Contemplating from afar

Today, most artist use computer to create their artwork. Artbooks are, as much as it might seems derogative, an industrial product, printed in a certain quantity. Quality is affected as soon as it’s printed, and I will explain how in this article. There are several steps on the road to printing, but the major two are the drawing and the printing itself which I will try to explain in-depth, though I can’t guarantee the accuracy of my information. I will also provide several reference to artists and artbooks to illustrate the technical aspect. This is the first article in a serie of 4, as it’s a bit too long for one post.

The road start from the white paper, and I will go until it get digitalized. Second article will be about colors on screen, then colors in printing, and finally paper and screening. I’m also introducing the Shadowbox on the blog since the Lightbox didn’t work. To get the full size of an image, you will have first to click on it, then save the image on your computer.

Computer has changed how most manga and anime are drawn today. They used to be on celluloid, on Deleter’s paper, with different tools to draw. Now, a good part of the process is on computer. One things can still be done on paper, the sketches. As far as I have seen, some artist still does it, others just sketch directly in their favorite drawing software.

Sketches are fascinating; it’s the idea of an artist as rough as it can be. I also like looking at the tool they use. Judging by the strokes, Aoi Nishimata seems to use a ballpen, Tanihara Natsuki use a pen, maybe the famous G one, or a marker but I guess the majority use a pencil, not necessarily a black one though; blue pencil are not scannable for instance.

The next step is inking, and can be done either on computer or still on paper, with pens, marker, or brushes. But be it at the end of the inking, or of the sketches, one important step is the scanning if the artist started on paper.
Scanning takes the drawing from the analog space to the digital space. From here, is set in stone the resolution of the drawing.

Let’s try to explain it briefly; one characteristic of a scanner is the resolution, expressed in DPI, Dots Per Inch. In short, a line of one inch is sampled to a certain number of dot. The more dot, the more precise and detailed it’s.
From what I have seen, artists usually either prepare their illustration for Internet or for printing. I think it’s the most visible in the Pixiv Artist Book 2009 which is full of small illustration. If the image were prepared for Internet, the resolution need to be high, but on paper, at a 300 DPI printing resolution, it will look small. I think some artist just didn’t have high resolution image. Here is a list of example of image resolution needed for a full page print at certain DPI:

• B5 page, 300 DPI, 2079×2953
• A4 page, 300 DPI, 2480×3508
• B5 page, 600 DPI, 4157×5906
• A4 page, 600 DPI, 4961×7016

And to illustrate, here are some original digital file, from Izumi Sakurazawa‘s doujin CD, Chronological, and Goto-P‘s Peeping-P doujin CD. It’s rare to get such file, but here are files which could be used for nice printing.
These, insane resolution requires, aside of the usual Intuos 3/4 tablet and the scanner, a very good computer who can handle these images. Kantoku for instance has a Intel Core2 Quad Q9550, with 8GB of RAM, 5 GB are used as a Ram Disk, a GeForce 9600GT/512MB, and 1TB of hardrive. This is a professional computer which is really scaled for high resolution images, as the most important part is the RAM.

So, what should be remembered is the resolution of an image for a decent printing; it’s freaking huge.