In response to the occasionall call for the file size limit to be upped, as well as the occasional poorly compressed JPEG image, I thought I'd show you how to fit a picture into 100kB. Images can't be over 468x468 pixels anyway, so usually 100kB should be plenty. I never drew an Apathy comic that went over 21kB, for example. The trick is to make the file the right type. The following filetypes are allowed for attachment to posts here: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg mid pdf png psd txt zip. The bold ones are image formats.

THE HAPPY, HAPPY SHORT VERSION :)

If you have drawn a cartoony image, save it as a GIF or an 8-bit PNG, but not using Paint. If you have drawn a "realistic" looking image, or you can't make a PNG or GIF look right, use JPEG.

THE LONG VERSION

BMP and PSD are uncompressed - in fact PSD files store a lot of excess information you don't really need people to see unless you're making a webkit or something. BMP is good for flags and graves, but not much else (as far as the forum is concerned).

JPEG, JPG, and JPE are all the same. They're the "blocky" images. They're very small, but the cost of this is that they distort images. Some programmes allow you to control the compression:quality ratio when you save a JPEG image - this can bu useful when there's a specific size milit as there is here. Most JPEGs which fit into the 468x468 pixel limit will be less than 100kB, but if they aren't it is possible to compress them further if you're using a programme like Photoshop, the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) (but not Paint). If you do a Google search for "GIMP" please make sure you have moderate safe-search on ;) The way JPEG distorts your image won't be very visible on photographs or CG images. Do not, under any circumstances, save an image as a JPEG if you want someone else to colour it for you. They'll hate you for it. All JPEGs are 24-bit colour.

GIF is an exclusively 256-colour format. If you have a photograph, or lots of gradient fills in your image it might not show up well in GIF format, but if you have a cartoony image it is ideal. (I used GIF for Apathy.) GIFs are "run-length encoded", which means that large blocks (or more accurately, long horizontal lines) of one colour take up much less space than a small, intricate image. This also means you can save some filesize by turning off error diffusion and/or dithering. GIFs can also be animated for good measure (for avatars, say). Paint, however, is very bad at saving GIF images. If you use something like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or the GIMP, you can customise both the number of colours (2, 16, 256, and maybe some other numbers are available) and which colours they are. (In the Apathy comics I only used 15 colours which made the file sizes tiny.)

24-bit PNG is a lossless compression format - which means it makes images slightly smaller than raw bitmaps (BMP), but stubbornly refuses to throw away any information. This rather limits how far it can compress your image, and therefore it is only useful if the image quality is of great importance. This sort of image quality is very rarely nessecary on the style of are seen here. (No offence ;)).

8-bit PNG is like a GIF file, only frequently it is smaller (thanks to its lossless compression). Just make sure you're not using 24-bits, or else your file will come out huge. This format only allows you to use 256 colours, but you get to choose which (or, more likely, your art package will chose the best ones for you after seeing your image), so 256 is usually plently. PNG also has fewer royalties-based problems than GIF, but again that doesn't really matter for our purposes..

IF ALL ELSE FAILS

If all else fails, and your image just won't fit on the forum, you can always link to it. If you just have one image to show us, then there are websites like http://imageshack.us that allow you to upload images to their webspace, or if you're going to be showing us lots of art, you might want to register an account somewhere like http://www.deviantart.com so you can keep it all together and manage it better.

Just to add something to Andrew's post:

http://www.imageshack.us/tutorial/

That provides useful information on the pro's and con's of JPEG, GIF and PNG formats.


I would strongly advise not to save as BMP (Bitmap) or PSD (Photoshop) formats, because these are very large, and won't fit on the forum. Also, PSD format can only be read by people running Adobe Photoshop, so the chances are, your internet browser won't be able to view it. Bitmap files are sometimes unreadable by internet browsers, so try to avoid those as well.

I've noticed there are more comics around here than ever at the moment - there are seven on the front page, and that's excluding ones on people's actual websites and using the mods' front page that is all cluttered up with deleted threads and things. So I thought, here's something I'm halfway qualified to talk about in a closed, stickied thread. So I did.

Reading order is the most important thing involved in making a comic. Observe this excellent joke garbled by poor reading order:

[scene: three bits of string enter a bar]
Barman: No, we don't serve strings in here.
String 1: Can I have a drink?
String 2: Can I have a drink then?
Barman: No, I told you. No strings.
[scene: string 3 in bathroom tangling himself up and messing up his hair]
String 3: Can I have a drink?
String 3: No, I'm a frayed knot.
Barman: Hey, aren't you a piece of string?
Barman: Alright then.

Obviously it looks very silly written out, but this is what people see when they read a comic unless it's clear what order to read the speech bubbles in. I've seen a comic on this forum today that reads backwards unless you spend a while reordering it in your head. As a rule, when people who don't really know what they're doing draw these things, they put the first speech bubble wherever it looks best and then try to fit the rest around it. So, what's the correct order? Why, it's the order you're reading in now -- that is, left to right, then down. Assuming your comic is in English, anyhow.

Wherever possible, the first speech bubble should be in the top left, the next one to the right of it, then subsequent ones underneath. That's not a hard-fast rule; you can have three speech bubbles along the top, and then four underneath, or one big one at the top and then three beneath it. Just make sure that the left-to-right-then-down reading order is preserved.

You should be thinking about this before you draw the first frame. Otherwise you don't know which way around the characters should stand, or how much of the dialogue has to be in each frame - especially since you can only comfortably fit four frames intop 468x468 pixels. Arrange the characters in the scene so that you can achieve the correct layout of speech bubbles, but don't change it between frames unless you have to - the pictures is usually below the speech and therefore people will often see it afterwards, so you want them to know from the start of the frame which character is saying which lines.

Everything above also applies to the frames of the comic - unless they're arranged in a line, or a clear grid, you'll have to be careful to make sure they're read in the right order.

Use a handwriting font if you have one - and if it isn't "Comic Sans MS" which is the only font in the world with the capacity to make me (and plenty of other people if you look hard for them) automatically dislike whatever it's applied to. There are some good ones available at Blambot.com - get a free one. No point shelling out unless you're planning to make money from your comic, which you're not. I use DigitalStrip as it resizes very small before it becomes unreadable, Fried (and many others) uses Letter O Matic. BottleRocket is also a nice font. all three are free from Blambot.

Type things out in full unless there are serious space issues. It's more important in a comic than a post because a lot of the impact will be lost if it takes even a second to decipher the shorthand. It will also make the whole affair look infinitely more professional. If there are serious space issues, you might want to consider (a) thinking more carefully about layout before committing to paper/screen/whatever it is you commit to, and (b) putting the text in first then drawing characters and speech bubbles around it.

One last thing - you have a choice. You can make a great comic and please the community with that, or you can please the community individually by giving every single one of them a cameo. Personally I always chose the former because the latter was too hard to draw and most people's "characters" are just visual and have no personality.

All that said, while I was writing this post I looked at a few of the comics up and a couple of them were very good - I don't want anyone to think I'm posting this because they're all rubbish. I'm sure if I still had my old sketchbooks from when I was younger there'd be some far worse stuff in there. But I don't, so nobody can ever dig those up to embarrass me with. Hooray! I love a post with a happy ending.

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The Fake Signature of Links:
Apathy Clan Comics thread: showthread.php?t=17189 (http://forum.team17.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17189)
Apathy website: andrewtaylor.keenspace.com (http://andrewtaylor.keenspace.com)
Blambot - fonts and things: blambot.com (http://blambot.com)