Video

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After the hundreds of hours spent living and imagining the world of Stick-N-Stone National Forest and creating the final artwork for the comics in a traditional 17" x 22" pen and ink format . Each page is scanned into the computer, then colored at original 17" x 22" size with Photoshop. The pages are reduced to the 10" tall comic page size and are jam packed with lots of detail as the files are completed for the printer. Commerce Printing takes the digital art  and creates a metal plate for the printing press to use to apply the ink to the paper as it passes through. The 'Plate' machine creates metal plates from the digital artwork that is put on the sheet fed press around large rubber drums in each of the 4 ink stations and tightened in place. When the printing press starts, the inked plate transfers the image onto the paper as it passes through all 4 ink sections, one after the other to create the beautiful, vibrant, detailed color images that help visually tell the Ranger Ralph series story. Printer's call it cmyk color, an abbreviation for the 4 color process: c-cyan, m-magenta, y-yellow and k-black used in the 4-color printing process. The Ranger Ralph front and back cover for comic #1 and #5 are seen in the video, but the paper is folded and there are more pages that we don't see that will fill the whole plate when printing on the sheet fed press you will see in the next video below.

After the large 2-sided printed sheets from the offset printing press are dried, they are moved to a machine called the 'Gate Folder' to be folded down to 1/4 their original size they were on the printing press. After the  sheets and cover are folded to the right size, they are moved over to a machine called a 'Stitcher'. The folded sheets are placed in order in the pockets on top of the stitcher. The machine pulls the sheets down individually onto a chain below the pockets where they drop in order creating the 24 pages plus cover of each comic book. They progress through the 'stitching' portion of the machine where two staples are placed in the spine of each book. It continues up the ramp and into a 3-sided cutter where it is trimmed, then stacked and counted.  The finished set of high quality comics are placed in a beautiful Ranger Ralph padded 10" x 13" white envelope and mailed directly to you with a FREE prize, a THANK YOU and a big smile :)