Where is the printed comic?

I know most of you are thinking (or have actually asked me) “Why is it taking so long to complete the printed comic book?" The biggest problem was that I didn’t know what I was doing when I started this comic. I made the same mistake as a lot of other webcomic artists when they started out. Making the artwork and comic pages in the wrong format. Before I go on any further, I should tell all you people out there thinking of starting your own web comic that your original artwork must be made at a minimum of 300dpi. Not 150dpi. But at least 300dpi! Or you will have the pleasure of redoing all your artwork to the proper size. Which is not a good feeling at all. This file format is quite big in size. But you can always shrink it down to the web comic size, and lower the quality to save on bandwidth. But you can't stretch low resolution artwork to a larger size. Well you can, it will just look like crap. All blocky and pixilated. 

That is what I did in my first attempt with the printed comic book. About one and a half years ago, I started running into financial trouble running the comic. I just stretched out the bad artwork I had and quickly slapped something together hoping to sell as fast as I can to make some money. Fortunately, all the printing houses at that time were booked for weeks, and thankfully to the fans that donated so Post-Nuke Comic could continue to move forward. That was the only time I asked for donations, and I never will ask for donations again. Because I took a lot of flack from negative people for asking for donations. Either way, I did what I had to and it bought me some more time to do the printed comic book properly. 

The biggest delay is because I just don’t have the time to work on both the online comic and the printed comic book at the same time. Remember I have to rescan all my artwork and recompose them into the proper format. If I work on the printed comic book, the online comic becomes late and people start to complain. If try to get ahead with the online comic, then the printed comic book begins to collect dust.

Anyway, I now had a long time to pick away at the printed comic book and I’m very pleased how it is turning out. I always considered the online version to be a draft version, or rough copy. There are a lot of grammar errors throughout the comic story, and a lot of bad artwork because I just didn’t have time to do it properly. The online version is also very amateurish. I want the printed comic book to have more of a professional feel and look. I'm glad I took the time to do it right.

I did learn from my mistakes however. I learned a lot through the last three and a half years working on this comic. As some of you may have noticed,  Chapter 8 and 9 comic pages are in a new style format. I am now making all the comic pages in the correct format so when it comes time to print that issue it's already done. Well, there is still some grammar errors and bad art I want to fix, but for the most part it will really speed up releasing the comic book when I get to chapter 8, 9, and 10. I did start making the artwork at 600dpi on chapter 6. Unfortunately I lost half of chapter 6, all of chapter 7 and the first quarter of chapter 8 when my main hard drive died last May. That was truly devastating to be quite honest. I learnt yet another valuable lesson, BACKUP YOUR DATA  AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN!! Luckily I had enough sense to backup all of chapters 1 to 6 and printed comic book to DVD's. Or I'd have the pleasure of redoing it a third time. Yesh! 

Well anyway, now you might have some understanding why Post-Nuke hasn't been much fun for me lately. It is a lot of work and just seems to increase in work as it goes on. But on the other hand, I'm quite pleased to the responses I've been getting from fans and I'm happy how the story is unfolding. In some ways a lot better then I originally imagined. That is the most important thing I think, to get the story right. 

So the first issue of the printed comic book will hopefully be done in a month or two. I know that sounds like a long time. But it will definitely be worth the wait.