Category: Blogging

Clip Studio Quick Access

I’ve refined my use of Clip Studio so much over the years (starting with Manga Studio 3(!) from 2006 – so coming up on twenty years) that sometimes when a new feature hits I don’t even bother with it, as I’m already optimised up the wazoo.

Anyway, a couple of versions ago, Clip Studio introduced a “Quick Access” panel – basically a pop up window that can have your most commonly used tools in one location (rather than scattered around all over the place).

I’ve been studying a bit on colouring in clip studio, and discovered that this quick access panel might answer a few distinct problems I have with workflow, and I’ve played with it and sort of love it. It’s especially useful if you have limited screen real estate. The quick access panel can use tools, menu items, actions or pretty much anything you want. I’ve set mine up for four distinct modes :

Pencilling, Inking, Flatting, Colouring and Lettering.

If you combine that with the ability to duplicate tools and add your own icons, you can have a powerful set of tools for specific modes. Here’s my pencilling set up (I won’t go in to too much detail, though I will answer comments if you have any!)

I’ve also mapped the quick access pop up to a key (Numeric zero on my keyboard or one of the quick buttons on the huion) which makes it really useful when you’ve a small screen with a small set of commonly used tools you want to pop up and down on the screen.

The Pencilling Quick Access

This has tools for Managing a new project, including an action to create page of thumbnails (custom icon on an action)

Tools for pencilling and tools for editing the panel layouts (all things I do at the pencilling stage)

Inking Quick Access

This is probably the simplest and action could be even simplified more. The numbers beside the tools here are part of the names – I coded the number keys along the keyboard with the various common tools I use and then renamed the tools to include the keyboard number so I wouldn’t forget. (Which a handy thing I nearly wish it was a built in feature)

Flatting Tools

Actually, I suspect they’re all simpler than the pencil quick access simply because it’s got most of the starting utilities I use for beginning a new project. One note on colour, I used to use the colour wheel for colour picking, but these days I’ve taken to using the colour slider, which gives you a Hue Saturation and Value sliders for changing the selected colour and takes the guess work out of which colour should I pick next.

Colouring Quick Access

No wait, this is complex! I have thousands of brushes, but lately, I’ve been focused on Kyle’s Builder Brush (Kyle of Photoshop brush fame, released this for free ages ago) and Daub Pigmentio Dual 02 – both add texture/noise to the colours as I paint them. Lots of great texture in the art.

Also a selection of actions to create different kinds of layers, saves me having to tap a new layer and adjust it afterwards.

And finally…

Lettering Quick Access

Text Edit is basically the object edit tool set up to only allow it to edit text. I’ve duplicated and created a bunch of text tools with the fonts I like, if I had time I’d make icons for all of them with the font in it (but I’m lazy)

And that’s it.

Comments are open, so if you wanna ask me about any of this, please do. (If you ask here rather than on the socials, I can answer where which means everyone gets the answer)

Dreaming Comics

This morning I woke up having very briefly dreamed I was putting together a comic, and I thought you might like to know what it might have looked like.

As with all my favourite things it was an anthology – it was nameless, but I’m calling it “FLUX” because – well, I remember sitting with some people way back in 1992/93 talking about doing a comic and flux was the title of that, and why not.

Fully formed from the dream was that it would contain a black and white western strip (weird western) stuff … strong potaganist, having strange adventures – drawn by Dan McDaid and here’s a link to his blog (and his Twitter/X account and bluesky). Dan’s a muscular artist, chonky and great to look at and also a fab writer. He could do this. Also: not afraid to draw horses…

(lifted from Dan’s blog, hope he doesn’t mind!)

Secondly, Gustaffo Vargas – a Peruvian comic artist based in Edinburgh (here’s a link to one of his successful kickstarters) and here he is in a couple of the social media places we have to spread ourselves thinly across these days: Twitter/X, BlueSky

I posted about this on bluesky, and because I was just waking my subconcious knew I meant futuristic fairytale but my conscious mind thinks I meant something else. Subconscious wins it though!

Here’s some of Gustaffo’s artwork:

That’s it, when I woke I had a vision but as the day has worn on that vision has blurred a little. I didn’t even give myself a gig in this dream comic (annoying) but come on, this comic looks like it would be cool, right?

