Secret Mac Superpowers (2)

”For prepress, one of the biggest advantages of the Adobe suite is its ability to export PDFs with different printer settings,” says Grazzini. “You can save all your export settings for crops, resolution, down-sampling, and so on. We’ve even sent our settings out of house, so someone can send us PDF files made on their machines.”

CS3 for Comics

Working with CS3 on the Mac has built-in advantages, Grazzini observes. “With OS X, there’s not all this concern about ‘do you have the right service pack, and which version of the OS are you running?’ There’s a lot of continuity from version to version, and the environment is pretty much the same. If a person’s using a Mac, you know you’re speaking the same language.”

Grazzini’s department acts as the nerve center of the production process. The bulk of the artwork is done by outside contractors — artists, letterers, and colorists — and flows in and out of Dark Horse, mostly via FTP, as needed. The digital art group manages the workflow, handling everything from pencil sketches to finished color pages to transparencies of cover art.

The Adobe suite helps manage these different workflows as well, says Grazzini: “The palettes are relatively the same in each program, the key commands are the same, you can sync color preferences, and so on. We’re making changes to the pages all the time, and that consistency really helps. We’ve started to cross-train the departments, so they can make changes in the originating program if they need to.”

Color Done Right

Grazzini and crew rely on the Mac’s color capabilities to produce accurate proofs of the finished color pages. The Dark Horse editorial department needs to see proofs that reflect the printed color as closely as possible. And the prepress department requires color-corrected proofs so the printer has a clear idea of what the final pages should look like. “As a result,” says Grazzini, “everybody’s invested in color management.”

The group profiles its Apple Cinema Displays and Epson large-format printers with X-Rite EyeOne spectrophotometers and ProfileMaker Pro software. “When we use the profiles with the Mac’s ColorSync color management system, we can be sure that whether we’re viewing onscreen or printed proofs, everything will look the same,” Grazzini says.

But the benefits of ColorSync don’t stop at Dark Horse’s door. “We get press profiles from our printers,” says Grazzini. “One in China, for instance, has profiled their press with our paper. So if we’re working on a book that we know will be printed there, we can set up our profiling and proofing to match that press. Then we can do soft proofing onscreen and hard proofing on our Epsons, all in that same color space.”

Saving and Serving

After a comic is sent off to the printers, all the digital material is archived to Dark Horse’s servers: 18 Xserves and five Xserve RAIDs, for a total of 50 terabytes of storage. According to System Administrator Shawn Welter, the new, digitally produced material gets archived automatically, while old books are scanned as needed — for example, when they’re published as a reissued collection.

”Everything we’ve done since 1992 is available on the servers,” says Welter. “Our Macintosh systems have made it possible to build an efficient and user-friendly network infrastructure, which gives our users access to all the resources they need. Thanks to the Xserve and Xserve RAID systems, users can access materials we have produced over the last 20 years — and everything is fully searchable using Apple’s Spotlight.”

The Dark Horse IT staff appreciates the network-friendly features of OS X — especially OS X Server’s OpenDirectory and Kerberos capabilities. “We’re able to leverage these tools to provide a centralized authentication system with single sign-on support to all our network resources,” Welter says. “This makes it possible to have remote home directories and centralized management of laptops.”

With this setup, adds IT Director Tom Kishel, each user’s primary workspace resides on the server and is accessed over the network. “That way, if someone’s system goes down, they can walk up to any other computer and start working,” Kishel explains. “Once they log on, all their files are there. It saves a lot of money and a lot of time. Plus we don’t have to install backup software on all 125 workstations and back them up separately.”

From head office to design studio to server room, the Mac’s many advantages have made die-hard supporters of the Dark Horse staff, letting them turn their attention onward and upward to new creative challenges. “We do have a couple of Windows PCs,” says Kishel, “but if we had more, we would never be able to maintain this number of workstations and servers with only three IT people. We’re spoiled by the luxury of being an all-Mac shop!”

Secret Mac Superpowers

Dark Horse Comics:
Secret Mac Superpowers

By Jake Widman

These days, comics and graphic novels are practically defined by creative experimentation. Over the past two decades, the genre has exploded with thousands of titles featuring sophisticated artwork and nuanced story lines.

But at Dark Horse Comics, some of the most interesting developments are behind the scenes, in the way comics are created and produced. Dark Horse’s innovations in graphics production, prepress, and data management have helped them grow into the largest independent publisher of graphic novels and comics, with retail sales of more than $50 million in 2007.

The source of the company’s superpowers? A network of nearly 150 Macs serving every department, including a complete in-house graphics and prepress operation.
Hellboy

Dark Horse publishes around 30 titles each month from their Milwaukie, Oregon headquarters, from original stories to licensed series like Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The company has also expanded into film and television production, producing blockbusters from 1994’s The Mask to this summer’s Hellboy II, as well as branching out into merchandise sales, non-graphic novels, and comics-related nonfiction.

