Ad Astra Con Sketches

April 17th, 2012 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

The literary sci-fi/fantasy/horror con Ad Astra happened this past weekend. It’s a small fan-run show in its 31st year, and that means it’s completely different vibe from the big comic cons I tend to frequent like FanExpo and the New York City Comicon. Ad Astra is much more low key, relaxed, and full of friendly people who appreciate the genre. There are lots of panels with intriguing topics, such as “Book Binding Workshop”, “Creating Fantasy and SF Languages”, and “Real Space Science”.  It’s one of those shows where you really want to book a room to stay overnight at the con hotel even if you live in town, because the party goes on til the wee hours. I was sad when I had to go home as soon as the dealers’ room (I use that term loosely, because dealers tables were spread all over the place) closed! Compared to most of the large, professionally-run conventions, this one seems hopelessly disorganized. But somehow it doesn’t seem to matter because everyone just takes it in stride. The crowd skews a bit older than the typical Anime con, which works nicely for me. Ultimately, Ad Astra is about having fun with friends. I like that.

Another difference, from my point of view as a vendor, is the “traffic flow” of the attendees. At most of the shows I go to these days there is a constant stream of people wandering by my table. And yeah, often they’re not stopping long enough to look at my stuff, but you never know who might decide to stop and look so I never feel like I can take a break. At Ad Astra there are certainly busy times, but there are also distinct quiet times when everyone is off at one of those aforementioned interesting panels. The result of this is, I had lots of time to do something I haven’t done in a while– produce con sketches!


I guess you can call this cute little chibi-Worf a follow-up to Aria in the ST: TNG suit. When I drew this I was thinking it would be a nice donation for the con’s charity auction… until I realized they weren’t doing a charity auction! Oh, well.


One fellow who stopped by my table asked if I’d ever made any “Triangle 9″ mugs like the ones the Galaxion’s lab crew drink their coffee from. Well, I did paint one for my own personal use, but I’ve never had any made to sell. (I did have it on a button, though, and he was pleased with that.) After that conversation, I drew the above sketch. Makes you wonder how it could be that Aria hasn’t yet learned never to drink the lab’s coffee… I figure she probably agrees to a proffered mug from time to time just to be polite.


There were lots of people in some sort of costume, and a high percentage of them were of the Steampunk variety. Now, Darvin is a rather dapper fellow. Of all my characters, he’s the one I imagine wold most enjoy the chance to dress up in some psuedo-Victorian duds.


Sitting across from me was a group of guys from a Maker Space club here in Toronto, Site 3. They had with them a MakerBot, which I, and lots of other people, found fascinating. I’ve read online about all the cool things MakerBots can do, but this was my first chance to see one in action. Thoughts of Maker Spaces led me inevitably to thoughts of a certain Galaxion character.

I didn’t think too hard about the logistics, not to mention the consequences, of kludging a MakerBot to run on chocolate. I suggest you don’t, either.


At the table next to me was a group of ladies selling corsets, tiny feathered hats, and other items to go with your cosplay wardrobe (Apollonie is the designer’s website). They all got a great deal of enjoyment out of playing dress-up with various Victorian-curious convention-goers who’d never had the opportunity to try on a corset before. They’d take measurements to select the right size corset and then happily lace up their customers, who were thrilled at suddenly having an hourglass figure and a soaring new bustline to match. And all the ladies behind the table would gush– quite sincerely– at how fabulous they looked, and soon after that people pulled out their wallets. Men were not excluded from this experience, by the way– several of them also got laced up and gushed over (“That looks amazing on you!”). It was so amusing to watch that I eventually had to draw the above. If Darvin would be the one to most enjoy dressing up, I suspect Fusella would be the one to most enjoy playing dress-up with her friends.

…And that was my con weekend! Despite all the time I had for the sketches, I did actually have a reasonably good show sales-wise. I didn’t end up selling any of the above sketches, though, so if you’re interested in owning one for $30 (which includes shipping), shoot me an email! Link on the sidebar.

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What Do You Use to Make Your Comic?

April 3rd, 2012 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

Recently this came up as a topic of discussion on one of the forums I follow. My first thought was, gosh, I still use mostly low-tech methods to create Galaxion–meaning I draw and ink on paper– so surely such simple techniques would translate to a simple set of tools. Paper and pen, right? And ink. And the pencil. And the eraser, too. Hmm. Just how much stuff  do I use? Well, I decided to gather it all together and take a picture. I had to stand on a chair.

That's a lot of stuff.

