PSA: Comic printing basics (from a graphic designer)
Hey there! I'm Marin, a comic book letterer and graphic designer, and since I've been seeing this on several projects lately, I wanted to share a quick note for artists and writers who plan on PRINTING their comics. This is meant to be practical/technical info that can save you time, money, and headaches later on (especially during lettering and prepress), so let's talk about bleed, safe zones, and templates.
What is BLEED? (images 01 & 02)
Bleed is the area of artwork that extends past the final trim size of the page.
When comics are printed, pages are folded, binded, and trimmed (and since paper has thickness, center pages can also move slightly outwards too). If your art stops exactly at the trim line, you risk cutting up important details, or ending up with unwanted white borders.
So, in short: bleed exists so that the art can be trimmed safely, nothing important gets chopped off, and the page looks as intended once printed and finished. If you're using a proper template, the bleed line is already marked in there for you.
This takes us to TEMPLATES (image 01): If you're an artist working on a comic that's going to be printed, please use a print-ready template. And if you're a writer commisioning an artist, you can also send them your preferred template before they start working - this way you'll be sure you're all on the same page (badum-tsss. I'm bad at jokes in English, sorry)
The most simple and reliable ones I've found are in Ka-Blam or ComicWellSprings - both include bleed area, trim line, safe zone, and a couple of different page sizes (not just standard comic size!).
These concepts might be a bit hard to explain virtually and without visual aid, so on image 03 I'm adding a comparison of how the art with bleed looks in digital, and how it will look once it's printed/folded/trimmed and it's a fully real comic in your hands! In case you're still not convinced, in image 04 you can see the deadly consequences of not using bleed on your art (yes, it might look subtle, but check out the difference on the margins/edges).
Hope you find this info helpful ♥
Some notes:
- The artwork used in these examples (which was correctly formatted!) was illustrated by Alper Geçgel and colored by Sercan Sarikaya for the 2nd issue of Jameson Pandarai's Curious Universe: Foreplay with the Flini. You can read the full story here: https://globalcomix.com/read/1df2b3c6-1d4d-4a0c-8da1-dab08ede79b0/1/1
- English isn't my first language, so I apologize for any errors. Also, I know there are more graphic designers/experienced artists here, so please feel welcome to add or correct anything that might be important!