Call for Submissions
Gurukitty Studios is currently accepting submissions for our third (so far Un-named)  annual anthology project.

How it Works
If this is your first time submitting to a Gurukitty Studios anthology project, please, make sure you read all the information.
How this works is web friendly versions of completed stories are sent via email (preferably in zip folders) to our submissions department.
The stories are read several times and chosen by the Gurukitty team, winning stories are notified via email.
If your submission is accepted you will be asked to send your print version files to Gurukitty Studios so we can put the book together as well as signed agreements.
You are required to remain available through email for any corrections until the book is in print. Once the book is proofed the artists free copy will be ordered and shipped to the contributors. After that, artists are given the opportunity to purchase additional copies at any time at a wholesale.
We don’t pay artists or do profit sharing as this is a communal project and not publishing works for people.  Also, if we were to do profit sharing, artists would probably not see any money for years as we would need to make back our investments first.   Rather, by offering artists wholesale you would get 100% of the profits from your own sales at Conventions or your online shops. This allows you to get immediate profits and no large financial investments as we don’t charge artists any publication fees.

Submitting to anthologies gives artists a chance to be published even if they don’t have a large volume or work or they are just building a portfolio. It looks really good to potential publishers to see your finished work in print.

Theme: Sci-fi
This theme is very wide open because Sci-fi covers a huge range of things from medical experiments to full out space adventures so use your imagination.  “Sci-fi” is Science Fiction, so anything is possible.

The theme is for cohesiveness of the books contents and should be used as inspiration and as a basic concept. We encourage artists and writers to be loose and free with your ideas and to just keep the theme in mind for the overall feel of your story.
If you are unsure of your ideas cohesiveness with our current theme, feel free to contact us.

Guidelines
We will be accepting 3-21 page, b&w/greyscale complete short stories.  Stories must have an odd number of pages.
Your files must conform to the technical specifications, (Download template) and sent as a TIFF, in greyscale mode.  TIFF (LZW compressions, IBM compatible) for final print version, JPEG for preview.
Your files must conform with the template Final page size should be have a 4.5″x7″ Live area and the trim should be 5″x7.5″ with the total page size being 5.5″X7.75″
Stories will be juried based on layouts, storytelling, writing, theme, art as well as other technical aesthetic aspects.
Pages must be fully lettered and ready to print, we won’t be editing your artwork or pages.
Deadline for completed entries is July 31, 2013 (it’ll come faster than you think)

Restrictions
While this book is not going to be aimed at children, we do require a certain level of decency.
Nudity, swearing and adult situations are allowed, however blatant pornography and graphic sexual imagery is not.

Stories included in the anthology should be complete short stories, not chapters or sections of existing stories. If you have such a story and the plot and characters develop and stand alone without the need to reference its parent story, this may be ok. Please email us if you have any questions about this kind of situation.
Copyright is another issue, we will not accept any stories that contain copyrighted or trademarked logos, characters, images or fonts.

Jury process
If you have submitted to our previous anthologies you should know that with each new anthology
we will be jurying more and more strictly, on all aspects of comics. While we may have looked past some minor technical imperfections in the past, they will have more weight in this and other anthologies to come.
This should help create challenges for creators that like to submit every year.

Compensation
Each story will receive one free copy of the final published book and be able to purchase additional books at wholesale while the book remains in print.

Submissions
To submit to this anthology please send a JPG preview of all pages in a ZIP folder to submissions@gurukitty.com
(Please do not send us scripts)

Additional notes:

This anthology is going to be 5.5″X7.75″, perfect bound, in black and white with a full colour cover.

Teams or partnerships are welcome, however  only one artists copy per story. You may submit as many comics as you like but only be featured once. You will be required to sign a contract before your story will be printed (sample below).

Resources
lettering tutorial
page template (psd)
Blambot fonts
Sample Contract from 2012 anthology

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Gurukitty Studios does Call For Artists on occasion and one thing that often seems to be just an afterthought or not even a thought in some cases is the talk bubbles, or balloons or whatever you call them. Believe it or not, your bubbles may mean the difference between acceptance and rejection when submitting to Anthologies and other publishing methods.

In our past Anthologies, we have indeed rejected stories that had illegible bubbles and accepted some with less than desirable bubbles, but in the future, we are going to be more and more strict in our selection process so we thought to help prepare potential submitters we would put a tutorial up on our own site for quick information and reference.