Macs have been Dark Horse’s computer of choice for more than 20 years. “For people who had no experience with computers, Macs were just easier to learn and use,” says founder and President Mike Richardson. “And once we had the Macs, we began exploring other ways we could use them.”
Many Paths to Production

The 120 desktop Macs and 25 Mac laptops at Dark Horse get a workout in every department, starting with the editorial group. Production for a new comic begins here, whether it’s a pitch from an outside creator or an internally generated book idea. Once the idea gets the go-ahead, a script is written and sent to the chosen artist, who uses pencils to create rough layouts and initial drawings. After the rough layouts are approved, work on the final art begins.

Before computers, comics creation followed a set course, from pencils to ink to lettering to coloring. But in the digital age, a comic can take any of several paths to production. For example, Dark Horse Design Director Cary Grazzini explains, the letterer might get scans of the final pencils at the same time as the inker and load them into Illustrator to add the words. In that case, the design crew is responsible for merging the Illustrator files with the rest of the page when they come back. Then they send the completed black-and-white pages to the colorist, who is likely working in Adobe Photoshop.

Another possibility is that the pencils don’t get inked at all. Currently, a popular artistic style is to add the color right to the pencils. In that case, Dark Horse is responsible for merging the lettering with the color pages to create final artwork on the Mac.
Service with a Mac

Today’s streamlined, Mac-based print production workflow is a far cry from the way comics were published when Richardson established Dark Horse in 1986. Back then, panels were hand-drawn, inked, lettered, then sent to outside vendors for coloring. But quality at these external shops was uncertain. Meanwhile, new possibilities for desktop publishing were emerging.

So in 1989 Richardson decided to bring Dark Horse’s color production entirely in-house, something no other comics publisher was doing. “We were way ahead of the curve in our use of computers in our business,” he says. “From that point on, we started building our own service bureau.”

That in-house service bureau has grown to include 21 people under the supervision of Design Director Grazzini, all working on Macs: a mixture of Mac Pros and Power Mac G5 towers, most with Apple Cinema Displays.

The design department is broken into three groups, all using various components of Adobe Creative Suite 3. The graphic design group relies on InDesign to produce internally generated elements such as tables of contents, credits, and letters columns. The digital art team assembles each title’s interior pages using Photoshop and Illustrator. And the prepress group uses all three programs, plus Adobe Acrobat Professional, to put the entire book together and generate PDF files to send to the printer.

to be continued....

Okami (for Wii)

Maybe you want buy Okami before read this article.

Age hasn't diminished the beauty of this modern classic.

According GameSpot, this games is awesome, like their review below:

There's a blissful moment in the first hour of Okami, one that is repeated several times throughout the game's epic tale: Tasked with restoring an afflicted sapling to its former beauty, you bring it to life with a swirl of your virtual paintbrush. The sapling bursts with light, a melody of soft pink flowers blooms on its young branches, and lush green meadows breathlessly sweep away the cursed countryside, returning vitality to the diseased landscape. It's a moment that stays with you, and it represents the sheer joy of playing Okami. Few games exude such grace and visual prowess, though you shouldn't assume that its beauty is superficial. Here is a case where stunning graphics, charming characters, and a dreamy, mythical adventure are united into a cohesive, powerful title that simply must be played. If for some reason you didn't catch it in 2006 on the PlayStation 2, you should do so now, posthaste.

Okami's story is straightforward, but it draws you easily into its world of mythical beasts and sake-swilling charlatans by way of smart, funny dialogue and a number of charming characters to chuckle at. As the goddess Amaterasu, who has been reborn in the body of a white wolf, you work to rid Nippon of the evil eight-headed serpent called Orochi and renew the lands it has poisoned. Ammy is a silent heroine, but that's just fine, since your energetic, buglike companion Issun does plenty of talking for the both of you. There is a lot of dialogue to sift through, and since the characters just speak a chirpy brand of gibberish, you'll be doing a good bit of reading. You can skip past it and get right back into the action if you so desire. If you did this, however, you'd be missing out on many of Okami's humorous exchanges, such as those with a heavyset sparrow that can only be described as the Godfather's avian counterpart.

You will notice right away that visually speaking, Okami resembles no other game that has come before it: It looks like a watercolor painting come to life. Landscapes are drawn with broad strokes and colors have a slightly muted tone, as if the paint has seeped a bit into the canvas. In locations like Kamiki Village, rose-hued blossoms waft past, while the subdued greens and grays of cursed zones make those areas feel stifled and foreboding. As Amaterasu, you leave a small trail of grass blades and flower petals behind you, which signifies the brilliance you seek to restore. Fans of the PlayStation 2 version may notice that the canvas filter in the Wii iteration is less noticeable, though it hasn't been removed entirely. Yet on a widescreen, high-definition display, Okami is dazzling, so while some may prefer the PS2's slightly softer look, the game's vistas are even more magnificent on the Wii. There are few instances in games that compare to watching a tree that was near death bloom before your eyes, or watching Amaterasu's lithe form sprint across the green terrain. The frame rate slows a bit here and there, and there are some brief loading times when you cross into new areas, but they are insignificant nitpicks that don't hinder the game's artistry.

