Today's episode, our hosts discuss one of the many ways your comic can get done: with PENS! The gang nerds out about what the best pens are, what to look for when choosing how to ink your comic, and some fun stories from the land of digital tablet pens!

When you’re making a comic, you’re often going to be using some way of getting line art on your page. This could be traditional, which is what we call taking a piece of paper and drawing with some kind of pen or brush, or digital, which is where you use specific computer hardware, or draw on the screen of a tablet instead of paper, and input it directly into your drawing program of choice. Now you don’t have to worry right off the bat if you just use what you’re comfortable with, but there’s a lot of options out there that might be better or worse for how you work, where you work, and what’s effective for the tone or scope of your comic project. So! We’re gonna talk to our amazing digital and traditional inkers today to walk through those options (and the thought processes they went through) to find the ones that work best for them!

Hey, Hi. I'm back again. This episode is full of some awesome pen talk, but since it's very opinion based, I left it to the hosts to tell you about it. Check out the timestamps to get you to each question in the episode!

2:50 Traditional ink sounds like it has a lot of options to choose from! How do you [Phin and Krispy] know which tool is the right tool for your work?

8:25 Now, being that you two [Thane and Rae] ink your current comics digitally, what are the advantages to switching to this method?

16:45 Traditional Inks can sound rather intimidating, how do you gain that confidence to look past possible mistakes and get a handle of the medium?

23:14 How do you go about your style for digital inks? What techniques or digital brush tips can you share that make your work feel right for you?

Digital Vs Traditional -- Pros and Cons:

Digital Pro: easy to work with/around mistakes using corrective tools (pressure help, pen stability, undo button, vector linework)

Digital Con: A Lot of brushes to choose from can be overwhelming, over reliance on certain steps can conflict with dynamic inks

Traditional Pro: Working with semi permanent mistakes builds confidence in inks!

Traditional Con: Cost and the need to replace tools can get pricey

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Episode Release Date: July 6, 2022

Episode Credits:

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Kristen Lee (@feathernotes) - she/they, ghostjunksickness.com lunarblight.com

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Phineas Klier (@tentacledeity) - they/them, heirsoftheveil.fervorcraft.de

Rae Baade (@overlordrae) - they/them, empyreancomic.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.