Take any strip you want, add some colour to it and mail it to me and I'll put it up at the site.
It doesn't matter if you are a Photoshop master , a TVPaint pro or just a happy new beginner in MSPaint. All contributions are welcome.
However, I'll be glad if you more or less follow these little guidelines..
Please start with the BIG strip, the print-size format. When you're done with it, use your paint progs "resample" function and shrink it down to 640x231 which is the (most common) format of the smaller strips. Most programs have a resample function built in. Please avoid the "resize" function, which of course works too, but doesn't look nice.
Don't rename the filenames. Please? Default names for the small ones are "SO_smXXX.XXX" and the print-sized ones are named "SabOnlineXXX.xxx" Replace the first two or three x:es with the strip number. The last three x:es are the filename extension. Shouldn't be so hard, eh?
File formats and their extensions:
Windows bitmap (extension .bmp) is out of the question. Those files are way too large. Too bad microsoft!
Compuserve Gif (extension .gif) is probably the most common image format. Too bad it has a big drawback: It only supports 256 colors and that's not much. However, if you are one of these who just use you paint programs "fill" function (example) you can use gif without problem. But I still recommend you to use the next format.
JPEG (extension .jpg) has support for 16+ millions of colours, and the file sizes are very small. Now there's another drawback: JPG uses "lossy compression". That means not all image data is stored in the file, causing the image to be a little bit blurry. Not much, and it's very hard too see. If you don't believe me, load a nice picture, save it as a JPG, load it again, save it again ,load it again, save it again , and after a while your once so nice picture is a real ugly one! I still recommend most people to use JPEG. Example
Portable Network Graphics (extension .png) are for those die-hard colorists who can't stand the lossyness of JPEG. PNG files are bigger than JPEGS ,but the quality is perfect. Grosse uses JPG for the small and PNG for the big ones. Example. (it's a big one).
AQ:s (asked questions)
-I want to color strip XXX. How can I know that not someone else is working on the same strip?
A while I was thinking of starting some kind of newsletter for this kind of chat, but I was too lazy. Until I (or someone else) will do that, you can mail each other. Mail addresses to most of the colorists can be found on the about page.
-I just want to see the colored strips. Can't you give a hint on the index page if they're colored or not?
Ehmm.. this site was very messy until I got here at www.sabrinonline2k.com. Now I have space, but no time to fix that (and I'm probably too lazy too). Maybe one day, or maybe someone with a fast connection can fix this?
-I click on a colored strip, but the big one behind is in B/W or is missing. Why?
Some people just colored the small one, and in Grosses case the web space went full quite often, and now I can't reach him.. :P
I have ten megs of colored strips. I'll mail'em NOW!
Ack! Arghh! Please don't. My modem is steam powered. I'll talk to Keith the server owner. I hope he can make some kind of login for you.
-What does Eric say about this?
He says:
"I will make no statements positive or negative to their quality, except to say that the 'official' incarnation of the comic is black and white, as that is how it was created, and intended to be viewed. The only official color comic strip thus far is the special edition 100th comic strip."