I suspect if I’d slept a little longer I’d’a dreamed up something cool for Artyom Trakhanov to do whose artwork has a dream like quality (and if pushed I’d say give him something galaxy wide, far future space opera?)

I mean just look at that!

Given those distinct strong voices, we’re gonna need something much more visually calming (god I hope that doesn’t sound negative, because it’s not!), and my old mate Dylan Teague (bluesky) might be the balm we all need. Dylan’s thing is almost certainly space opera though, so I’d have to think of something else, maybe earth based far future about a vigilante who is taking down the corporations who’ve ruined the earth. Nice political scifi adventure (with a protaganist with a bob, because I know Dylan would enjoy that)

Image

I would probably find myself a job in that book, I’ll take b&w cosmic horror, thank you.

Oh and a final humour strip? (maybe not humour? maybe pulp noir detective?) By Dan Schkade (bluesky)

Comps!

I’ve had three deliveries of comps (complimentary) copies over the last week. One box every few days and it’s been fun!

First issue #2 of Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn wherein I do my best “Ok., I’m not Ben Templesmith but I’ll try” (Ben had drawn part one and I was drafted in for part two)

Next, a big ol’ box of the paper back of Soul Plumber – I’d forgotten entirely it was coming, but it was fun when it arrived.

And then, today, “Catwoman Uncovered” a collection of Catwoman covers, which I drew some images for which I assumed where for a backup article, but nope! turns out they were for a little connective tissue between pin ups, genuinaly gasped out loud to see my catwoman on page 1.

I’d forgotten how fun it was to get comps, and how quickly you feel buried by them.

Roll on the next delivery.

Planning the week…

I know I’ll illicit very few sympathies for this, but it can be tough planning out when you’ll finish a book when you can find yourself hitting spurts of speed and equally, suddenly losing a day for family reasons can knock you off course pretty violently. It’s the driving equivalent of doing 90 in a 30 zone.

My plan is to roughly mark out days in chunks of four pages of pencils/two pages of inks. Last month the best I did was six pages of inks and seven pages of pencils in any single day, but you’d be mad to base your working life on that.

So four pencils, two inks. Two inks is a pretty average for many artists, speed wise, but I’m secretly hoping for the most part I can hit three/four pages of inks, and get to the same 40 or so pages this month as I did last month.

So, that said, my plan this weekend and week ahead is:

Saturday: 2 pages of pencils (weekends I tend to hope for any work rather than expect any – that said I’ve done one page already. so actually I might get four done)
Sunday: 2 pages pencils
Monday: 4 pages of pencils
Tuesday: 2 pages of pencils

And that will finish the pencils for this chapter of Bad Magic – then I start in to the inks, given 2 pages of inks per day, I reckon I’ll hit 21 pages on or around the 18th/19th. Then more pencils for the final chapter (again 21 pages) about a week to do those which means, even with a following wind I’ll probably only start inking on the 28th/1st so nope, not a mission of getting 40 unless 2 pages of inks per day is pessimistic!

Anyway, we’ll see.

The Studio

Been a slow slow slow development towards what my new studio space looks like. Functionally, I’ve moved to entirely digital, which has meant the focus of the space is around digital drawing. But I still want to have the option to pick up some paper and draw on it.

I have a great big a3 inkjet printer I’d love to get rid of, but I need (JUST IN CASE!) and a Alex set of drawers first for A3 / A2 paper (well, just about A2) which is just a little too big. And this chair is no longer fit for purpose. BUT I have a bookshelf (which is currently half empty) and a new shelving system which I can add to as I see fit (though it turns out the top is so high up I can’t even reach it, so it’s now where I put my Objects of Desire. Though, tbh even seeing them requires me to stand on my tip toes.

I do miss the old old studio, you know… the one before we had kids when I had this VAST room that I could fit three tables in, and still have too much space. *sigh* maybe one day. At least now we’re in a house rather than a flat, there’s a possibility one day I’ll get a bigger space by putting a decent shed out the back… but I suspect my wife will veto that long before I put roots down. Still, this isn’t bad. Not bad at all.

Inside the studio space

A month of pages

Well, I’m not going to do any drawing tomorrow, but let me tell you – phew, what a month.

