New Artist Primer

This document is built to help orient new artists on the team, and artists returning to the team of our needs and expectations.

Color Space

The following is a drastic oversimplification of what's actually happening. Feel free to correct it if you know better and want to, but understand that it still needs to be as simply communicated as possible for people that might not know anything about color spaces/profiles.

For Web use RGB

If you're designing for use on the webpage that is unlikely to ever be used in print, you can use the RGB color space. This allows for colors that don't exist in print because they're made of light - monitor use only.

For Print use CMYK

If you're designing for something we know we're going to print out, you should be designing in the CMYK color space. This is going to result in duller colors, but they're colors that ink can actually print.

For Print and Web use CMYK

If you don't know what you're designing for, or it's for something that is going to be on the web and in print, use the CMYK color space.

Sizes

For print, or print and web, go big!

The con book is printed on 11" x 17" paper and one page is 8.5" x 11". We print 11" x 17" posters. If you want what you're drawing on a poster, it needs to be at least 11" x 17" at 300 DPI

For web only, small is okay but we still prefer it big

Web-only images can be small, but if we love them and want to use them somewhere we won't get to. Try to design even small characters on a canvas at least 3" x 4" at 300 DPI.

Don't forget to set your DPI

Everything should be designed at 300 DPI or higher.

Bleed and Margin

If you're designing a full design and not just a character, always let your design "bleed" outside of the intended size by .25" on each side. Keep in mind flyers will be cut and you should keep all important text away from the edges of your page so it can't be cut off. Sometimes we have an exact margin figure from our printer but other times we just try to add a safe amount of about .25".

Please please please, if you're designing a character or an element that goes off the page, still draw the whole thing. It's fine if the whole thing is just a bust, but if you draw a full bust and then cut off an elbow, it makes it hard for us to reuse that element elsewhere.

How to design your elements and characters

• Please please please, if you're designing a character or an element that goes off the page, still draw the whole thing. It's fine if the whole thing is just a bust, but if you draw a full bust and then cut off an elbow, it makes it hard for us to reuse that element elsewhere.
• Please isolate each object or character in its own layer or group so that we can take that object and use it elsewhere. We like to use random elements in the con book.
• Always have the line art on its own layer so we can use it to make coloring pages. Sometimes we also need it for other design purposes.