What you see here are only the things I use on every single page. I have other tools I pull out occasionally, like circle templates, tracing paper, and other sizes of tech pens, which for simplicity’s sake– ah, the irony– I left out of the photo. What the heck is all this stuff? Left to right, top to bottom, I have:

  • An old yoghurt cup for water to clean the brush at the table
  • Canon brand smooth Bristol paper, 14×17, which I trim to 11×17 for each page
  • Clear plastic ruler, for drawing margins and panel borders
  • Deleter Black Ink #3, one of the nicer inks I’ve tried
  • Zebra Brush Marker, large tip, for inking word balloons
  • Pentel Clic eraser
  • Zebra Brush Marker, medium tip, for emphasis lettering and inking straight lines
  • Uni-Ball Alpha Gel Kuru Toga Mechanical Pencil, size 0.5, “B” leads
  • Copic Multiliner, size 0.7, for all other lettering
  • Winsor Newton Series 7 brush, size 1, for most of the inking
  • Ames Lettering Guide
  • Mono brand eraser, large
  • Kneaded eraser
  • T-square
  • Rolling ruler, for quickly drawing parallel lines
  • Straight-edge ruler, for inking straight lines
  • Scrap paper to remove excess ink from brush
  • Rag to remove excess water from brush
  • MacBook (and Photoshop CS2), for cleaning up art and adding grey tones
  • Wacom Intuos 3 tablet

And here’s the tool that didn’t fit on the table:

I purchased this monstrosity, the Brother MFC-6490CW scanner/inkjet printer, because it has an 11×17 bed, so I can scan my pages whole instead of having to scan in parts and stitch them together, which is what I had to do before. Much easier.

For those of you who are most interested in the pens and stuff, here’s a close-up of those:

I talked more about some of these items in a blog post from a couple years ago. If you’re wondering why some of the tools have tape on the ends, it’s merely there as away for me to mark when I started using them (I write the date on the tape). I’d been wondering how long some of my tools last, especially the brushes, which are expensive. My current one has only been around since the beginning of the year.

Why so many tools? Why, for example, do I need three different erasers? Well, I suppose I don’t. I like the kneaded eraser because it’s gentler to the paper and it doesn’t leave any of that eraser dust, but for some jobs it just doesn’t cut it. I like the Clic eraser because it gets into small spaces easily, and I like the large eraser when I have to erase large areas, or when I’m cleaning up the pencil lines after I’ve finished inking. Each does a different job well, or at least represents a reasonable compromise. For example, I used to use Rapidographs for lettering because with the ink I could get a much darker line (markers are never as dark), but they require a very upright position to write with. I’m not happy with the greyer line I get with the Copic Multiliner, but it does make all the hand-lettering easier. So I’m using that for now, until I find something better. Meanwhile, the Rapidographs are still good for making straight lines. And speaking of…

These are even more tools I realized should have gone in the first picture. A non-descript pair of scissors to trim the page, a Koh-i-noor Rapidograph, size 4 (or 1.2, depending which numbering system you like) that I use to ink the panel borders, the Ultradraw ink that goes in it, and a big fat soft brush. The brush is completely trivial, since all I use it for right now is to gently brush away eraser dust (too often I just use my hand, and then end up smudging the pencil lines). I had it lying around so I figured, why not.

So, yeah… that’s a lot of tools. Maybe art tools to me are like kitchen gadgets to people who like to cook– there are so many specialized tools that do specific things really well. I know my kitchen drawers are full of  little gizmos I consider indispensable and I don’t even enjoy cooking all that much. Could I pare it down to one knife, one big spoon, one pot, and a frying pan? Sure. But I probably won’t, because I like my gizmos.

These days more and more artists are switching to purely digital work, which means their entire list of tools is a computer and a tablet. Or maybe only just a tablet, if they happen to have one of those fancy Cintiqs. Think of how clean my desk would be. Makes switching to digital almost tempting. Almost. :-)

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Valentine’s Day Colouring Fun!

February 14th, 2012 | by Tara
Posted In: Blog

As some of you are already aware, February 14th just happens to be Captain Fusella Mierter’s birthday. How can I let a Valentine’s Day go by– especially one that falls right on a Tuesday, Galaxion’s traditional Update Day– go uncelebrated? Plus, we’ve seen so little of Fusella these past months. She deserves a little something special on her birthday, and what’s more appropriate than to make her royalty for the day: Fusella, Queen of Hearts!

And you can be a part of the birthday celebrations, too! Fusella normally lives in, shall we say, a rather black-and-white world, but a little colour would really brighten her day. Why not help her out? You can download a PDF (2.2MB) or TIFF (1.2MB) file (whichever is easiest for you to use) of this image and colour it however you like. (The file images are bigger than shown, 8.5″ x 11″.) Use a colouring program, use your new iPad app, print it out and use crayons, whatever you enjoy most!

Just for fun, If you send me your version of Fusella, Queen of Hearts in colour, I’ll mail you– that’s actual mail through Canada Post, folks– a postcard that has my coloured FQH printed on it. Perfect for hanging on your fridge. Keep in mind this isn’t a contest– everybody who contributes gets a postcard as a thank you! I won’t be posting my colour art anywhere online, so this will be your only chance to see it.

You can send me (email link on the sidebar) the jpg file of your coloured piece, take a photo and send me that, or snail mail it if you wish (contact me for the address). I’m very flexible! If you’re OK with it, I’ll be pleased to post submissions to a gallery on this site. [Edit: The Gallery is now up!] Obviously I’ll need your snail mail address to send you the card. (I promise I am not collecting addressing for any other purpose than these postcards.) Comes complete with a gen-u-ine Canadian stamp! Or possibly two, if you’re overseas. :-)

I’ll keep this offer open until the end of March (but feel free to ask for more time if necessary, because hey, this is just for fun). Happy colouring!

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