In the end, I pencilled 47 pages and inked 49.

It felt good. It breaks down like this:

Week BeginningPencilsInks
2 Jan 2023 128
9 Jan 2023511
16 Jan 2023291
23 Jan 2023124
31 Jan 2023 (so far)05

That included two episodes of the Leopard from Lime Street and finishing chapters three and four of Bad Magic (the Skulduggery Pleasant graphic novel written by Derek Landy). Next month I have the final two chapters to complete.

If you’re a patreon member you can see and follow the progress of the work I’ve done over the last month, and I intend to try and keep that format of weekly updates with photos of my work journal.

StreA page from the Leopard from Lime Street in the comic Monster Fun.

I’m feeling pretty good about not only how much work I did, but the quality of it (and idiot might say “fast pages aren’t good pages”, but I’ve always maintained, for me, the opposite is often true – fast pages frequently are ones I’ve felt confident about, slow pages are the ones that I’ve had to labour over).

Last time I hit a burst of speed like this was for the second volume of Dept of Monsterology (and I’m still really happy with a lot of those pages).

One worrying factor is if I DO the same next month, I’ll literally run out of work – but then, I can always start looking for more. Certainly, like an idiot I’ve started to turn over the idea of a commando digest style comic as a possible project. That’ll pass. I’m sure that’ll pass. I think.

Anyway, hope you had a good start to the year, mine has been great!

The Digital Studio

Here’s my computer setup for work.

Acer Asus 4k 27″ Monitor (which I can show 3 roughly print sized pages on across ways) cost: £179 (I think I picked this up as a bargain, it was the last of two of these in curry’s and they were discontinued, the newer one I think was about £230 or something)

Huion 16″ I picked that up for around £300 (Actually it might’ve been £269?) absoloute bargain at either price. I’d buy another of these in a heartbeat. 

Even when I had the massive 27″ Cintiq, I’d usually split the screen in two, in the left I’d show the full sized page and on the right I’d show a zoomed in area I was working on. The Huion is capable of the same but there’s not enough real estate there realistically, so instead this double screen set up is perfect.

Both powered by a Mac M1 Mini, the new M2 Mac Mini starts around £649 (8Gb RAm, 256Gb HD) – I’d probably go to the £1049 model (16Gb Ram, 512Gb HD) the mac isn’t upgradeable, and while my current setup is 8Gb/512Gb I do slightly regret not getting more ram (not that it’s ever hampered me, mind you, it runs fast enough for everything I do)

Updated to add: I forgot, the mac doesn’t come with keyboard or mouse, so I’ve a logitech wireless mouse (about £20?) and a really lovely, took-me-ages-to-finally-pull-the-trigger keychron keyboard, that was about £69(!) yes, I know. But it’s super small footprint, the keys are bright white (though it has an irratatingly large selection of how the keyboard lights work – I mean keyboard lights that dance around while you’re using it, I just want them on or off!) and they have a chunky nice feel when you use them. Plus it’s wired OR wireless, I use it wired just to keep the lights on all the time. (And you have three bluetooth connections you can choose from if you like).

Connected to all of that is a Brother DCP6690CW – which I think I bought 10-15 years ago? An A3 scanner/inkjet printer. Anwyay, it was around £260 and I use whatever rubbish ink cartridges I can find cheap and it works great for everything I do – scanning lineart, and printing blueline for inking. (though a more modern one would work a bit nicer on the network and I could print/scan to an iphone) That said I don’t actually ink this way anymore, so I’ve got it on hand JUST IN CASE.

Second printer is a Brother HL2350DCP laser printer, I use this for printing scripts and the odd comic, it’s A4 and can print double sided so good for silly fun projects.

Software wise: Clip Studio Pro Ex ver 1.13 (Latest version 1). There’s a version 2 coming soon, I’m not sure it has any features I want/need, but my old computer head will kick in and I’ll probably upgrade. 

For scripts/editing, I’ll usually turn to Pages – which is Apple’s word processor and free with the mac. Word compatible so good enough for most things. Though I am tempted to get Scrivener for comic scripting, which is about £50.

