Hey readers! The nominations are open for the 2022 Drunk Duck Awards. Follower is eligible for these categories. I can’t nominate myself, but if you make a free DD account, you can! We will need at least a couple of nominations to make it into the running!
Drunk Duck is a well-established webcomics platform with a long history and a great community. Follower updates there as a mirror, and so can be included as part of the awards this year!
Here are the main categories you can nominate us for!
Best Sci-Fi Comic
Best Anthropomorphic Comic
Best Plot Development
Best Protagonist (Dia)
You can also nominate other comics on the DrunkDuck platform! It would be super helpful to even make it into the running, since it helps boost our visibility! Thanks so much for reading!
Hey there! This is coming in a bit late, but here’s this week’s streaming schedule! It’s a bit sparse, but mostly due to the fact that this Friday is our Discord’s first Movie Night! Come join us on Friday, June 24 at 8:00 PM on Discord! Everyone is welcome.
Without further ado, here’s this week:
WEDNESDAY 6/22: 8:30 PM – Caves of Qud Adventures Continue!
FRIDAY 6/24: 8:00 PM – Not a stream! Movie Night on the Radio Chio Discord! Our Discord is free and open to everyone, with extras for Chio Club members.
We suggest dropping in a bit ahead of time to make sure your permissions are all set since it takes a moment to pop through our server join requirements. (It’s easy, just mostly there to keep spam and stuff out.)
That’s it for this week. Hope to see you at one of these events!
Stream schedule for this week is a bit different due to some life stuff going on! Note that Monday is as usual, Wednesday is sorta canceled? And Friday is what I would have been doing Wednesday. Phew! That’s a bunch.
I may or may not pop on at other times to do artwork kind of unplanned, but we’ll see how things go due to said life stuff happening!
Here’s the plan:
MONDAY 6/13: Art & some kind of game! We’ll see what I feel like playing. Could be Pokemon, could be Caves of Qud.
WEDNESDAY 6/15: No stream!
FRIDAY 6/17: Caves of Qud night!
I’m super duper close to making affiliate! It helps even if you just pop in and lurk for a while. Last week on stream I hit 100 followers, so I revealed what my first emote is going to be when I can finally do that: it’s Shocked Diachu! The perfect combination of ridiculousness, games, and comics.
Drop in during one of my streams to help me achieve affiliate status and Shocked Diachu will be available for everyone to use!
Good news, everybody! Follower is now available on GlobalComix! For now, Chapter 1 is free and ready to read, and the rest of the series will be added soon.
You can also help support the comic by supporting us directly through GlobalComix! You’ll get access to newly finished pages as they’re added, once the rest of the backlog has been added to the site.
I’m streaming again this week! Hopefully it’ll be a little more on track compared to last week. I wasn’t feeling so good on a couple of days I had planned to be on, but I spent the weekend sleeping in so I think things’ll be better!
MONDAY 6/6: Working on artwork and playing a game afterward. I’m not sure which game yet, might be Pokemon, might be Caves of Qud, might be something else!
WEDNESDAY 6/8: Continuing my Caves of Qud adventure as Nyla the mutant laser turtle!
FRIDAY 6/10: Pokemon Emerald cart rescue mission! (Or I might plug in FireRed or Sapphire to see what’s there, I haven’t peeked at those in a long time, either.)
BONUS! SATURDAY 6/11: This is a little more casual but I might pop on Saturday afternoon while I’m working on some miscellaneous comic page updates for the new website. I’ve listed the time as 3 PM eastern on Twitch, but that might change. Check Twitch or my Twitter to see what’s up!
If technology within the post-apocalyptic world suddenly worked once again, would there be any interest from the Chio community to discover how it all functioned?
Chios are very inquisitive by nature and it would probably make them really happy to have so much new stuff to explore and experiment with.
I use Clip Studio Paint to make about 99% of all my comics and comic-related work. Occasionally I’ll use something else, but there’s really nothing comparable to the specialized features Clip Studio has when it comes to making comics.
One of the best features of the software is not really directly part of the software itself, but part of the related services provided by Celsys: the Clip Studio assets site. You can find downloadable materials you can use in your art and comics, from brushes to 3D models to patterns and textures. Some of these assets cost money, but there are a LOT of free assets available, and there are some really great ones out there.
Here are a few of my favorites, some of which are complete lifesavers.
1. The Only Perspective Grid You Need by OutlawEric
The Only Perspective Grid You Need (TOPGYN) is a tool made by OutlawEric (@0utlaweric on Twitter) that helps you more easily adjust your perspective grids. I can never get my vanishing points placed exactly the way I want, and this asset helps immensely. You just drag both parts into your canvas, and then move the target around until the perspective looks like way you want. More detailed instructions are available on the Clip Studio Assets site.
Theoretically, this is something I could have made myself, but sometimes I’m lazy and this is convenient. These height scales allow you to set up 3D models so you can make them scaled properly with one another. For example, I recently set up a batch of 3D models customized to match the heights and builds of most of my comic characters. I used these backgrounds to get them all looking like the correct height when stood together in a lineup.
This is a super useful reference when I’m putting a bunch of characters in a scene together, to make sure every character stays more or less “on model.” I’m not usually super concerned about that, but it really makes a difference when you need several characters to look consistent across several pages or an entire chapter. This has been especially useful in the past few chapters of Follower, where I’ve got multiple adult humans of different shapes and sizes, plus Leah, a kid, among them.
There are several of these tools made by K96 and they all sort of work in a similar way. You make lineart, you put a layer underneath it, you use the lasso to select around the lines you want to fill, as casually as you like, and it automatically fills the layer. Super simple for doing quick fills.
They also have these cute ice cream cone icons so they’re very easy to identify in your toolbar.
Seriously, a lifesaver. Set your lineart as reference, select the color layer beneath, use this eraser and it’ll erase everything outside of the lines. Nice for doing quick, easy cleanup. Made by @pharanbrush on Twitter!
This blur tool is set up just right for making parts of your drawing look like they’re receding into the background. Use it to draw your focus to parts of the scene you want viewers to, well, focus on.
If you’ve never used Clip Studio Paint before, and want to try it out yourself, you can get a 30 day free trial by clicking the link below. If you buy a standalone (desktop) version of the software, or a subscription (mobile) version, I’ll receive a commission, so it’s a win-win for everybody. I recommend CSP to basically everyone I talk to digital art about, and I come from a long Adobe-using background. The price is unbeatable, and the features are constantly improving. I can’t say enough good things about it.
Maybe my next article will be about my favorite brushes! There are so many….
If you found this article useful, you can also help support future content like this by joining the Chio Club as an ongoing member or as a one-time tip! Check out these options!
Webcomic maker, artist, and Bug of all trades.
