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Brickwall
2006-08-29, 08:48 PM
As none of you have known up until now, I draw comics occasionally as a hobby. I'd like to do it more, but I have a teensy weensy problem.

Panels.

I just can't get those damn boxes looking good at all. It's hard enough making them uniform, and making them non-uniform is just overwhelmingly painful.

I see so many hand-drawn comics with nice, regular, neat panels. How do you do that without going insane?! Tell me!

And don't just tell me to give up good panel shape, because that isn't an option.

BelkarsDagger
2006-08-29, 08:55 PM
What medium do you use? That can change the whole thing.

Brickwall
2006-08-29, 09:00 PM
Mechanical pencil, although I have amateur-grade inks at my disposal if ever needed.

BelkarsDagger
2006-08-29, 09:03 PM
Use way thicker lines for the borders, then. Do you want them to be all perfectly box-sized or the same, or not? If so, then use a ruler. If not, use a ruler for the straight lines and then size them however.

Brickwall
2006-08-29, 11:43 PM
I use a ruler, but the angles and exact measurements are giving me pains. That's the problem.

BelkarsDagger
2006-08-29, 11:50 PM
Oh, okay. Exact measurements... have you thought about doing the frames on a program where you can copy/paste, then printing it out and drawing the comic from there?

Brickwall
2006-08-29, 11:55 PM
My computer hates me. If I draw something in, say, Fireworks at "2 inches", it does not print it out at 2 inches.

BelkarsDagger
2006-08-30, 12:01 AM
That sucks. It seems you've backed yourself into a corner, and I have no further advice at this time. Sorry. :(

DArKandEViL
2006-09-09, 01:27 PM
Fireworks, eh? Have you tried printing borderless?

Brickwall
2006-09-09, 03:53 PM
Actually, I solved this by using Paint. Apparently, it behaves well. I made a panel stencil, so I can have fun with smaller panels now. If I ever need a big one, I'll make a new one.

DArKandEViL
2006-09-09, 07:13 PM
I have a lot of problems using paint to print anything, it allways spreads to a 2 or more pages.

But, I can print with Fireworks just fine. ^.^

Brickwall
2006-09-09, 10:51 PM
It puts the top left of the image at the center of the page. If the image is small enough, you will have no problem.

Fireworks hates me though. You're lucky the better program likes you.

Picasso007
2006-09-11, 03:16 AM
Re: printing images at certain sizes.

After working in a copy shop for over a year, the best quick-and-easy way I've found to get an image to print out the size you want it to is to copy it into Microsoft Word. You can set the view to show the layout of the entire page, can resize the image however you need, can adjust the print margins as desired, and the program handily displays rulers scaled to the page so that you can print boxes the exact size you need to. Note that I'd recommend that you draw the box in another program (Paint, for example), then paste that image into Word and scale it there. Word's drawing toolbar I find is more trouble than it's worth.