First of all, there are many different ways to balloon and letter a comic, whether it be digitally or traditionally. At Gurukitty Studios, we are both traditional artists and often traditional letterers, a computer to us is usually just to scan and put books together, not for art. We have done digital lettering and ballooning, as well as hand lettering, but you can also do a combo of both (which is good if you have bad wrists). In some stories we have done penciled lettering to get the appropriate balloon size to prepare for digital lettering.

Because Gurukitty Studios is a English speaking duo, we are going to do an English style balloon  which is different from balloons you see in Manga (Asian Style) comics. English balloons are horizontal, like English writing, while Japanese is written vertical, so the balloons are vertical.  We often see Manga styled artists trying to fit English in Japanese style balloons, which creates untidy hyphens. It is important to use the right kind of balloon for the right language.
*In the future, Gurukitty Studios will not accept English in Asian style balloons, we dislike hyphens.

Using the right kind of balloons for the right language makes a huge difference.

So that would be point number 1, I know some anime purests will complain that its not real animes without the vertical balloons, but thats B.S. English translated Manga have vertical balloons because they were originally Japanese, and you cant change all the balloons because they are integrated into the art. We excuse this in translated comics because they are translated. If they are written in English to begin with, then they are English Mangas and should have English Balloons.

So the next point to go over, is balloon crowding, your text in your balloons should have space around the text, so that the text floats comfortably inside the balloon, without being cramped in. You can achieve this easily by following 1 simple rule, text first, balloon after.  A general rule is you should be able to fit an invisible ”W” on all four sides of the dialog.

When you are laying out yor text for your balloons you should be writing it out in a diamond shape, this will make it fit in a round balloon easily.  See my rather crude,  blurry cellphone photo, I scribbled a diamond overtop after I roughed my text in so that you could see how it fits.

Sorry, bad photo

If you are doing balloons traditionally but digital lettering, you only need to roughly scribble in the text at the right size to get the balloon proper shape and size when you scan your pages. (This is what I’m doing in the sample image which is why the text isn’t so tidy, if this was going to be really hand lettered, my text would be pretty.)

Once you have your text in, you can sketch out the shape of your balloon after. This ensures that your balloon will be big enough to comfortably fit around the text.

I’ve sketched around balloon around my text now.

Ideally when you have done your thumbnails for your pages, you would have included space for text balloons, so if you have a panel with a large amount of text, you could put that in before sketching your page if need be. Don’t be afraid of covering your artwork, in fact, it wont even be a concern if you thumbnail properly. I’ve never been afraid of covering art though, as you can see, I put my balloon a little over her face, you can still make out whats happening, her expression is there, so it’s all good.

From there, if you are hand lettering, you’d want to start in with a pen, ink all your text first. Remember when you are lettering to not just write like you normally would, you want each letter to look like it’s brothers. What I mean is, your e’s should look the same, and your N’s and all other letters should look the same each time you write them, treat it like you are drawing each letter, not writing words.

If you are lettering on the computer and just want the balloons done traditionally, then you can ink the balloon now. I prefer hand drawn balloons with hand drawn art, I found that digital balloons on traditional art doesn’t look quite right and I regret doing it in the past.

I love these pens

For inking comics I usually have a variety of pens. If I want a more expressive flowing look, i’ll use a brush pen (Pentel Pocket Brush), but if I want more clean precise work, I use refillable Copic Multiliners. Often, even if using a brush for the art I will use the technical pans for the balloons anyway (unless I’m really going for some expressive craziness).

Balloon inked! YAY, but so sloppy!

So there, any mistakes you make can be cleaned up with a little white paint. Especially if you muck it up more in the process of inking your art, which I often do!

White gouache, copic Opaque white or other opaque white inks work well with a small watercolour brush (just a cheapy brush will do)

From there, you can scan your art, and add text in digitally.

Those are some really rough basics for lettering, I would suggest googling, as there are a lot of tutorials out there for lettering by more experienced people than me. My main advice is to treat your balloons and dialog as part of your panels and art, not as just something you add on.

