2807. I printed To:You comic at home myself!
Printing my comic(s) has been in the back of my head in the past few years. But when I was looking at the price for book printing at printing companies, the idea was shelved pretty quickly. I don't want to spend so much for printing, especially when I don't know whether I'd sell any – since they always have pretty high MOQ to justify the price.
Also, I'm currently working hard on budgeting my spending on more essential things, including working with others for my commercial VNs – so merchandise and printing processes fall lower on my priority. ;-;
While pondering, I looked at the printer I've been using to print my stickers and wondering: "It should be able to print comics too, shouldn't it?" So I read some documentations about how to print books on a simplex printer, and it is possible! :o It's actually really simple!
I just need to activate the "brochure" setting on the printer screen and it will sort the pages accordingly. To maximise the printing surface, it's the best to have all pages in multiplication of 4. To:You comic happens to have 16 pages each (32 pages for both chapters in total); so it was a perfect test-print candidate.
The result was exciting! Apart from the margin problem, the book is basically perfect!
The first test (the bigger one, A5 size when folded) has wrong printing direction. I made To:You to be read from right to left (manga style), and so I put all pages in Libre Writer in the reversed order:
and on the printer setting, I selected "right-to-left" setting for the brochure printing layout. I was confused when I sorted the paper, like: the pages printed correctly, but why did it feel wrong...?
Only a few minutes later I realised that I basically reverted the reverted order! 😣🔨Literally slapped my forehead for what I did without thinking. I did second print test (with A5 paper this time) without the same mistake, and it looks really nice!
The A6 sized mini comic is really cute, and for such simple art style, low detail, and wordless comic – A6 is probably the perfect size for it.
With only a few pages, it can take saddle stapler very easily. I don't have saddle/long arm stapler so it will remain loose for now until I own a saddle stapler, but I believe that's all I need to have to print comics at home myself.
Suddenly, printing mini booklets becomes so much accessible for me! ✨ Also, making our own copybons at home feel special, because it's literally homemade and there's no fear of the high MOQ and huge money investment.
I remember drawing this comic on live stream, which helped me lock in and progressed a lot in just a few days. Wrist was suffering, but with my art skill at that time, it was a huge achievement! Now when I look at it, I can see a lot of things I want to fix: their head shape (so flat???), their body proportions (so chibi!!!), their faces (too cute?!?), and more...
At some point I was thinking: should I redraw everything so they're worthy to share/sell to others? But then I quickly snapped out: please, don't give myself more job than what I already have... So, I guess, it will stay with its old, charming art style that it has. I went through: proud of it, cringe when seeing it, and now I feel this feeling of nostalgic, precious old art style when I look at it...
To know that this comic is actually the base of Blooming Chimes, it makes it even more precious. Because of my work load and stuff in life, my VN production has been taking its sweet, sweet time. It's still going despite all that and I'll do my best to live healthily and happily, so one day I'll finish it with brimming proudness. I hope you'll keep living happily and healthily as well, that when that day comes, I'll show what I have been working on in the past years, and that I hope you'll enjoy it!