The Comic landing page: inked capitals, three panels that slam in, a strip, the price in a caption box. Desktop, laptop, tablet and phone.
GO TO
PRESS!
Twelve pages, one cover, a centrefold, and a convention table with your name on it. Lay out, ink, letter and tone the issue, then send it to paper and to the internet, without leaving the file.
The whole-issue comic template, SIGNAL #1: front cover, credits, eight interior pages, a centrefold and the back cover, side by side on one page of the file. The view flies from the front cover to page 1, then to the centrefold that runs across two pages, then pulls back to the whole issue.
KAPOW!
THE PROJECT
SIGNAL #1, from script to table
You have a script, a con in six weeks and a table you paid for. The plan: a short first issue, printed and stapled, a stack of them on the table, a link on a card for people who would rather read on a phone, and something that moves for the socials. The usual way that happens is a paint app for the art, a layout app for the pages, a third tool for lettering, a print shop form that asks about bleed, and an evening of exporting GIFs.
This page follows that issue through PopCraft instead. It starts from a real template, SIGNAL #1, the Whole comic issue, and every clip is the real editor. The tools each have their own feature page; this one is about getting an issue out the door.
12
pages in SIGNAL #1, centrefold included
33
comic layouts to swap in
3 mm
bleed on the metric print presets
1
file for paper and screen
THE PLAN
Six stages, one page
The whole job, laid out the way it deserves: as a comic page, with slanted panels. Each stage below has its section, clips and links.
THE MAKING OF SIGNAL #1PAGE 1 OF 1 · NO ARTISTS WERE HARMED
- STAGE 1ThumbnailsPick a layout per page from 33. Rough the beats in pencil.
- STAGE 2Pencils & inksSketch on its own layers. Ink with vector pens over the top.
- STAGE 3LettersBalloons, captions and SFX, all on one text style each.
- STAGE 4Colour & toneA colour per panel, then halftones that stay sharp.
- STAGE 5To paperPreflight, a booklet proof at home, a CMYK PDF with bleed.
- STAGE 6OnlineA landing page, a link preview, a strip that loops as a GIF.
STAGE 1 · LAYOUTS
Start with the whole issue open
Open Whole comic issue and the issue is already there: front cover, an inside front cover with the credits, pages one to four, a centrefold that runs across pages five and six, pages seven and eight, a next-issue tease and the back cover. Every page is a trimmed print page, so the sizes and the bleed are right before you draw a line.
Keep its pages, or swap any of them for one of the 33 layouts: the nine-panel grid for a tense conversation, the silent page, the splash. The make a comic page shows the whole shelf.
The whole-issue comic template, SIGNAL #1: front cover, credits, eight interior pages, a centrefold and the back cover, side by side on one page of the file. The view flies from the front cover to page 1, then to the centrefold that runs across two pages, then pulls back to the whole issue.
STAGE 1, CONTINUED
Panels are polygons, not boxes
The chase on page three wants slanted panels. In PopCraft a panel is a frame with a vector mask, so its shape can be any polygon: a wedge, a shard, a sliver. The art sits underneath, uncut.
That matters on the last weekend, when you decide the runner should be further left. Drag him, and the slanted panel re-crops live. Framing stays a decision instead of a destructive crop you made three weeks ago.
The action page template: three tiers of slanted, wedge-shaped panels with a chase across them. The view moves down the page tier by tier, then one shard is clicked and its street art is dragged inside it: the slanted mask crops it live.
STAGE 2 · PENCILS & INKS
Draw right on the page
Click Draw and the page becomes a drawing surface. Rough the figures with a pencil, each stroke its own layer, so the roughs hide with one click later. Then ink over them with the Inking brushes, Studio Pen, Dip Pen and Crow Quill among them. Those strokes stay vector paths: sharp at print size, editable forever, light in the file.
Want texture in the night sky? Painterly brushes bake to pixels as you draw, and a page can mix inked vectors with painted panels. Pressure and tilt work on a stylus, and you can import your Procreate brushes. All of it lives on the brushes page.
A comic page in Draw mode, with the brush library in the left panel. Oil Pastel is picked from the library and two curving strokes are drawn across a panel; each lands as a stroke layer in the layer tree.
