Convention weekend San Diego ConDor Con

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On March 21 through 23, 2014 I attended the ConDor con in San Diego. Great little con, I had fun. In the smaller cons you can meet and talk to the authors. The lines to get a book signed are much shorter than at World Con. Very heavy Steampunk influence at the con. Many people were in costume. A large number of vendors selling Steampunk clothing and accessories. A couple of the panels were really fun with lots of laughter.

Write on, draw on.  Professor Hyram Voltage

Drawing on the screen the same size as on paper

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Needed to have the image on the screen the same size as the image on the paper (so I could hold the paper up to the screen and compare the two images). Zoom settings are arbitrary, zoom to 100% does not mean one to one.

In Manga Studio 5 here’s what I did.

Open an 11 by 17 page. Turn on grid (click view in tool bar at top of page, then click grid in drop down menu to put check mark next to it). Count number of horizontal, light blue, grid lines as you go down the page vertically. Divide number of grid lines by 17 to get lines per inch. Count the number of vertical grid lines across the page. Divide that number of lines by the size of the page in inches (11). You will get a different number of lines per inch, blame the programmers. I got 4.9 lines per inch (most likely grid lines are in metric spacing) vertically for my small monitor. Zoom out while holding a ruler to the screen, when you get 4.9 (OK 5) light blue grid lines per one inch note the zoom factor. Use that zoom to check how an image will look in real size (when printed on 11 by 17 inch paper). Zoom to 30% gets the screen image close to 11 by 17 paper size on my monitor.

The numbers will be different for different monitors/screens.

e-mail me from the contact page if you have questions or would like to talk about how to use Manga Studio 5.

Write on, draw on.  Professor Hyram Voltage

Likeable Monsters

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Professor Hyram “Hy” Voltage here.

This comic is based on a movie script I wrote. Of all the scripts I’ve written I like this story the best.

The one comment I kept getting back from the writing group, rewrite after rewrite, was “Where do the monster come from?”.

Where the monsters come from doesn’t have anything to do with the story. The monsters were created years before the story starts and I’m not big fan of flash backs.

After a long pain racked analysis period I came to realize that what everyone was saying is that my monsters were more interesting than my villains, protagonist, and anyone else in the script. My monsters were the good guys/gals (yes, this is an equal employment comic).

So I wrote, an origin for the monsters. Then rewrote, rewrote, rewrote, rinse and repeat. The result is a adventure/rom-com with a very bloody opening. You can’t make a good monster without spilling a little blood.

But it gave me a chance to show the personalities of the monsters before they were monsters. And showing is the best way to do it.

Mad scientists, Monsters, and Mayhem.  This comic got it all.

Write on, draw on.  Professor Hyram Voltage

 

Teething Pains

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If there are mistakes to be made I will make them faster than anyone else. This is progress. So pardon my mistakes while I build this blog.

Write on, draw on.  Professor Hyram Voltage