Creating an Indie Comics – 2. Paper size

Paper size or your work area where you draw your actual comics may vary in sizes. I do not use a 10 inch by 15 inch (10x15) standard size that professional artist of DC and Marvel often use. I use a bond paper size only because of the following reasons.

1.) I am not making a full blown comics. I only publish an ashcan size. It is a A4 size folded into half. Drawing on a large 10x15 will not make any sense since most of the lines will start to collide when I shrink it down to an ashcan size comics.

2.) For convenience. It will take me longer to draw a sequential art page on a 10x15 size. And I am afraid that I could not publish my comics every 4 months.


I often buy my supplies at NBS (National Book Store) and my art board for my sequential pages is no exception. I buy an 8.5x11 Vellum type board (brand is Elit). It is just the right size, texture and thickness for me. It is also the same board that I previously used for the cover of issue #1 and #2 of Kalayaan. As you might have noticed, issue 1 and 2 is the size of a folded short bond paper. While I started to use an A4 glossy photo paper from issue #3 onwards.


If you want a little bit more larger work area than 8.5x11, you can get its bigger brother 8.5x13, but of course it will cost you a little bit more. The 8.5x11 cost at P21.50(10pcs.) while 8.5x13 cost at P24.50 (10pcs.) .

But weather you use a shot bond size or an A4 size, it does not matter, as long as you retain the aspect ratio of your work area.

What is an Aspect Ratio?

To put it very simple. You must retain the shape of your comics when you enlarge it or shrink it. Look at the figure below and you will get what I mean.



So if you are going to print your indie comics on an A4 size (or any size) just like I do. Here are the steps in getting the right work area/margin of your sequential page.

Get an A4 paper and fold it in half.


Place that on top of the 8.5x11 Vellum paper. And place a vertical and horizontal line on the left side and bottom of the paper respectively. Following the rule above on retaining the aspect ratio. Create a line from the bottom Left to the upper right tip of the A4 paper and continue the line to the Vellum paper.




Remove the A4 paper and create a horizontal line above and a vertical line on the right side. Make sure that those two new lines connects at the same point. And thats it. You can now use this as a template for the border/margin of all the other pages.


After drawing your art on this size, you can now rest assure that the aspect ration is the same with a folded A4 size. And even shrinking it in Photoshop and laying out the pages, would still retain its aspect ratio (That is assuming that you do not distort the image in the scale option of Photoshop.).

Please also check Gerry Alanguilan's creating mini-comics.