I have spent most of my Getting Some Art Done Time playing in bits of Photoshop I have known about for a while but never really explored - seriously it's a maze. I have pay out string to find my way back to my desk sometimes.

I have this idea that I want to make my next comic - paper one - look like a real comic. Printing technology is getting too good. I like the texture of old fibrous absorbent wood pulp paper and the sloppy soaked-in inks they used up until the 80s? 90s?

These days comics are printed so well, on such good quality paper, that people can use gradations of colour and detail unheard of 30 years ago. If you want imperfections you have to build them in. You can't rely on rattling old printing presses shaking something loose or overworked underskilled careless printers to randomly do it for you.

Comics look too slick these days.



So I've been messing around channels and coming up with groovy new ways to make my art look messy(er). The big break was finding a button that splits a flattened CMYK image into editable greyscale images each one corresponding to a different channel... I can see your eyes glazing over but this is seriously exciting stuff for me. That and finding the option in Illustrator (that I could have done with knowing about ages ago) that lets me preserve transparency when autotracing imported PSDs.... Trust me. It's been a good night.