The classic comic page template in the editor: three tiers of panels on a trimmed page. The view moves down the page tier by tier — the establishing shot with a caption and speech balloon, three beats with a thought balloon, then the reveal with an inset, an impact star and a sound effect. A panel is clicked and the inspector shows it, a masked group, then the whole page comes back into view.
STAGE 3 · LETTERS
Balloons that point at the speaker
SIGNAL ships with four components: a speech balloon, a thought balloon, a caption box and a sound effect. Drop one over the panel, drag its tail to the speaker, type. The words are ordinary text on a text style, so when the lettering is too small on page six, you fix the style once and all twelve pages follow.
Sound effects are text too, so they take gradients, strokes and effects. Flatten one with Alt+Shift+F when you want to push the letterforms around by hand.
A classic comic page. The moon and skyline art in the first panel is dragged: the panel’s mask crops it live, so the framing is a choice that can be changed any time. Then the speech balloon is dragged to sit over the speaker; it is an ordinary layer above the panels.
STAGE 4 · COLOUR & TONE
Halftones that stay sharp
The templates give each panel a colour from the file’s colour variables, so a mood change is a variable change, not an evening of repainting. Night for the flashback? Change the colour, and every panel using it follows.
Then the dots. Halftone is a live GPU effect: shape, angle, size and ink, with light, mid and dark tones split if you like. It stays sharp at any zoom. If the printer wants real dots in an SVG, Convert to vector halftone makes them, after warning you how many it is about to make.
The six-panel comic page template, zoomed in on the establishing shot: a city skyline under a moon. With the panel’s sky selected, the plus button in the Effects section of the inspector adds a Halftone, and the sky turns to Ben Day dots, drawn live on the GPU. The view zooms in close on the dots, which stay sharp, then pulls back.
STAGE 5 · TO PAPER
Proof it at home, then send it out
Two printers matter. The one on your desk, for proofs you can staple and read on the sofa, and the one at the print shop, for the run you sell. PopCraft does both from the same pages.
First, open the Preflight tab and run it. It checks every page for low-resolution images, art in the safe margin, missing bleed, hairlines, overflowing text and fonts, and lists where each problem is. Then press ⌘P, pick Booklet, and the pages go two to a sheet in folding order. The dialog tells you how many sheets and how to print them: double-sided, flipping on the short edge. Fold, staple, read. Find the typo. Fix it. Print again.
The whole-issue comic template: covers, eight pages and a centrefold. Command-P opens Print. Pages on the paper is changed from single pages to Booklet, and the dialog counts the sheets of paper and says how to print and fold them; then Four pages per sheet, for a proof of the whole run.
The bold business card template. The Preflight tab opens in the right panel and Run checks both sides: image resolution, safe margins, bleed, hairlines, overflowing text, fonts and transparency, each issue listed with where it is.
STAGE 5, FOR THE PRINTER
A PDF with bleed and marks
For the print shop: Export as PDF. Every page gets a TrimBox and a BleedBox, crop marks and registration marks if they want them, and fonts embedded as subsets. Lines and type are real PDF geometry, so the inks stay crisp.
Pick CMYK (uncalibrated) if they ask for CMYK. Be clear on what it is: a straight conversion with no ICC profile, not a PDF/X file. Fine for many digital presses and for proofs. For exact colour, send RGB and let the shop convert it. The print and PDF page has the details.
The whole-issue comic template. ⋯ › Export › Export as PDF… opens the PDF export. Color is switched to CMYK (uncalibrated), Full bleed is turned off so each page carries its bleed, and Crop marks and Registration marks and color bars are ticked; the notes under each control say what the file will be.
CENTREFOLD
The spread, handled
SIGNAL’s centrefold is one frame across two pages, with a fold guide down the middle. Keep faces and words off the fold, let the explosion cross it. When the pages go to paper, the export cuts the spread back into two pages, which is what printers expect.
The two-page spread template: pages 10 and 11 as one sheet, with art running straight across the fold in the middle. The view pans along the spread from the left page, over the fold, to the right page, then pulls back to the whole sheet.
An event poster. Command-P opens Print: what to print (every page), how the pages sit on the paper (single pages), and Full bleed, already on for a print page. Crop marks is turned on; the dialog says what each sheet will be.
