Monday, February 28, 2005
Art Supplies Used at Continuity
For the most part, what goes on here and pays the bills requires drawing and marker coloring.Paper - Layout Bond, tracing, and xerox paper are used for commercial work.Strathmore 1 ply or 2 ply is used for comic pages.Pencils - Neal's favorite are Mongol #2 which at least at one time seemed to be the most popular brand. However a company called Sanborn bought Mongol and then discontinued making them so that they wouldn't end up competing with themselves. Thus we are left with Dixon Ticonderoga pencils that break in the electric pencil sharpener and have those tiny hard chips in the lead that make it feel like you have a grain of sand between the pencil tip and the paper. We're still looking for a quality brand pencil that we'd be happy with. No luck so far.Inking - When using India ink, Neal uses high quality sable brushes and inking pen. Some comic work and all commercial work are done with pentels and brush pens. A brand of pen called Fountain Pentel, made in Japan, is used to do thin brush stroke lines. Pilot Fine Liners and Pentel Sign pens are still found at the studio but less and less frequently used. Thicker brush stroke lines were done with a Tombo brush pen then a brand called Brushpen from Japan. The problem with the Tombos is that the ink smudges. The Brushpen from Japan offers a really cool effect in that it isn't very wet and therfore gives a drybrush effect that Neal had fun with. However when you print art work you need a solid black line in most cases. We've recently found the possible answer. The Copic Multi liner BM. These are nice and juicy and give a solid black color. They also make a thinner version, the Multi-Liner BS, but we've found that for some reason, the thinner one bleeds. Now a lot of work here at Continuity is inked in Fountain Pentel and Multi-Liner BM.Marker Coloring - For years, we used strictly "ab Markers" by Chartpak. They were the wettest and had the best colors. Some years ago we discovered that you could color on a xerox with Pantone and Prismacolor. This made things a lot easier for us because every now and then a mistake is made and you can't erase marker. We didn't need to color originals anymore. Pantone markers by TRIA are slightly better than the Prismacolor markers and come with a big feature the others don't have; you can refill them with TRIA dyes. We still use the "ab" markers too but limit it to backgrounds. They're still the best for big areas. A while back we used Design Markers but mainly for airbrushing because they developed a great little nozzle that you could attach a design marker too for airbrushing. They discontinued those. Can't imagine why. Recently we made another discovery. Copic markers. These are used by Japanese animators and designers. These seem to be the best by far for a few reasons. #1 they have a huge amount of colors. #2 they are refillable. #3 Airbrush attachment. #4 Color on Xeroxes. #5 you can change the tips from chisel to different size brush tips. We bought a set and tried them out. Had a great time with them. The brush tips open up the coloring possibilities a great deal. We recommend them highly.
Misc.Colored Pencils- PrismacolorAirbrush - AWATA A, B and C. OlympusDr. Martin DyesPremo! Sculpey Sculpey III Sculpey SuperFlex Super Elasticlay Super Sculpey ¶ 6:52 PM
For the most part, what goes on here and pays the bills requires drawing and marker coloring.Paper - Layout Bond, tracing, and xerox paper are used for commercial work.Strathmore 1 ply or 2 ply is used for comic pages.Pencils - Neal's favorite are Mongol #2 which at least at one time seemed to be the most popular brand. However a company called Sanborn bought Mongol and then discontinued making them so that they wouldn't end up competing with themselves. Thus we are left with Dixon Ticonderoga pencils that break in the electric pencil sharpener and have those tiny hard chips in the lead that make it feel like you have a grain of sand between the pencil tip and the paper. We're still looking for a quality brand pencil that we'd be happy with. No luck so far.Inking - When using India ink, Neal uses high quality sable brushes and inking pen. Some comic work and all commercial work are done with pentels and brush pens. A brand of pen called Fountain Pentel, made in Japan, is used to do thin brush stroke lines. Pilot Fine Liners and Pentel Sign pens are still found at the studio but less and less frequently used. Thicker brush stroke lines were done with a Tombo brush pen then a brand called Brushpen from Japan. The problem with the Tombos is that the ink smudges. The Brushpen from Japan offers a really cool effect in that it isn't very wet and therfore gives a drybrush effect that Neal had fun with. However when you print art work you need a solid black line in most cases. We've recently found the possible answer. The Copic Multi liner BM. These are nice and juicy and give a solid black color. They also make a thinner version, the Multi-Liner BS, but we've found that for some reason, the thinner one bleeds. Now a lot of work here at Continuity is inked in Fountain Pentel and Multi-Liner BM.Marker Coloring - For years, we used strictly "ab Markers" by Chartpak. They were the wettest and had the best colors. Some years ago we discovered that you could color on a xerox with Pantone and Prismacolor. This made things a lot easier for us because every now and then a mistake is made and you can't erase marker. We didn't need to color originals anymore. Pantone markers by TRIA are slightly better than the Prismacolor markers and come with a big feature the others don't have; you can refill them with TRIA dyes. We still use the "ab" markers too but limit it to backgrounds. They're still the best for big areas. A while back we used Design Markers but mainly for airbrushing because they developed a great little nozzle that you could attach a design marker too for airbrushing. They discontinued those. Can't imagine why. Recently we made another discovery. Copic markers. These are used by Japanese animators and designers. These seem to be the best by far for a few reasons. #1 they have a huge amount of colors. #2 they are refillable. #3 Airbrush attachment. #4 Color on Xeroxes. #5 you can change the tips from chisel to different size brush tips. We bought a set and tried them out. Had a great time with them. The brush tips open up the coloring possibilities a great deal. We recommend them highly.
Misc.Colored Pencils- PrismacolorAirbrush - AWATA A, B and C. OlympusDr. Martin DyesPremo! Sculpey Sculpey III Sculpey SuperFlex Super Elasticlay Super Sculpey ¶ 6:52 PM
