What Digital Brushes do I use?

Hello folks!

Happy November! Things have been crazy, hasn’t it? US folks, I hope you all went out and did your civic duty and voted. It’s a very important thing to do.

Without further ado, a question some folks have asked me during my Twitch streams.

What brushes do you use?

As with most digital artists, I think it’s a complicated question since we all tend to experiment and use a lot of different things we stumble upon. Luckily, the ones I’ve been using regularly have been ones that I’ve kept track of.

BIG NOTE: I have not been sponsored or anything for posting any of the products I talk about. It’s just what I use and I fell in love with as of Nov 2022.


Main Inking and Coloring Brush

The “Chan Brush”

Not a surprise, but my “Chan Brush” was created out of a little frustration. I liked using the Real G-Pen and the HIMOG Zara, but there were some issues with getting the right velocity and pressure when I needed it without switching between the two. So I opted to combine both and just call it my own.

I had a credit question, which is why it’s a little open-ended for me. Feel free to credit where you deem fit, but you don’t need to credit for commercial work or personal stuff. I don’t feel my brush makes any immense breakthroughs!


Pencils/Sketching

Frenden’s Clip Studio Brush Pack

Frenden has been an old reliable throughout the many many years. He had all his brushes separated into neat little categories for a time, all with low prices of around 5 USD. However, he’s done us the ultimate solid and combined all of them into one mega pack for 15 USD. If you’re not sure you’re interested, I will 1000% back these brushes. You’re bound to find something you like in it.

I use the 4B Real Pencil in his pack for all my sketching. My preferred pencil in real life is a 4B+ anyway, and it hits all the notes I need. It also works well for adding texture to a monochromatic layer for some texture!


Textures for Comics

Multiple amazing CSP artist assets

I use these brushes fairly frequently when making comics! These ones are just sort of my default options, but the textures are so amazing for the price! They add amazing tone without going into the half-tone territory, which is amazing! And it saves your hand trouble! EXTRA amazing!

Effect Full Set Clip Studio Assets

The Terrible Hatch Pen


Stippling Brush

True Grit Texutre Supply - Stipple Studio

This brush got some traction when I talked about it on my Twitter, which was a surprise!

I use True Grit Texture Supply’s wonderful Stipple pack! This particular one from the pack is called “Fat Tip - Medium Fill” which gives me a wonderful amount of density without losing its texture from afar.

I use it to soften SOME edges. It’s a way for me to not use blending brushes, to maintain some control over my cel-shading style.

I recommend subscribing to their newsletter to get 20% off, and then unsubscribing if you don’t care about their other products!


That’s all I have for now! These are my regular brushes, and I just make do.

I hope this is helpful and expands your mind just a little!

Where do I print books?

Hi Folks!

My book “Parts of Us” is here! I finally got the chance to take some silly photos. I used my old Nikon d90 for this, like all of merchandising photography, and did some quick gentle color balancing to fix some of the colors. But I’m stunned! The blues came out so vibrant, which I did not expect with a digital printer. Maybe technology and paper has been getting better, or maybe I never use very bright colors in my work! (The latter is very true.)

Parts of Us book sitting on a table
Interior shot of the Parts of Us book

Printing!

This is my third time printing through this company, and I’m happy with the quality again! They’re on top of things in terms of making books, and they provide a nice low quantity for independent artists.

The company is called MIXAM and they have locations in the UK and in the US from my knowledge. They have a great turn around time, and amazing paper stock options. Things to note however: I have a decent library of printing knowledge and have experience with printing books. So I typically have a good time with any printer, but I think MIXAM excels at having a print on demand calculator which includes shipping estimates. This way, people can figure out what days they have to turn in their files in order for them to get their books on time for a convention or an online store. (This is called Lead Time.)

I do use my comics template when I print through them, however I also use Photoshop for Prepress and InDesign for Page Layout.

This is the technical part of the blog: For those of you wondering, printing is the main reason why I tell folks to be cautious with my template. It is a slightly bigger size than your typical 8.5x5.5” format, which gives some wiggle room, but can lead to some extra drawing that wont show up if you don’t pay attention. I think the template has an issue with calculating gutter space.

Here’s an example of a page in InDesign.

The brownish boarder indicates the full page size, and you can see it extending slightly past the bleed on the left, but extends into the other page pretty far.

It’s because the way the inDesign document is formatted doesn’t account for gutter bleed. Which is so tricky and depends on the individual printer if they include it or not.

But I’m still in the process of tinkering with this template, and it’s all very very technical!

TLDR: Be careful toward the edges of the comic template if you ever use it! Or you might regret it!

Thanks for reading!