Don’t know about you, but my response to this year’s crop of Golden Globe winners can be summed up in one word: meh. Like most Web surfers right now, I’m too obsessed with the new Spider-Man 3 trailers to be bothered with Oscar buzz for Beyoncé. Everyone wants to know: Will this sequel be as good as Spider-Man, the comic? For me and anyone else who saw the show of original Spidey art at the Cartoon Art Museum awhile back, the answer has got to be no – but I’d like to see them try anyway.
But while we’re all waiting around for the webbed wonder to rescue us from plodding movies about dour British royals, other major comic phenomena are sneaking up on us: Megacon is just a couple weeks away in Orlando, Florida, and WonderCon and Alternative Press Expo are headed to San Francisco in March and April. These are prime opportunities to meet cult comic book heroes, load up on graphic novels for those long commutes, and maybe make a dramatic telephone booth transformation of your own from mild-mannered Blurbarian to comic book creator.
What, you haven’t already made your comic book? Never fear: Even if you can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, you can get that book done pronto with Blurb. Here are some tips to get your comic book ready to take on those comics conventions:
- Save your art as jpeg or png digital files – or for you old-schoolers, scan your original drawings and save them as jpegs or pngs.
- Select Photo Book, which offers you the most comics-ready page layouts and border options.
- Choose your book size in hardcover or affordable softcover. (Insider tip: More comics-friendly book formats to be announced in February… stay tuned!)
- Follow the prompts to import your digital art files into BookSmart, then drag and drop them into professionally designed page layouts.
- Go on, play around with different page layouts and borders – you know you want to. In BookSmart, page layout options are in the upper left of your screen; borders are on the main toolbar and on the Picture Tools bar that pops up when you click on your image.
- Overachiever alert: Already laid out a page exactly as you want it, have you? Just drag and drop that png or jpeg page into a full-bleed page layout.
- Bonus points: Make a glorious two-page spread. Follow these directions to make sure your best work doesn’t wind up in the gutter between the pages (horrors!)
- Get entrepreneurial, and sell your comic book in Blurb’s Bookstore. You set your price, you keep your profits – that’s right, 100% of them. Jeremy Yeunger shows how it’s done with his comic compendium leave, freeze, or die – way to look sharp, Jeremy.
- Tell us how it goes, why don’t you?