On another side note, the blue pencil is a non photo blue pencil called COL-ERASE. I use those because when I scan my comic pages in black and white (BITMAP), the non photo blue will not scan, and I don’t have to erase all my sketches, roughed text and scribbles.  Time saving tip, but not for everyone.

If you have concerns or questions, feel free to contact us.

Today we are going to go over the basics of lettering for comics.

First you will need some tools, in this first image we have some supplies:

1. Triangle straight edge
2. Erasing Shield
3. A mechanical non Photo Blue Pencil (COLERASE), or any mechanical pencil as long as you press lightly
4. Ames Lettering Guide
5. A comic page, roughly sketched (or a blank comic page with detailed layouts off camera showing where dialog will go)

Samples of Supplies

The Ames Lettering guide is somewhat of a crazy looking tool if you don’t know what it’s for, and some people seem to think it’s some magical tool that will actually make your letters. The truth of the Ames guide is that it actually just makes perfectly uniform lines, the lettering is then easier to get uniform because your lines are uniform, and you can make the line height differ by changing the settings on the guide.  I will explain; the Ames Guide has a little wheel in the center that turns (See Fig 2).

Fig 2

There is a notch on the bottom  of the guide, and on the wheel is a series of numbers from 2-10.  By turning the wheel, and lining up the numbers with the notch you can change the height of your lines.

The Guide doesn’t only do the lines for your text, it will do the space BETWEEN the lines as well, and when you turn the dial to change your line height, it automatically adjusts the space between your line proportionally. I think a demo is in order…

You’ll want to line the edge of the Triangle Straight edge against one of the guide lines (FIG 3) on your comic board. I recommend the lines and not the actual edge of the paper because paper can be cut crooked, but your are using the lines to draw your comics in so it’s best your text lines up with that.

FIG 3

The triangle straight edge gives you and edge to drag the Ames guide along to draw your lettering lines, so on top of that, you’ll want to plop your Ames guide (You’ll be wishing you have 4 hands in a minute).

FIG 4 Plop your ames guide right on that edge. The triangles rock because the glide is smooooth

So, now you have a clear look at that guide, you’ll see several rows of holes, this is why the mechanical pencils are recommended, they are too tiny for a fat little traditional tip of a wood pencil.  The row of holes we are going to use is the 3rd from the top, the one with evenly spaced holes.

You want to start on the right hand side, because if you notice, it is the highest point, so it will be the top of the first line. So starting point, far right, first hole, go ahead and stick your pencil in there, and just drag the guide along the ruler and make your first line.

You’re not going to want to move to the next hole to do your next line though, you’ll want to skip a hole, draw a line, dont skip a hole, draw a line, skip a hole, then no skip…. (see fig 5)

FIG 5 Yellow dots indicate holes to use to get the effect shown on the top. The space between the lines needs to be smaller, so you skip a line for a wider space where your text will go.

Using this pattern, it creates a line height for letters to go, and the space between the lines is exactly half the height of the line, giving you an even clean space to letter. I apologize as that is super hard to explain in words, just look at the yellow dots I put on Fig 5, it shows which holes to use.

Something you need to figure out is how many lines you need to make, better to make too many than too few, so you might need to move your triangle down, line your ames guide back up (line the top hole with your last drawn line) and continue on. Practice practice practice.

In the end you should have something kind of like this (Fig 6)

FIG 6

Thats that, you’ve used the Ames Lettering guide. From this point you’ll want to add your text. There is a whole lot of rules around making your text all professional and making balloons clean and properly shaped, but we’ll have another tutorial to explain all that.

Hope this was helpful. If you search the Ames guide on Youtube you can find videos of it in action and other peoples methods for using different holes and things.

The Ames guide is a drafting tool, so there are lots of other function to it you can learn and you can find it in the drafting area of an art store or in any technical supply store. Same with the erasing sheild.

The erasing Shield is very helpful for corrections because you can erase between the lines, without erasing the lines themselves.

HANDY!

We’ve had many people comment on the fact that they missed our call for artists for our anthologies. So we decided to create this sign up form for a mailing list.

To subscribe, just add your email here.

This list is for Call for Artists only and you will not receive any updates on any other aspects of Gurukitty Studios. If you want to get Quarterly updates on all aspects of our work, you can sign up for our Gurukitty Studios Newsletter.