Qwitter

I’ve gone round the houses on twitter, and the quitting of it. Here’s where I am now: my account – while active is only so because it’s a reasonable defence against my username being handed to a pornbot or similar (how many old comics forums are now in the hands of porn websites? I dunno, but don’t look up panelxpixel, it’s depressing)

Anything I post here gets autoposted, I do occasionally browse twitter and when I do, I might RT someone generally if it’s someone looking for help, or trying to drum up an audience for their kickstarter. I’m trying not to engage, but twitter still remains the best way to catch up on the world. BUT – my days of posting bon mots are, I think, over.

I have occasionally posted stuff, but it’s now basically just when I want eyeballs to look at things. I’ve found, like my old boss Davie used to say – I’m as replaceable as a fist in a bucket of water (you remove the fist and the water rapidly fills in the void)

I suspect over time those eyeballs numbers will drop and drop until the point where there really is no point posting there (partly this is the algorithem anyway, and partly I suspect Musk’s push for payment for audience is gonna make it useless)

That all said, my blog has never had more attention from me, and I’ve been averaging three-four pages of pencils per day (I mean yesterday I finished pencilling a page from the previous day, then did two pages of pencils and then did two pages of inks and still went to bed at a reasonable time…) so being mostly off twitter has been generally a net positive in my life – even if I do miss all my old mates who haven’t made the leap to Mastodon.

Film Night!

So, I did the first class – a sort of introductory who-we-are-and-what-our-favourite-films-are, two hour thing.

(For the record, I said my favourite film is The Big Lebowski – which I think it is, probably the film I’ve seen the most, and has bits that make me laugh, though honestly the reason I’m doing a course on short film making is I love things like Inside No 9, Black Mirror and… you know … 2000ad)

The plan is everyone who wants to can pitch an idea and then Larry (who’s running the thing) will pick one (based, more on how well it’ll use everyone’s abilities, as much as the quality of the idea/script)

It’s weird introducing yourself in a group – especially one where odds are you’ll find a comic fan – or at least someone who knows you (Belfast is a small place anyway, so – as was the case here – Larry had heard of me, but from people saying “there’s a guy who lives [redacted] who writes* for 2000ad” (*these things are always a bit garbled)

So last night I sat and had a think and came up with about five ideas for shorts, I dunno if any will get past tomorrow, and they’re all a little nebulous, but here they are:

TANGO

Outside a community centre a husband and wife talk about their past, and their future, and how this tango class is a first step in a new future for him. As he walks haltingly towards the door, we see a sign for the tango night – “Singles Tango Night – widowers welcome” and he turns and says goodbye to his wife, who vanishes.

The Pass

Spide and Jaunty are two not-so-bright belfast hoods who need some money for weed, and decide to mug the first person to come down the back street they’re in. That first person, it turns out… is Gandalf.

There’s a confrontation – Gandalf gets the better of the two idiots and escapes, but as he does so, he drops his pipe.

Spide is disappointed, they got nothing. “‘er, you think he was… you know, Magic…?” Jaunty, drawing from the pipe and in a smokey weed induced haze – “I dunno about him, but this is fucking magic”

The Ticket

A traffic warden and a badly parked driver face off, as the warden is about to place a ticket on the car and the man knows if he can get to the door he can claim he was just leaving. No dialogue and filmed like a spaghetti western, including tumbling crisp packets and close up of sweaty eyes.

Working Stiff

An office style docudrama as a husband and wife are interviewed about their typical day. The husband though, is a monosyllabic zombie. “Oh well, day to day there’s not much difference from before, I mean he’s still mostly in the way, though he is a LOT better with the dog and to be honest his personal hygene isn’t what it was… ” “And your … love life” “Oh, well, now … that IS different… I mean… now he’s always … ” [end credits]

Northern Ireland Comics Creator Club (NIC3)

Are you a Northern Irish comics creator looking for a place to connect with others in the industry? The NI Comics Creator Club (or, simply “NIC3“) is a new Google Group that aims to provide a space for people of all ages and skill levels to share information, collaborate, and support each other in the creation of comics. Whether you’re self-publishing, printing, or trying to break into the industry, this group is for you.

Join us at https://groups.google.com/g/ni-comics-creator-club. While the group will be informal at first, as membership grows I plan to establish regular posting. Let’s build a thriving community of comics creators in Northern Ireland together!