That visual beauty is matched by a stupendous sound design that enhances the onscreen events and makes Okami a feast for the senses. Battles are signaled by the thumping of drums and the whistle of a wooden flute. The spread of petals and leaves is accompanied by the strums of harps. When you talk with some of the more quirky characters, bassoon and clarinet riffs complement their rants. The emotional range of the soundtrack parallels the pervading sentiment in any given scene or battle, so while it's easy to heap praise on the unique visual style, the soundtrack and sound effects are equally extraordinary.

Not that Okami is simply a work of art meant to be hung on a wall and admired from a distance. It's also a long adventure game with some interesting gameplay mechanics that are woven into the production values so well that one aspect couldn't thrive without the other. You'll travel from one end of Nippon to the other, speaking with all sorts of eccentrics and taking on a number of quests. Often, you'll need to fight, though much of the time, you can simply avoid enemy encounters, which are represented on the screen by floating scrolls and miniature haunted houses. When you do battle, you'll face any number of surreal foes, from flying fish to drum-beating demons, along with a few imposing-looking boss creatures. You can equip a number of different weapons, and you'll generally have primary and secondary attacks available to you. Combat is fun and moves along quickly, and it looks terrific.

The standard combat controls take some time to get used to. Weapons like the life beads work remarkably well, doing plenty of damage with a forward flick of the Wii Remote. Standard reflectors, on the other hand, may cause you frustration at first, because you can't string attacks together simply by incessantly flinging your remote forward and back. Rather, you need to time subsequent attacks, or your thrusts won't respond as you'd expect. This is one area where the PlayStation 2 version has the upper hand. Certain weapons simply aren't suited to be your primary attack in the Wii version, since the timing of your slicing and dicing is tough to get a handle on. Another area that needs improvement is dodging. On the Wii, you yank the Nunchuk in the direction you want to tumble. The problem is that Ammy may or may not dodge in that direction. In Okami, this isn't a big problem; combat is easy, so you'll rarely need to dodge. In fact, you may even forget you have the option in the first place. Nevertheless, dodging is troublesome, and folks who want to use Infinity Judge or Tsumugari as their primary weapons will need to adjust to picky motion controls.

On the flipside, the Wii controls shine brightly in regards to the celestial brush. You can pull out the brush at any time and use it to slash through demons, create gusts of wind, draw bombs, create impromptu waterspouts, and perform all sorts of sundry tasks. This is Okami's main gameplay conceit, and it's woven impeccably throughout the game, where it's utilized in battles, puzzle sequences, and even some cute minigames. On the PS2, you used an analog stick to draw the necessary rune; on the Wii, of course, you use the remote. For the most part, this works wonderfully. Interacting with the celestial brush in this manner is incredibly pleasing, since you literally draw the motions onto the screen. It also improves the pace of the game, because you can scrawl at a faster rate. Using the remote in this manner has its foibles, particularly when you need to draw a straight line. However, ineffective scrawling can be easily corrected with a second try and a careful hand.

All in all, the motion controls give the Wii version a slight advantage, by greatly enhancing the brush aspect of Okami while contributing to some minor flaws in basic combat. But you'll also be accomplishing a variety of other tasks on your travels, and these peripheral elements are arguably what make the game so exceptional. You'll need to earn praise if you wish to increase your total health or the amount of ink your brush will hold. To do so, you can bring a withered tree back to life, which always produces a lovely flourish of colors and sonic textures. Feeding various animals you encounter will also benefit you. Different fauna require different types of food, but assuming you have what your furry friends prefer, you'll be rewarded with your due praise and a gentle cutscene showing your follower enjoying his morsel.

These elements all coalesce into a completely engaging experience that's almost impossible to walk away from. You'll hurtle down a river at breakneck speed on a runaway log, and slow it by drawing makeshift vines with the celestial brush. You'll search for hidden treasure in a sunken ship, siphon flames from a fiery foe to defeat an icy one, and get an eight-headed monstrosity drunk with holy sake. None of these tasks are very challenging, but the variety of gameplay, and the stylishness with which it's presented, will push you forward--and just when you think you've reached the end, there's more to the saga. It will take most speedy players a minimum of 30 hours to gun through Okami, though you'll probably be inclined to savor the experience, digging up every hidden clover and finding all of the game's many secrets and treasures.

Age isn't kind to many games, but with the addition of motion controls for the celestial brush and support for widescreen and progressive scan displays, Okami has been updated enough to make it even more relevant today than it was in 2006. At a time when the majority of action games are more focused on destruction than renewal, this is an elegant and poignant reminder that some of the most meaningful experiences in games are the ones that enrich and rejuvenate us.

Source from GameSpot and review written by Kevin VanOrd.