Manga/Comic Page Inking Setup (as of 6/2016)

A friend of mine was curious what my setup was for making/inking a manga/comic page in SAI 1.1 and, well, here it is. I'm currently having tech issues with MS5 andI'm still trying to work on and optimise my style and technique. I do have some projects in the works, but they're still too new into the storyboard/name phase to draft yet, so I'm practicing while I'm writing.

I wish this version had the ability to lock certain layers (maybe it does and I just haven't found it yet), but that's okay, it makes it easier and faster to change the opacity, plus putting them in a particular folder works prety much the same as long as I'm careful not to edit on those layers.

Explanation of the Essential Layers

Bleed/Trim Reference pixel-penguin-da.deviantart.co…: Although it may not always be pixel-perfect, the outer-most blue helps scale the  reference to size for the document itself, the outside of the deeper blue is the trim and the light blue nox inside is where all the important stuff goes to make sure important art or text doesn'r exceed that noundary and risk getting cut off.

Barcode Reference: Similar to the rule of thirds reference, it isn't essential for every page. It's more for the back cover to block out a rough guess on the barcode's size and lpcation to make sure I don't format anything that's going to be hidden by the barcode. It's obviously flexible in its location, but most barcodws I've seen will be in the bottom, usually on the right corner. It's just a 1.5inX2.5in teal box, nothing special or hard, probably a bit too big, but big to make room for error.

Border Reference pixel-penguin-da.deviantart.co…: It's an edited version of the bleed/trim reference to help preview what the final print will look like once the excess of the document gets trimmed off and thus helps a lot with visializing the aesthetics. For a colored page, I recommend changing the color from blue to either a neutral earthtone or neutral grey—this will keep it from obstructing your preception of the piece's colors while still functioning as a preview.

Background: Although it may mot seem special, it's painted white to help be used to white out excess stuff in the final version, mostoy for any effects behind the borders, which I may use a lotmof for flashback or blackoit transitions in a way that doesn't distract from what's going on in the panels.

Rule of Thirds pixel-penguin-da.deviantart.co…: This isn't essential in every page, mostky for the ones with full-page illustrations, but it helps with applying the rule of thirds for illustrations or the covers.

This will probably be updated once I get a better idea of how I want to do this and once I get some glitches in the other programs fixed (MS5 won't do vectors for some reason). The main reference sheets sjould be available for download in my gallery.

Happy drawing!