STAGE 6 · ONLINE
The issue, on every screen
The table is one weekend. The internet is the rest of the year. Three comic-styled templates sit next to the issue and share its look:
LINK PREVIEW
SHARE!The Comic cover link preview: 1200 × 630 for the socials, with a 1280 × 640 GitHub version.
LOOPING STRIP
LOOP!The Comic strip post: three panels slam in and leave again, so the loop is seamless. Eight seconds, square, 4:5 and 9:16.
Check the landing page at a phone’s width in Web preview, then publish it at an address and print that on the card at your table. Export the strip as a GIF for chats and forums. For a vertical read, the webtoon layout is one long column where the scroll is the gutter.
The comic landing page template. ⋯ › Web preview opens the page as a site beside the canvas; the width is switched to a phone’s and the inked hero, the three-panel strip and the caption-box price reflow into one column.
The animated comic strip post template in Animate. Space plays it: each panel slams in with its caption box and the speech balloons pop. Then the export button in the transport bar opens Export animation and GIF is picked, with its palette, dither and loop settings.
WHO MADE IT
The credits box
Every comic has an indicia. Here is SIGNAL’s, with the jobs on the left and the part of PopCraft that did them on the right. Each one links to its feature page.
SIGNAL #1 · CREDITS
- Pencils & inks
- Draw mode, the Inking brushes
- Production
- Print, Preflight, PDF export
- Web edition
- Web preview and Publish
Story by you. Everything else in one file.
THE OLD WAY
Paint app, layout app, lettering app, prayer
| THE OLD WAY | IN POPCRAFT |
|---|---|
| Paint the art, export, place it, crop by hand | Draw in the panel; the mask crops it live |
| Letter in a separate pass, fix each balloon | Balloon components on text styles, fixed once |
| A halftone filter that flattens your art | A live halftone, convertible to vector dots |
| Look up trims and bleed, impose by hand | Print presets, Preflight, Booklet in the print dialog |
| Rebuild the art for a site and a GIF | Landing page, link preview and strip in the same file |
FROM ZERO
Your first issue in six moves
- 1
Open the issue
New file, search Whole comic issue. Covers, eight pages and a centrefold, already at comic trim size. - 2
Rework the layouts
Swap a page for another layout from the 33, or nudge panel shapes. Panels are masks, so the art just re-crops. - 3
Draw the art
Click Draw. Rough in pencil, ink with Studio Pen, Dip Pen or Crow Quill on the layers above. - 4
Letter and tone
Point the balloon tails, set the text styles, add halftones to the panels that need weight. - 5
Proof and print
Run Preflight, print a booklet at home, then export a PDF with bleed and crop marks for the printer. - 6
Put it online
Publish a landing page, make the link preview, export the animated strip as a GIF.
OPEN THE ISSUE
Read it, then rewrite it
In PopCraft, click New file and search for Whole comic issue. Read SIGNAL #1, press ⌘P and pick Booklet to see how it folds, then start replacing it page by page. The comics docs and the print docs cover every control.
ASKED & ANSWERED
Questions, answered
Can I really make a whole issue in one file?
Yes. The Whole comic issue template is SIGNAL #1: front cover, credits, eight interior pages, a centrefold and the back cover, each a trimmed print page in one file, with shared balloon, caption and sound effect components.
Are the panels real masks?
Yes. A panel is a frame with a vector mask, so its shape can be any polygon, slanted and wedge-shaped ones included. Drag the art underneath and the panel crops it; nothing is cut away.
Can I print a booklet on my own printer?
Yes. In Print, choose Booklet. Pages go two to a sheet in folding order, and the dialog counts the sheets. Print double-sided, flipping on the short edge, then fold and staple down the middle.
Is the CMYK PDF colour-managed?
No. CMYK is an uncalibrated conversion with no ICC profile, and the file is not PDF/X. It is fine for proofs and many digital presses. For exact colour, send the RGB file and let the print shop convert it, and ask for a proof either way.
How much bleed do I need?
The print presets use 3 mm or 0.125 in, which is what most printers ask for. Bleed only works if the art bleeds: run anything that touches the edge past the trim line.
Do GIF exports have a watermark?
On the free plan, GIF and video exports carry a small PopCraft watermark. The Creator and Studio plans export without it.
THE MANUAL, FOR THE DETAILS
KAPOW! YOUR TURN.
Pages, inks, halftones and a print-ready booklet. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.