FREEZE, Spread ‘EM!

So hopefully, you now know how to correctly template an interior comic book page the DC Comics way.  You’ve scanned all your pages in and templated all your pages, be it bitmap or grayscale.  “But Corey”, you say, “I drew a double page spread in my book, how do I template that?”  Well, now I will show you how to do that.  It is not very complicated at all, because you are essentially using the same technique as a single page, just with a couple of added steps that make it a little more work.

The first thing you want to do is scan your double page spread.  Hopefully, you drew it correctly by following the rules of a double page spread on the comic book board.  The rules are the following: “DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD: CUT AS SHOWN, ABOUT PAGE EDGES, TAPE ON BACK, DO NOT OVERLAP.”  I’ll explain what this means.  On a regular DC Comics Art Board, you have the safety lines marked by dotted blue lines.  Then beyond those lines are solid blue lines that represent the crop area.  When setting up a double page spread, you are going to want to take the left side of the spread and cut along the entire crop line of the page on the right side of the board.  For the right side of the spread, you are going to want to cut along the left side of the board along the crop line.  You can now put the two pages together by lining up the two pages using the opposite sides you just cut.  The crop marks in the middle should now line up perfectly, depending on how straight you cut the boards (use a ruler and exacto knife for best results).  Finally, tape the boards together using a semi-strong piece of art tape.  Now you can draw your image on the correctly sized board for a double page spread.

So you have the drawing completed.  Now you need to scan the spread.  Since it is much bigger then a single page 11 x 17 inch board, you are going to have to scan each page separately, and then put it together in Photoshop.  Scan each page of the spread as a single page, grayscale, 100%, 600 dpi.  Save both images after the scan, and open them both side by side in Photoshop.  Then you will need to open the DC Comics two-page spread template!  If you need to make one on your own, the dimensions are 13.487 x 10.438.  The height is obviously the same as a single page, but the width is now doubled.  Including the guides (as discussed in the my previous templating post), it should look like this, grayscale, 600 dpi:

Now you are ready to create this spread in the template.  Here is the example we are working with for this tutorial. It is a page from Magog #3, a double page spread by Howard Porter & John Dell, that will be colored by HiFi Studios.  This is the first scan of the spread, the ‘left’ side:

This is the second half of the spread, the ‘right’ side:

On both the ‘left’ and ‘right’ scans, select all and shrink down to 67%, comic book size.  Take the ‘left’ side file and drag into the two-page spread template.  Position the image all the way on the left side, taking into account the middle of the page falling on the innermost guide line, the center of the page.

Now you have something like this:

Now you are going to bring over the ‘right’ side of the spread, into the template.  Remember, shrink it down to 67%, then drag it into the template where the other half of the image is, which will create a new layer in your layer palatte.  Click on that new layer, and change the opacity of it down to about 50/60%.  This will make the ‘right’ side see through, so we can match it up with the ‘left’ side.  Place the ‘right’ side all the to the right of the file, keeping an eye on the center of the image until it matches close enough to the ‘left’ side.  We will zoom in and make it more precise after you do these steps first, as shown below:

Zoom into the center of the file, and move the ‘right’ side as close to the left side until the art matches up as close as possible, so that they are fully connected.  This is the most important part, because you have to make sure that the art is flawlessly filled in with no space in between.  If the art does NOT match up, then get it as close as possible.  In this example, the art doesn’t match up exactly, so we are going to have to fill in the missing art to connect the sides.  Before we do that, delete any of the excess board from the ‘right side scan, so that the art is cut off exactly where it meets with the ‘left’ side.

In the example below, you can see that the art is “missing” in the middle.  We are going to have to redraw what’s missing:

Before you fix that though, we are going to change the opacity back to 100% on the ‘right’ side.  Then we are going to bitmap the image.  Go to File>Mode>Bitmap.  Make sure it’s 600 dpi, 50% threshold.  Hit enter.  It will ask you if you want to Flatten the file.  Say yes.  That will creat a one-layered file like below:

Now zoom in and using the pencil tool at 100% K, or black, redraw and connect the art so it is all one image again, like below:

Finally, you have the FINISHED, Bitmap, 600 dpi, Templated Double-Page Spread!

And that is how you template a Double-Spread Spread.  I hope I didn’t confuse you too much, it is easier said then done, and remember, I’m a visual learner, so I’m doing my best to explain these processes to you.  I hope this helps you, because you wouldn’t believe how many artists send me their scans for a double-page spread saying they do not know how to template it!  I hope this explains how to do just that, and my job gets a lot easier!  LOL

Until Next Time!

CjB