JUNE ROUNDUP
Hello friends,
May has been a busy month! Unfortunately I don’t have a lot I can report on just yet. But here’s a roundup of projects:
Rigsby, WI
I have decided on a return date for Rigsby: January 1, 2024. That’s a longer hiatus than I had hoped for, but it will hopefully give me enough time to build up a healthy buffer so I won’t need to go on any more lengthy hiatuses for a few years.
However, I am nearly finished with the first 15 pages of chapter 4 and will be putting them up on Patreon for subscribers to read some time this summer.
I released a few more previews of Chapter 4 art this month:
If you read Cheap Thrills, you might recognize these dudes. It’s Marty, everybody’s favorite tattoo artist/weird taxidermist, and Finn, tattoo shop owner/man who is angry about having a hot wife.
In Cheap Thrills, I had a running gag where Marty, a possum-man, was always making the same face as his little dead possum art project, and I’m a kinda sad I can’t do that here. Oh well.
I’m using a lot of Kyle Webster & True Grit brushes for these pages. If you have an Adobe subscription, you can download Kyle Webster’s whole brush library for free. Most of them work pretty well in Clip Studio as well — in fact, most of the early test pages for Chapter 4 were created using Kyle brushes in Clip Studio.
Also, not to shill for Kyle Webster too heavily, but I am also using his Lasso fill plugin to do all of my flatting for this chapter, and it is saving me an immense amount of time (and works really well for this style, which does not require flats to trap within ink lines). Kyle Webster also has a great PS actions set available for purchase on Gumroad, It’s definitely worth taking a look at if you illustrate in Photoshop and would like to streamline your workflow.
True Grit brushes are available at https://www.truegrittexturesupply.com.
I mainly use Rusty Nib, Grain Shader and Beat Tones brush sets (I used these a lot in Chapter 3 as well). Some of the packs can be a little expensive but worth the investment. They also have a great sample pack you can download for free. One nice thing about True Grit is they have brushes/textures/etc for more than just Adobe products, so a lot of their stuff is available for Procreate, Affinity, Clip Studio, etc.
Oh, also, here’s a potential cover for Chapter 4:
Not sure if I’ll actually use it — I like the look of it, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about the content of the chapter. If I do use it, I’ll probably tweak the colors — I really like these colors, but I’m afraid they’re too dramatic and it doesn’t match the brighter, lighter palette of the interior.
Cheap Thrills
Not a lot going on here. It’s still updating, read it on Patreon.
Also, I’ll just plug this one more time, but if you haven’t listened yet, EK Weaver (TJ & Amal, Shot & Chaser) talked to AJ of the Webcomics Corner podcast about Cheap Thrills in March — the episodes can be listened to here:
SPEAKING OF the Webcomics Corner podcast and EK Weaver, I just recorded my WC episode with AJ. We talked about The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal. I did not choose TJ & Amal because EK talked about my comic on the Webcomics Corner, I chose it because I love that comic and could talk about it forever (also it was a great comic to discuss for Pride Month). I believe the episode will come out mid-June, and I will include a link to it in next month’s newsletter.
Thanks! Romina
I’m finishing up the art for Thanks! Romina this month. The 20-page initial issue comes out June 28! You can preorder it at your local comic shop using the preview code APR231834. This is a 20-page floppy edition of the first chapter; the full GN will be available in 2024 (published by Chispa).
Here are a few preview pages:
IMPORTANT LINKS 4 U
Ethel’s Up North Discord server
SECase on INPRNT (art prints)
SECase on Ko-Fi (tip jar)