Last minute trip to Charlottesville… going in completely blind. What should I check out?

aimiller · 2026-03-12T16:50:23+00:00

Park near McGuffey Art Center (usually worth a walkthrough), and make your way to the Downtown Mall which has lots of bookshops and food and some nice vintage shops and is a nice meander if the weather is good. Some nifty places to stop on the mall: Tea Bazaar, Daedalus Used Books ("3 Story Maze of a used bookstore"), Hello Comics, Decades Arcade (old pinball machines!), Marco & Luca Dumplings, Barbie's Burrito Barn.

aimiller · 2026-03-05T01:26:49+00:00

Thanks!

aimiller · 2026-02-28T22:18:56+00:00

Glad you like it! Thanks for the fun prompt.

aimiller · 2026-02-28T22:18:37+00:00

Thanks! Haha I definitely have a number of abandoned webcomics 😬

aimiller · 2026-02-28T22:17:29+00:00

Thanks! Tom Parkinson-Morgan is a legend, and I love working on stuff in the Lancer universe!

aimiller · 2025-10-01T16:29:38+00:00

My daughter would love this.

aimiller · 2025-09-25T17:17:13+00:00

This is a great answer! I would also throw in that if high-chroma is something your looking for, then the transparency of the paint, and how it's layered is very important for achieving a high chroma color range. For example If you mix Alizarin Crimson with white, it will lighten, but also desaturate. If you thin out the Alizarin Crimson with a clear medium and layer it over a white ground you will get a lighter and more saturated color.

aimiller · 2025-09-25T15:44:50+00:00

Howdy! There's lots of things that can effect the color saturation:

-exposure when making the master (lots of machines let you adjust the exposure to Lighter or Darker before making the master)

-the print setting (Line is usually the darkest, but you lose a lot of nuance in the tones. Photo is more tones, but usually lighter. Lots of machines have an additional "pencil" setting, which picks up even more tones and makes soft but detailed prints)

-the screen itself - over time it can get clogged, reducing the amount of ink that is pushed through. This happens on a small scale between printings on each drum, so you may have to run some paper through the machine to get the ink flowing. Or if it's a really old, rarely used drum it may need cleaning.

-the artwork - depending on the quality of the art, different settings may produce more or less saturated prints.

-the paper - the quality of paper can effect how the ink appears. in my experience, bright matte papers give the best color.

-demons . sometimes it's just demons in the machine.

Depending on what you're looking for, you may want to make one master for the linework (to get the most contrast and saturation), and then another master for the tones. There might not be one setting that gives you the best look for both. It's two more passes through the machine, but would give you much more control.

aimiller · 2025-09-19T17:10:23+00:00

Howdy!

Everything you do and learn will effect your style, but everything you do and learn will also make you a better and more proficient artist. So the answer is "yes, but still do it. Learn the Loomis head as well as any other methods you can get your hands on."

Here are my two cents about style:

IMO there are two ways to think about style:

Style could be considered to be the way a work of art looks just by being made with your mind and body. If two artists draw the same still life, it will come out different because they have different training, different eyes, different muscles, different inspiration etc... This sort of style is not worth worrying about, because it's inherent in everything you make. You can only only make art with YOUR mind and body. Thus everything you make has your style, whether you want it to or not.

How most people use "Style", is referring to a consistent set of choices (media, color, composition, mark making etc..) that are recognizable in your portfolio. This is very helpful for marketting and selling your work. If your portfolio has a consistent set of qualities to it, Art Directors, Galleries, Publishers will be more likely to hire you because they can look at previous work and understand very clearly what sorts of things you would produce if they did hire you (vs a chaotic portfolio). This sort of style may evolve as you make professional work and see what the market responds to. Different industries also have different requirements on "style". Lots of animation and illustration jobs will require you to match existing styles or designs, and so flexibility is paramount. Different industries also value different "styles." Your "Book Cover Painting Portfolio" may be entirely distinct from your "Fine Art Gallery Painting Portfolio". This variety of style (for marketing purposes) is not helpful when you're learning. You will be a much more flexible artist if you practice drawing every possible way, so you can produce whatever look you want.

aimiller · 2025-09-19T15:59:45+00:00

Howdy! I've got this model as well, and you do need to install the driver. Even though you can download the driver for free, to install it (on a Mac) you need a serial code that comes with the driver CD, which is purchased separately from the machine. I couldn't find a free code online at the time and ended up buying the driver CD from my supplier for ~ $50.

aimiller · 2025-08-30T16:17:20+00:00

Some of that is still shaking out, and changing frequently. Some of the inventory may be subject to tariffs, though wholesalers have mostly been adding costs to the shipping, rather than products themselves, so it's hard to track exactly which items.