Once Upon a Time…

Miss your chance to submit? Never miss another call for artists and sign up for our call for artists mailing list 

Once Upon a Time…
$15.00 (Pre-order)
Manga Sized Trade Paperback
Black & White
Page Count: 268

Cover by L.M. Silva

Stories & Artists:

Dream of Angus By Patrick McEvoy & O. Pelàez
Maria Makiling By Lindsy Silva & Aileen Balucanag
Lazon By Chev Kamie
Lindorm King By Michelle Silva
Godfather Death By Autumn Haynes
The Happy Prince By Bevan Thomas & Ksenia Kozhevnikova
The Snow Child By Owen Heitmann & Sarah Milne
The Evil Boyar’s Farmhand By Reetta Linjama
The Glass Mountain By Jen Overstreet
Biron, Bronin, and Borm: The Hulder’s Deal By Thomas Oman & John Oman
The Last Temptation of Hansel and Gretel By Troy minkowsky and line Olsson
Coyote Burns his Children By Donut
Lions Wings, Lions Bones By Jeri Weaver 
6 Reasons for Revenge By Jayleen Weaver
The Thieves and the Serpent By Chris Cirillo
Kaguya Hime By Timothy Nakayama, Sara Moodie and Jay Penn
Small Wars Of Inconsequential Beings By Jason Hart
Pumpkin Humpkin By Tammy Taylor
Warmth By Erica Fletcher
Momoteru by Becca T Hillburn

Artist Interviews:

Jason Hart (story and Variant Cover Artist)
Bevan Thomas
Jeri Weaver
Reetta Linjama
Michelle Silva (story and cover artists) (Includes images)
Jayleen Weaver (Includes images)
Table Flip Studios
Patrick Mcevoy 

Sample Pages:

[Show as slideshow]

facebook page for  some sneak previews

We held our usual cover submission contest for the One Upon a Time Anthology cover, we got one wrap around cover and two regular cover submissions. We decided against a public vote this time as last time it ended up just being a popularity contest to see who could send the most friends over. Having said that, feel free to comment on this post and share your thoughts about each cover possibility.

Here are the submissions

WINNER - Wrap around Submission by L.M. Silva

FUTURE VARIANT COVER – Front Cover Submission by Jason Hart

Front Cover Submission by LeEtta Schmidt

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED

Once Upon a Time…

There was a little anthology project, where lots of different artists put their work together to make a graphic novel.  But there was a problem, their little anthology didn’t have a cover. This is sad news for a book, it’s like a human with no face.

So, the creators of the Anthology decided there would be a great competition in the land and that’s how they would choose the cover.

Along came the guidelines:

Anyone can enter, even if you didn’t  submit or get accepted  to the anthology.  You can also submit as many as you like.

Leave appropriate room for a title graphic/ Logo

Obviously, no copyrighted characters, designs or logos.

Read the original anthology submission information to get an idea of what the anthology will contain
Please avoid the cliche fairytale imagery from Aesop’s Fables and the like, the entries are from all over the world and we have some really varied folk tale ideas and we don’t want people to think they will be seeing the common classics in this book, because they won’t.

Must be in full colour, traditional or Digital, doesn’t matter. Remember it’s the cover to the book, and people judge a book by its cover(believe it or not), so it should be attractive and enticing.

The finished graphic novel will have a final size of 5.5″X7.75″, this is commonly referred to as “Manga” sized books

The accepted entry will be required to sign the same contract as other participating artists.

Your file must conform with the template (Download template)

PNG or TIFF (LZW compresssions, IBM compatible)

Submissions must be received by April 30,2012  SUBMISSIONS NOW CLOSED!
please send a JPG preview to submissions@gurukitty.com

The winning cover artist will receive 1 free copy of the Anthology, and be able to buy future issues at Artist Pricing + sh.

Other than that, just a few things to say to tie up any unforeseen complications/issues:

If we do not feel that any of the submissions are appropriate to the anthology we will not pick a winner and go with our “Plan B”.

We will be holding some public voting, however the public votes are not the only factor. To be frank and Honest, they tend to be more popularity contests than legitimate choices, and we want the best cover, not the most popular artist who has more friends to tell about the voting.

