Thursday, May 23, 2013

Comics Creators Visiting Downtown Comics West!

Steve Horton 5/29/13
Steve Horton is the writer of the Dark Horse epic steampunk fantasy, Amala's Blade, with one miniseries out in 2013 and another in 2014. He's also done short stories for DC Comics and the non-profit Reading with Pictures anthology. When not writing comics and editing at the day job, Steve plays a lot of Magic and other games. He lives near Indianapolis with his incredibly patient wife and three incredibly impatient kids. And one beagle.
More info about Steve can and his comics can be found at about.me/tropicalsteve or follow him on Twitter at @TropicalSteve


Kyle Starks 6/1/13
Kyle Starks is a comic book writer/artist living in Southern Indiana.  He is the creator of the Robot Mountain webcomic series which includes Adventure Wizard, Punch Captain and the book comicsalliance.com called "the best wrestling comic of all time", The Legend of Ricky Thunder.  Last year a short comic, This is Wild Dog! was included in the Comics Bulletin's 10 Best Online Comics of 2012.

He might be a time traveller. I'm not sure. I heard he punched out a dragon once, though. Seriously. Dragon punching.

More info about Kyle and his comics can be found at www.kylestarks.com or follow him on twitter @starr226 or visit his tumblr www.robotmountain.tumblr.com

Ryan Browne 6/5/13
Ryan Browne is a comic book writer/artist living in Chicago.  He is the creator of God Hates Astronauts and Blast Furnace. He's also worked on books like The Manhattan Projects and Hoax Hunters.

"I don't want to oversell what Ryan has accomplished here, but I gave God Hates Astronauts to a blind man and he regained his sight." -Jonathan Hickman (The Avengers, Fantastic Four, The Manhattan Projects)

More info about Ryan and his comics can be found at www.godhatesastronauts.com or follow him on twitter @RyanBrowneArt or visit his tumblr www.ryanbrowneart.tumblr.com.

See you at CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo)

Designed by Chicago’s own, Jo Dery (http://jodery.com)
Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE)
Saturday and Sunday, June 15 & 16, 2013
11 am – 6pm
Center on Halsted
3656 N Halsted
FREE and open to the public!

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Working Digitally

I've been curious about working all-digitally, so I started messing around with Manga Studio 5 last week. Apparently it's what everyone is using to ink stuff digitally now. Right off the bat it feels so much better than Photoshop, while still having a very similar UI. The default brushes you get aren't bad, but there are a ton of options for tweaking. I called out on Twitter @MangaStudio to see if anyone had suggestions for brushes. I got a ton of responses saying that @Frenden's are the best. I grabbed Ray Frenden's "Manga Studio 5 Pencilling, Inking, & Painting Brushes" and they are fantastic! I used them to do this week's Solo Acoustic. Frenden has a free brush available called "Lando Calbrusshian" that I definitely recommend if you want to see how much better his are than the defaults.


 

P.S. If you are considering purchasing Manga Studio 5, if you use my link I'll get a little kickback.