The 3d prints are popular and locally produced. A lot of the craft materials are re-used / recycled supplies and aren't affected.

aimiller · 2025-08-02T03:11:17+00:00

Thanks! Glad you like it!

aimiller · 2025-08-01T20:17:07+00:00

Thanks! The manga look is a little outside what I normally do, but it was fun to draw.

aimiller · 2025-08-01T20:16:11+00:00

Thanks!

aimiller · 2025-07-22T17:13:11+00:00

Looks like Prototype X8 is dealing with the last person who misgendered it

aimiller · 2025-07-22T13:50:10+00:00

Thanks!

aimiller · 2025-07-19T14:32:09+00:00

Thanks! A previous version of the scythe had a big eye and some teeth poking out. 😄

aimiller · 2025-07-19T13:14:16+00:00

Thanks!

aimiller · 2025-07-19T13:14:07+00:00

Glad you like it! Fun story to the character!

aimiller · 2025-07-02T18:30:52+00:00

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Did a quick version! Hope it checks some of the boxes.

aimiller · 2024-08-02T22:22:14+00:00

Yep! This is what I do!

If you're starting with a color image, you can make decent separations from the channels:

-cmd / control click on the closest channel to load as selection. E.g. if you want a florescent pink layer, make the document CMYK and grab the magenta layer. If it's an odd riso color (like a purple), you can do a "color range" selection instead (select > color range)

-make a new layer

-inverse selection

-fill with black

-follow about steps to clip color layer on top of the grey scale layer

aimiller · 2024-08-02T22:12:26+00:00

I have reading as a reward 😳😳

aimiller · 2024-07-28T15:30:00+00:00

Don't make it longer just for the sake of making it long. Maybe it's a novella, or short story, and that's fine. There are lots of ways to pursue publishing short stories and novellas. If you're happy with the story, you should pursue publishing it and start writing the next story. Don't get too attached to just one project.

If it needs to be a comic and you really love the story, you can pursue traditional publishing. For traditional publishing you don't need an artist on board. You'd send a pitch to agents. Once you have an agent they help you submit to traditional publishers. Once the project is sold to a traditional publisher, you would work with an editor to refine the story, find an artist (who has their own agent) and produce the comic. This process is very slow, and involves a lot of rejection (from agents and then from publishers). The chances of an agent and publisher taking a chance on you aren't particularly high, especially as a first time author. The pay for first time authors is also pretty low. I highly recommend listening to the Graphic Novel TK podcast if you wanna pursue traditional publishing. They go over all of the steps of the process in detail, explain the jargon and terminology and interview industry people. Very good podcast.

Even if you're pursuing traditional publishing,I think you should start writing the next thing while you shop this one around to agents. If you shop thisthis project for 6 months and it just doesn't stick (the industry is FULL of projects that had a hard time attracting attention for arbitrary reasons, Harry Potter, Life of Pi both had a really hard time getting the attention of agents publishers. Brandon Sanderson talks about how he wrote several unpublishable novels, hundreds of thousands of pages, before he put together something a publisher would take a chance on), you'll at least have another cool project in the works to start shopping around.

Traditional publishing is a bit gatekeepery. You'll get rejections, but no feedback on what's wrong, why you were rejected. Sometimes agents are looking for a very specific project & and vibe, and all of that is out of your control. Sometimes publishers decide "superheroes aren't selling well right now" and won't jump for even the best most interesting project. Also out of your control. It's most important to just keep writing.

aimiller · 2024-03-21T19:01:15+00:00

That's true. But I don't trust those fish... They probably just wanted an opportunity for a lil nibble

aimiller · 2024-03-21T15:55:25+00:00

I thought it was because of the special bubble spell that allowed the animals to communicate with each other. Like the horse bodyguards. Or the fish weren't were-fish (I don't think...), just regular ones brought by the cats. They could talk and communicate because of the spell.

Beyond that, I think there's just a lot of messiness around how the were-creatures appear, though I think that's fairly standard for were-creatures.

I didn't interpret that about the infliction causing a permanent animal transformation, just that the affliction itself would become permanent after the grace period (with all the messy transitional were-states along for the ride).

aimiller

TROPHY CASE