After much discussion and user feedback via Instagram, the votes trended towards THIS design shown up top. So I drew it.
RathaCon is host to a LOT of nerdy events, from tabletop gaming rooms to belly dancers and Quidditch. I wanted this design to incorporate the many scenes that RathaCon has played host to.
I even squeezed in some gears for the steampunk elements, because there’s a steampunk contingent that appears every year. Magic: The Gathering cards and comic books will fill up some of the spaces around the edges. Plus the GhostBusters logo is to homage the local GhostBusting team.
There’s still some details to fit in, but so far it’s off to a great start. Don’t ya’ think?
One of my Patrons on Patreon, Pat, suggested I draw a UniDragonMaid. Little did she know that I would ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE.
Why a UniDragonMaid? Well, I was looking for ideas to draw for an upcoming art show in Columbus, OH themed around mythical creatures.
And… well, she was too cute of an idea to pass up.
I drew her with some colored Bombay India Inks a friend of mine gifted to me recently. The lines were drawn with a Kuretake Bimoji Fude Brush Pen I got from ArtSnacks.
Patrons on Patreon not only made the request to get her drawn, but they got to see her published before the general public. If you would like me to draw random things for you, consider supporting me on Patreon with a monthly subscription.
Here’s part of page 9 of my webcomic The Legend of Jamie Roberts.
Ever since I switched from PhotoShop to Clip Studio Paint, I have LOVED how much easier Clip Studio Paint is to use.
That said, on occasion it can be a bit of a headache. One specific way it can bother me is when I’m adding shading to a comic page.
See, I cheat a lot – I’ll trace a shape over where I want my shadows to be, and then I use my Bucket tool to fill in the blanks. When I do this I often have the bucket tool set to “Refer to other layers.”
Why? Because my line work is on a separate layer from my shades. I don’t do all of my art on the same layer, you fiend.
That said, sometimes CSP will have a brain-fart, especially if the shade color is very close to a color I’m painting over. So instead of only filling in where I want, sometimes CSP will be like, “color THE WHOLE THING? OK!”
But I figured out a way around this. And it’s made producing comics WAY easier.
The secret?
Well, I need to show how I do a comic page first.
I have the following layers to work with: the base drawing. The Edits (where I clean up lines and smudges). Colors. Shades. Letters.
The secret is: I turn the Color Layer off.
It’s super easy: just click the little eyeball on that layer and boom – it turns off.
This has made shading A LOT easier. My Bucket tool no longer tries to fill in a space that’s the same/similar color to the shade color.
Also – it has made looking at what I’m shading WAY easier.
I tend to include a lot of dark colors in my pages. That makes shading a thing pretty tricky to the naked eye. So turning the Color layer off has made it far easier to judge how far shadows need to go.
Another plus is if I wanted to make a black and white version of a color comic, this cheat makes it easy.
I was first approached by Mr. Smith, at the Pittsburgh Witches Ball. He asked me if I was available to do commissions.
That made me ask, “What would you like me to draw for you?” And he said, “I was thinking of getting my family drawn as superheroes. But let me get back to you on that.”
About a month later I was approached by Mrs. Smith.
She asked, “Can you please draw my family and me as super heroes?” To which I said, “Absolutely!”
That resulted in this:
While I was drawing this, Mr. Smith contacted me again. He said, “Hey! Are you still available to do commissions? Because I would really like you to draw my family as superheroes.”
Before I could reply, I contacted Mrs. Smith and said, “Uh…your husband just asked me to make the same thing you asked for. What should I do?”
She laughed.
So I said to Mr. Smith, “Sure I can make the thing!”
And that’s how I drew this:
They were both surprised when the presents were unwrapped.
Awwww yeah! This print got finished not too long ago to showcase my new upcoming webcomic, The Legend of Jamie Roberts. (Coming online mid- to late-November.)
Illustrated here, from foreground to background, is Jamie Roberts, Ragun Ranki (pronounced Rah-Goon Ra-N-key), and the dragon shape of Ragun Basho (pronounced Rah-Goon Bah-show).
This took a little while to illustrate, especially with the waves of The Way in the background. The Way is the spirit world, where souls rest after death and before birth, and where Ranki was banished after The War of the Leaders 500 years before the start of the Legend.
Here’s some clips of the progress of the piece:
The colors of the background and Ranki were done in Clip Studio Paint to save me some marker ink.
This image will do double-duty as both a print and as the cover art for Chapter 1’s online serialization.
