Comic Creator from MS Publisher New to Scribus

Previous topic - Next topic

rwoods35

Hello Everyone

Being on a forum like this is new to me. So first of all I hope i'm doing this right...
or i mean i hope this message is going in the right place.
But any way.
I am a comic book creator and I self publish. I have been using Microsoft Publisher to do this for the pass 6 or 7 years.
I have the same program i bought in 2010 and now for some reason its saying i don't have it anymore...
well anyway i was told Scribus is a publishing program and so i downloaded it. I already been using Open Office and I find
their programs to be very similar to Microsoft programs i'm already used to. So they weren't hard to figure out. So I kind of assumed that Scribus would be just like Publisher But it doesn't seem that way.

To get to the point...
Does anyone know how to set up pages in Scribus for a book/booklet, or more specifically for comics. Or Know of a tutorial I can watch?
I also might  be wording this wrong because when i search i get alot of pages showing how to create a comic with such programs but for what im looking for the pages are already made.and would like to know how to set up the pages in Scribus for a book or booklet that will be printed for a tangible copy.
Any help Id appreciate it.

Thank you. Have a blessed day


a.l.e

hi rwoods

welcome to scribus.

i don't think we have a tutorial for comics but this tutorial is a good starting point:

http://write.flossmanuals.net/scribus/hands-on/

i know that scribus has already been used in the past for comics (and i have helped people with a few details!) and, depending on your needs it will be a good tool for your or not... hard to say without knowing more details.

then have a look at this

http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,15.msg96.html#msg96

(i only skimmed through it, but seems to be an interesting starting point)

and then come back with more questions!

as far as i know, there is one important issue in scribus for some types of comics: we cannot produce pure black and white or grayscale PDFs. the fact that you always get all the plates, was an issue in the past but might be less of a problem with newer printing workflows. (afaik, it was more a cost issue rather than a technical one).
but i don't think MS Publisher can produce them either, so it's probably not a stopper for you.
(and it would be very nice if the scribus team could find a solution for this issue...)

p.s.: i'll try to take notes about this thread and -- at the end -- maybe produce a small tutorial...

GarryP

(I started writing this post before a.l.e's reply above was posted so it might contain some some repetition but I can't be bothered to re-write it.)

Welcome to the forum rwoods35.

You've posted your message in the right place. If you were asking about specifics then another area of the forum might have been more appropriate but as you have a general question and you're just starting with Scribus then "Beginner Talk" is the best place to start. All is good there. (It doesn't really matter where you post on the forum but it helps others looking for the same sort of information if the post is in the right place.)

OpenOffice and LibreOffice - essentially the same thing - try to give users the same sort of experience as they would get with MS Office so that's why they look very similar. Scribus, on the other hand, doesn't pretend to copy how other software works. Scribus does things the way it does because that's how the developers want it to work. Most of the things that you could do in Publisher can be done in Scribus but you might have to do them in a different way. It sounds like you have found this out already. This shouldn't be a big worry though as Scribus is easy to use, it just takes a bit of time and effort to get used to how it does things.

Now to get to your point...

Scribus is not set-up to create comics or any other particular type of document. There are some templates but they are really just to give people an idea of the sort of things they can make. This doesn't mean that Scribus cannot be used to create comics, it simply means that there are no tools/features that are specific to that sort of document. That's a good thing because it means that you don't have to try and use software that's created to make one sort of document to make another sort of document. In other words, you don't have to try and squeeze your workflow into another type of workflow with a lot of work-arounds.

Scribus is there to make any type of document you might want to make. Because of this you have full control of what you make but that also means that you have to put extra work into what you are doing.

As for comics specifically, Scribus can make them. See this experiment I posted a while ago: http://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,2064.0.html (my example isn't anything special but you can get the idea that it's possible, and quite a bit of fun too).

First you should learn how to use Scribus more generally. Either of these should help with that:
* https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Get_Started_with_Scribus
* http://write.flossmanuals.net/scribus/introduction/

It's worth taking the time to learn the basics before you jump in to making something specific. Once you have got the basics under your belt you can then look to see how you can make what you want to make. As far as I know there aren't any templates or tutorials on making comics with Scribus. I haven't looked very hard though so there might be some out there. If there are any then you could well find that they aren't really what you need anyway. Templates will be very specific to a certain type of comic and tutorials will probably not tell you how to make exactly what you want. You will find yourself forced into making things the way other people make them. Best to learn how to make what you want to make. Then you can make whatever you want.

Your next step will be to figure out what sort of format you want the comic to be. You need to think about page size and layout at the very start because Scribus can't automatically reshape layouts. You can change the page size and the layout manually but Scribus won't do it for you. This means that, for example, if you start with an A4 page size and then decide to change to, say, Letter, then you will have to manually adjust everything yourself. That could be a big job so it's best to make sure that things are correct from the start.

For layout it really depends on what sort of comic you'll be making. Do your pages have standard layouts? If so then it will be worth learning about the Scrapbook. The Scrapbook lets you save layout for use later without having to re-create them time and again. Layout is such a big subject that really depends on how you want your comic to look and, as each comic is individual, that's a wide-ranging area.

If you could post an example of how your comic looks - after being made in Publisher - then people will get some idea of what you're trying to achieve. It's always easier to figure out how to make something that already exists. Once people know what you're trying to achieve then you can ask more specific questions about how to do certain things.

I know I haven't given you much information but it's best that you learn the basics first before jumping in at the deep end. Hopefully I've given you enough general advice to get you started and you know what sort of thing you need to keep an eye out for. Apologies if I haven't given much specific advice but this is such a wide-ranging subject that it's difficult to give anything other than generalised help at this point.