JohnChalmers+SandraMarrs=Metaphrog

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The sword and the stone.

(It’s tofu in case you ask)🙂

Snack🍓🍒

Bluesky just labelled the image in our last post as adult content, but it’s just the cover for the new Captain Underpants manga 😃 Glad to see they’re being thorough though in their content checking 🙂

Super cool!

Our favourites books from childhood here are Tintin (for both of us), the Fantômette series (for Sandra but it’s not known in the UK), Alice in Wonderland (for John) and one that we discovered later: Where the Wild Things Are.

Our favourites books from childhood here are Tintin (for both of us), the Fantômette series (for Sandra but it’s not known in the UK), Alice in Wonderland (for John) and one that we discovered later: Where the Wild Things Are.

Book cover for Funnybones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Book cover for Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins

Book cover for The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones.

Book cover for When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr

In honour of the great Allan Ahlberg, who died yesterday, I wanted to use this #KidsBooksFriday to celebrate all the great children’s writers who formed us as readers. For me, along with Ahlberg, it was Pat Hutchins, Judith Kerr and Diana Wynne Jones. Who would you celebrate? #KidLitUK #KidLit

And one great message we took away from it is to never stop learning. It’s all about discovering new things.

… captures that feeling and the excitement of discovering this incredibly dynamic medium, and passes it on to the next generations. Especially loved the pages where it breaks the 4th wall to tell the reader how comics works, and the characters interact with the pages themselves.

🧵Loved The Cartoonists Club by @goraina.bsky.social and @scottmccloud.bsky.social ! It’s a ‘how to’ disguised as fiction for kids. A love letter to making comics. The comics community is one of those where everyone involved is there because they truly love comics. This graphic novel…
#KidsGN📚💬

hand holding a book in front of a bookcase

Forgot to show the other book post I got yesterday

Unfairies by @huwaaron.bsky.social all about warring tribes of fairies in your garden

#KidLitUK #BookSky 💙📚 #GraphicNovel

We’re so hooked on The Killing right now (the Danish ones). Yeah, we know, catching on this a bit late. But it’s seriously the best crime series of the last 2 or 3 decades. They sure know how to make stories!

#KidsGN📚💬

It’s like they’re trying to put small shops out of business.

We said we loved the trailer and @scholasticuk.bsky.social (thank you so much!) sent us this sampler! It’s funny, sweet and rebellious all at the same time. Nora Nightsky by Rebecca Lewis-Oakes, illustrated by Becka Moor is out in September. You can pre-order now. #KidLitUk #KidLit

Help!😭😂

Probably cause a lot of people make digital comics, not printable ones.

We just export to Photoshop from CSP then refill all the flats with the correct CMYK values. With the contiguous unticked for replacing multiple areas of the same color.

It is! If you think about it coldly it doesn’t make sense to think about creativity before money, in the regular world, but viva diversity! It’s a way of life🙂

Yeah so do we. We don’t want muddy colors with k in it. Also doing flats in CSP then exporting to psd photoshop, then adusting CMYK in flats, then shading in photoshop. Always hoping for shortcuts though 🙂

Yeah, quite convoluted. We’re flatting in CSP and then filling in the correct CMYK values in Photoshop before finishing the coloring. It adds extra steps and extra time. Flatting CSP in easier than Photoshop though, for filling in where’s there’s big gaps in the inking especially

Ok. Thanks. Wondering when they’re gonna get with the programme and update this thing. Will keep on coloring in Photoshop, then.

PS: we don't have the latest CSP upgrade, just the old one before they went to the subscription option.

#ClipStudioPaint Q: is it possible to work or export files from CSP to Photoshop (as psd files) in true CMYK mode? We've tried but it exports files rendering colors with black (K), but we want colors with no K, just CMY. Noticed there's a recent CSP update so wondering if they've changed that now?

Newsletter - John Chalmers & Sandra Marrs NEWSLETTER In Graphic Novel Life, we share our experience of making graphic novels, the creative process, some news and more. Fill in the form below to sign up. And to give you a flavour, you can read...

creators often have a side day job, or a spouse who earns a salary that cushions things a little. We don’t. It’s like living on a tightrope.

Sign up to our newsletter for more like this. Link in bio. metaphrog.com/newsletter

and any of them can vanish at any point. That’s why it’s important to diversify your income. There’s no security. No sick pay. No holiday pay. No pension. You gotta love it to do it. Authors/illustrators/comic

⭐️Art sales: sale of original art and prints, and fees from exhibitions etc.

⚠️Warning! Earning money from making graphic novels (or indeed from any art) is hard! You’re earning money from your wits alone. Any of these income streams fluctuates from year to year,

⭐️Commissions: when a publisher, organisation or individual asks you to make an image or a comic/graphic novel/prose about something specific that they want.