Free video tutorials available every week at Photoshop User TV, brought to you by the National Association of Photoshop User gurus. You, the faithful viewers, who will have to sit through a few commercials and some light banter, but it’s free, so no complaining from me on that score. I never fail to learn some nifty tip or tool watching this program which requires Flash to view.

Even though there are a lot of free tutorials out there in webderland, I still strongly recommend paying for Lynda.com as the ultimate online source for tutorials for virtually any computer program of any kind. Need training in Maya and other complex animation programs? You will find many of them at Lynda.com.

Many free tutorial sites are poorly organized, and finding just what you need can be problematic. All of the videos at Lynda.com are meticulously organized and sequenced by program type, technique, and tool. Even if you have very old programs, many of the tutorials are still available at Lynda. The site adds new programs every month, and has over 20,000 videos available. Each one runs about 8 or ten minutes per task, so you can find dozens of hours of tips and training for almost any program you can think of. Subscribe and get unlimited monthly access. You’ll save money not having to search around the net for every little task to pay for the site subscription.

c

PS: Old episodes go offline and you have to pay $1.99 to download them unless you are an NAPP member. I am, so that’s yet one more reason to join the organization, out of which I have already gotten far more than my money’s worth.

Not a paid endorsement, or anything. Just in case you were wondering if I get shill money for all this.

No.

With New York Comic Con this week, I bet lots of people who will have some art they want to put on the walls. It is to be hoped, some of that art is mine! Thanks!

Whenever I create original art, I try to make it conform to US standard mat or frame sizes so fans can avoid expensive custom matting and framing costs. Some framers and print brokers try to take advantage of customers, talking them into extremely expensive services they really don’t need.

Once, I even worked with a small time printer wannabe who repeatedly ignored my instructions to size my prints with framing costs in mind. Waiting until the last minute to ship the prints (which usually showed up the day of the show, meaning there was no time to get corrections made) I was stuck with prints that not only cost me a lot of money to have custom framed, but cost the fans, too!

Naturally, the client was happy to pocket a lot of custom framing costs; his sideline was to try to get artists to let him sell their prints online…with hefty framing charges passed on to the customer, of course.

Let me give you an example of what custom framing costs means for the fan who just wants to enjoy his art.

When my client printed my work on 13″x19″ paper, and failed to reduce the printed art so that it can fit a standard mat size, every time a fan wants to have the work matted, a custom, double mat job will cost about $60- $80. No kidding. Without a frame! That’s more than I was charging for the print alone.

Yet, to buy a standard, ready made double mat, you will pay only about $10. To pop that mat into a 16×20″ frame, you will pay about $20-$30, MAX. So, to get your mat alone, the custom mat job will cost you 2-3 times as much as mat and frame COMBINED for standard sizes!

It would have been simplicity itself to have the art reduced, then printed on standard 13″x19″ paper. Then trim the paper to 12″x16″, which is standard. But then, there wouldn’t be a healthy back end in framing money, right?

A lot of art stores really don’t tell their customers little things about stuff like standard frame sizes. When you go in to get your art matted and framed, they will try to get you to cut the mat to fit a uniform area around the art. That is, they will try to convince you to get your 13″ x 19″ original art matted to a frame radius of 15 “x 21″ to “make it even”. There is no frame standard for 15″ x 21″. So, your framer will have to make a custom frame for you. This will cost you about another $100-$150.

So, your custom mat and frame job – for the $20 print or the $40 comic page you bought at the convention – could run you nearly $200!!! Honestly, do you really care if the measurement on the top and bottom of the mat is the same as the sides? Even if that will cost you another $200?

I don’t. I just want to look at the picture on my wall.

If you can’t find a mat to fit your art ready made, you will have to shell out the dough for the custom mat job. But the secret to saving money here is to make absolutely certain that the outer dimensions of the mat conform to a standard frame size that you can buy ready made off the shelf. Get your 13″x19″ art matted to fit a 16″ x20″ frame. Then walk over to the frame section of the store and pick up one of those $20-$30 ready-made frames. It probably already has a mat in it that you can use for something else later.

This little trick will save you around $100 per piece of art, and you can afford to have a lot more art on your walls!

Custom matting and framing can be beautiful, but it’s a sucker’s game. The average person does not need to be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars matting and framing art! You can enjoy your art and save some money, too!

