To ensure smooth processing of your custom images print, we want to make clear how to prepare your files and check for common issues. Please run through this checklist
before sending your files to us.
☑ Make sure that your aspect ratio is appropriate for the size you are selecting!
⮡ Our dakimakura covers are 50cm in width and 150 or 160cm tall. Please be cognizant of this when drawing the images yourself or working with your artist. If you need to print at an unusual size, please contact us first for a quote.
☑ Be aware of the bleed areas!
⮡ Printing up to the edges on any material is a difficult process. To avoid having white borders surrounding your printed image, the cover is trimmed a cm or so away from the edge. This area, in printing terminology, is referred to as the bleed. If any character limbs are in the bleed, they will be cut off! Avoiding unnecessary loss of limbs is a simple task though, just ensure that your whole character is at least 2cm away from all edges.
☑ Colors painted on an RGB monitor ≠ colors reproducible in the CMYK printing process!
⮡ Each pixel in your monitor comprises of three subpixels: one red, one green, and one blue. Varying the brightness of the red, green, and blue subpixels allow your monitor to reproduce several billion colors. However, combining red, green, and blue does not work well for physical printing on materials. Instead, printing equipment typically uses what is known as a CMYK color model (for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key [black]). While the technical details get quite complex, what’s important to note is that CMYK is a smaller color space than RGB. Thus, not all colors that can be represented on your monitor can be replicated precisely in-print. This is especially noticeable if your image contains a lot of vibrant, bright colors.
“This all sounds very complicated, is there a one-stop template I can give to my artist?”
Yes! This file is the template we use internally for all of our projects. Its size is a bit different from what we described above (54x166cm), but it helps us maintain flexibility between 150cm and 160cm printing without losing too much in any one direction and keeps all our characters from experiencing accidental loss of limb. If you use this template and size your character so no important bits are inside the blue and purple areas, there should not be a problem.