
Weirdly credible watercolor test of a comic page from
Candle Arc #1 (image has slightly cleaned-up lineart as I wasn't sure this brand of paper was going to work out so why sink in more effort before the test).
I'm annoyed that I cannot for the life of me find a
US-based (as a USAn) color
digest size (5.5"x8.5") zine/booklet/comic printer that handles
print on demand. I absolutely cannot commit to physical fulfillment as a business model even as a side hustle (health); but at-home color printers that do anything larger than US letter (8.5"x11") or MAYBE A4 are extortionately expensive, and I am never making back any money sunk into this.
I need to resign myself to hand-watercoloring like THREE copies for the very few interested friend/family people (and myself) and give up on trying to make
physical color copies available because quite literally the ROI makes zero sense and I have orchestration homework waiting.
Why digest? Because I've found paper (...for now) I can print onto with my laser printer (which only goes up to US letter/A4) and then
do watercolor on top of without (a) jamming my printer because it's too thick (b) destroying the paper once I do even a gentle wash because it's too thin.
Even if I could produce
color comic zines at home, however, the bottleneck remains that I absolutely can't do physical fulfillment on a regular/reliable business, and I am never going to sell enough indie/hobbyist comics to justify HIRING someone to handle fulfillment, so this ends here. :p
(If anyone has leads on print on demand printers that work well for this kind of thing, I'm all ears, although I'm not optimistic. This is weirdly difficult to Google possibilities for as well.)