes a problem in itself.  I personally like to have everything done in a light lead, like a 3h or 4h – it’s just soft enough some nice technique work comes through, but erases easy. Oh, that’s the other thing, I have a really hard time erasing the non-photo pencil work.

So there you have it. Below is a reduced example of a comics page, with non bleed on the left and bleed on the right.  It's rough pencils, I promise you the final product will be a lot cleaner and more professional. got home at 10 last night, and cooked dinner, so I didn't have much time to pound this out on an artboard. (Click the image for a better view).

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NEW NOTE: Actually I just realized I made a mistake on the non-bleed, which just goes to show how important this is.  On the non-bleed I put the panel up to the trim line. The Trim line indicates where the comic will get cut at the printers. My boarder of the shown panel goes right up to it, meaning . . .mistake, and more importantly a problem for the printer. I should have moved it down a 1/4".  SEE, TOLD YOU THIS WAS IMPORTANT!