As this anthology is more a collaborative artist project, artists do not receive a share of profits sold by other artists or Gurukitty studios sales. If you wish to gain some financial benefits for yourself you need to sell your own copies of the book and you will keep 100% of the profits of your own sales. However, Gurukitty Studios will promote the locations where artists are selling this anthology as well as artists online shops. Gurukitty Studios will cover all costs and labor for preparing the book for publication apart for individual comic submissions which need to be submitted in compliance to the technical specifications.

Have you gotten your Ghost Tales copy in the mail or at a convention? Send us your shots of you with your copy of Ghost Tales for us to post on our site and we’ll send you a coupon code for the Gurukitty Shop.

[Show as slideshow]

SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED

“Once Upon a Time…” is our second Anthology, and you guessed right, it’s going to be a folk/Fairy Tale themed anthology.
If you participated in the Ghost Tales anthology, be aware that things are going to be slightly different this time round, so don’t assume anything at the moment.

The Theme:
The theme for “Once upon a time…” is obviously Fairy and Folk Tales. We chose this because when we did a public poll and it was one of the ones people voted most that they wanted to participate in, after ghost stories.

Here is the challenge though, we are all familiar with the mainstream typical stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding hood, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the other popular classics. They have been done over and over again and unless you have some masterfully twisted version of the very well known stories, there is no point in doing them again.

We want you to dig into lesser known or culturally relevant folk stories from various cultures from all over the world. We want folk stories from many different countries all in one book so people can see how different cultures influence the different types of story telling. You can tell a classic if you like, but you’d better tell it in a mind blowing way noone would ever predict or it’s not getting in this book.

Please be careful of copyright infringement and be sure you are taking the essence of the story and telling it in your own words. Also make sure the story is free from copyright (over 100 years old, public domain or author-less). Because these stories are often published, and re-told and published and re-published you need to make sure you are taking it from it’s original version and not someones adaption/publication.
Example, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is very different from the original story, if you used Disneys telling as your reference point, you are going to get yourself in legal trouble and us along with you. You will be required to sign a contract stating that you have researched this point and you will take sole responsibility for any infringements.

Specifications:
We are accepting 5-20 page completed short comics with the following specifications:
-Black and White (Greyscales/*Screentones[see note below])
-Your files must conform with the template (Download template)/Final page size should be have a 4.5″x7″ Live area and the trim should be 5″x7.5″ with the total page size being 5.5″X7.75″
- PNG or TIFF (LZW compresssions, IBM compatible)
-Pages must be fully lettered and ready to print, we wont be editing your artwork
- Rating will vary (G-18+), while we don’t want blatent pornography, we do know that fairy tales were originally targetted to adults and we do not intend to make this graphic novel safe for children. So we will be accepting stories that have the original contents (ie cannibalism, pregnancy, sexual references and violence) and references from the first editions. We aren’t looking for a pile of “Happily ever after” stories, but they are welcome as well.
Having said that, we will judge each story on a case by case basis, we will expect them to be tastefully or artfully done without making it pornography.

The finished graphic novel will have a final size of 5.5″X7.75″, this is commonly referred to as “Manga” sized books.

*Screentones are alright as long as you understand screentones in print and how they differ from the screen

Compensation:
As a participating artists you will be given 2 free copies of the completed book and will be offered future issues at wholesale +SH (“Artist Pricing” we will call it) for re-sale or gifting.
As this anthology is more a collaborative artist project, artists do not receive a share of profits sold by other artists or Gurukitty studios sales. If you wish to gain some financial benefits for yourself you need to sell your own copies of the book and you will keep 100% of the profits of your own sales. However, Gurukitty Studios will promote the locations where artists are selling this anthology as well as artists online shops. Gurukitty Studios will cover all costs and labor for preparing the book for publication apart for individual comic submissions which need to be submitted in compliance to the technical specifications.

Additional notes:
This anthology is going to be 5.5″X7.75″, perfect bound, in black and white with a full colour cover.
Teams or partnerships are welcome.
You may submit as many comics as you like but only be featured once.

Because we require you to sign a contract, you must be either over 18 years old, or have a legal guardian sign the contract if your submission is accepted.

 Submitting:
Deadline for Submissions is March 30, 2012
To submit to this anthology please send a JPG preview of all pages in a ZIP folder to submissions@gurukitty.com

If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post.

Also, if you are a writer in search of an artist or vice versa, or want some partnerships we have a forum for you connect and meet.