Also, try to have your mats cut in bulk. That is, if you are a comic collector, might as well have ten mats cut at a time. Comic art usually comes in one or two sizes. See if your art store will give you a discount for the bulk order. If not, go someplace else.

Try to make sure you do business with an art store that does their own matting and framing in house! Lots of them do not. They send out, it’s takes days to complete, and they charge a big mark up.

Don’t get nailed on high matting and framing prices! Custom matting and framing takes skill and can be lovely, but it’s not rocket science and ready made frames are easy to handle yourself. If you can pop a photo in a mat, you can pop art in, too. Use art tape, or even cloth medical tape to secure the art. HINGE ONLY AT THE TOP! Do not tape art all around the perimeter. If you make a mistake or need to remove tape, apply high heat with your hair dryer or a heat gun. It will melt the adhesive and it can be safely removed.

Here are the
Standard U.S. Frame Sizes:

4″x5″

4″x6″

6″x8″

5″x7″

8″x10″

8″x12″

8-1/2″x11″

9″x12″

10″x13″

11″x14″

12″x16″

14″x18″

16″x20″

20″x24″

22″x28″

24″x30″

24″x36″

30″x40″

Remember, this is the OUTER edge of the original art or for the mat you have cut to fit. Tell the framer to cut the outer perimeter of your mat to the standard frame measurement, and plop it in the frame. Most standard frames are already supplied with backing and hanging apparatus, so you save money there, too.

Another fun tip: ready made frames usually have sturdy hinged backs that allow you to easily pop a picture in and out without special tools. You can have a number of favorite pieces with inexpensive mats ready to rotate any time you like. Change your wall decor and enjoy a new piece of art every month.

When framing costs more than art, something funny is going on. Save some money on those custom jobs and buy more art to enjoy!

When I first posted this, we got a great comment from Ty who pointed out that ready made frames often didn’t come with UV/conservation glass. Since that glass can be bought in standard frame sizes, you can buy ready made frames with cheap glass and get UV glass later.

Here’s a couple more points I thought might be of help:

1) Buy a pad of acid free paper and back your art with it. This will help protect the art in case the backing is not acid free. Discard the sheet yearly and replace with a fresh one. A block of 20 pages of paper at 16″x20″ should cost about $10. Most collectors do not know that mat board should be replaced periodically as a matter of course, acid free or not. Lining the back of your art with acid free paper and replacing it continually will aid art preservation.

2) You can also buy UV protective spray which can be used directly on SOME original art and glass. Or you can buy UV protective glass/plastic panels. They come in the standard mat/frame sizes and are very reasonably priced. You don’t need to have them custom cut. Most art supply catalogues carry them pre-made.

3) A lot of comic art can be sprayed with de-acidifying spray. Black and white art tends to be a safe bet for this treatment. The spray is a little pricey, but a $9 can will cover a lot of art, and it will reduce the acidity of your paper, preserving it and protecting it. Follow directions carefully.

No matter what you do to protect your art, remember that most comic art was drawn for commercial reproduction, not preservation. Do not display in direct sunlight.

MOST of my art was done with conservation concerns in minds, but some of my early art was not. Most black and white comic art can be preserved with simple, inexpensive methods.

There is no preserving old tone sheets. They are plastic and were not created with longevity in mind. Modern Japanese tone sheets are supposed to be acid free and archival. Mine have not yellowed in a decade.

Buying the ready made frames can be a special problem for me, since most come with glass. Shipping glass usually means that no matter how careful I am, something breaks en route! I like the plastic, but it sometimes has a dull surface that ruins the glossy look of oil varnish. Sometimes I just take the glass out entirely for shipping to shows.

As I wrote in this snark fest below, I decided to take some time off and go back to art school to learn computer graphics and recharge my creative batteries.

That didn’t work out.

Here’s my rant from the old blog, which seemed to touch a chord for many of our fine readers here as the path to creative freedom is littered with the bodies of aspiring artists who paid freaking huge loads of money to go to art school and got nothing out of it but a big student loan bill.

For the record, I remain no computer graphics expert, but with some tutorials from Lynda.com, some very handy tutorials by Brian Haberlin, and one Photoshop seminar, after just a few weeks of study, I was able to produce the art for Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo, and the training for same cost a fraction of what one semester of one useless art class from my dumbass school, not to mention the fact it took a hell of a lot less time.

Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo was the first time I had tried to do an assignment from start to finish on the computer, and I think it turned out…not half bad. Thanks also to me pal JMS for the upgraded computer equipment which makes all things easier. Painting with a mouse is a thing of the past and I’m no longer going blind trying to see on a crappy old screen.
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Click on the SHOP tab above to go to the bookstore and buy this lovely, awesome tome. And be sure to click on the Brian Haberlin link, because he’s got some free downloads there. FREE TUTORIALS! Tell him Colleen sent you!

And now, Another Reason to Ditch That Dumbass School.

About that school…

I’ve agreed to finish out this quarter, because if I do, I continue to get access to school tutors and tutorials that the school offers until April, even though my current class ends on February 15.

The school…it is not happy.

Their argument is that if I were really, really dedicated and willing to push “past my comfort zone”, I wouldn’t be scared of the big bad computer programs.

Holy fucking flaming shit, I do believe that the reason I went to the school in the first place was to learn the god damned computer programs. Instead, I spend more than half my time writing essays about color, how advertising affects us emotionally, and doing thumbnails by the dozen. After I have wasted about ten hours of my week talking about hue, tone, shade, and the color wheel, I then get a design assignment that requires I use software I’ve never opened in my life. (more…)

Art and Creative Materials Institute is a handy website where you can check out your tools for toxins.

Improper use of solvents, such as failure to utilize proper ventilation when airbrushing or spraying fixative, can result in permanent brain or nerve damage. Bookmark this handy website for future reference.

I developed terrible headaches and respiratory problems after years of using a fixative spray on my pencil work. Don’t be a dope like me! Get a ventilator or spray those pics outside! That goes double for airbrush paints.

And be sure to read the health and safety website for more info.

c

Highly recommended book below:

Dear Colleen,

Gina Miller

Hi Gina,

One reason why you may be getting so many answers to your question about comic book page size, is simply that comic books (and manga) come in different sizes.

The right size of your original art – whether digital or or by hand – is not as important as the final printed dimensions of the work. Your drawings must be proportional to the printed work.

Pick up a comic book and a ruler. Now, find a page in which all the images of the comic page are contained within panel borders. That is, a page where none of the pictures breaks out off the page, or runs into the margins of the book. You want what we call the live area also known as the image area.

Just to keep the math easy, we’ll say that area measures 6″x9″.

Now, you don’t necessarily want to draw at that size. Art that is drawn larger than print size and then shrunk down looks cleaner and tighter than art that is drawn at print size or smaller. If you are working on computer, you can do anything on the art as long as it is proportional to the final print size.

So, if the final print size of your image area is 6″x9″, and you wanted to draw your comic page 1 1/2 times larger, then the size of your original art would be 9″x13.5″.

If you are doing all of your art – lettering and colors and tones – it is really up to you to draw your book as you choose, as long as you keep standard proportions in mind when you create your art.

The website ComiXpress has a great list of sizes and technical specs for different types of comic art. If, as you say, you are looking at “traditional” comic size, that would be the first page size listed. This website also explains what bleed, live area, and trim mean. Some other publishers may have different specs, especially manga publishers. Since ComiXpress is a POD (Print on Demand, as little as one copy at a time) printer, these tech specs are the sizes which they need to go directly to PRINT. Remember, your comic art does not need to be created at this size. It needs to be finished and PROPORTIONAL to this size.

There are some very good reasons for not going your own way and making huge variations in these standards. If you end up working with other artists, and your specifications vary wildly from industry norms, it can be hard for other creators to work with you. It may take a while for letterers and colorists to get used to your personal specs.

I do almost all of my art by hand, and even after years of being in the business, I make mistakes with sizing. Sometimes I work on projects where the printed size of the book is slightly different than what I am accustomed to. If I make a measuring error, I may draw an entire book at a slightly faulty proportion. I did this on the graphic novel Orbiter. No one noticed but me, but every single one of my splash pages is centered incorrectly because I drew the images slightly wider than the final book proportions.

I had a fit trying to figure out a good working proportion for my new book Gone to Amerikay (which won’t be out until next year.) Because the proportion is, once again different from standard, I found myself having trouble with the trim area and getting accustomed to the design of the wider-than-normal page proportion.

So, don’t feel badly if this is a little confusing! It happens to all of us! Which is why many artists buy pre-printed paper for their work.

BTW, I’ve also seen page layout programs on the web which you can download. I have absolutely no idea if they are any good, but I am providing the links for you.

Here is a set of layouts you can buy that appear to be at the standard comic page proportion.

I hope I’ve answered your questions, Gina! Thanks for writing!

c