Q: what's your name / How old are you / where do you study / etc?
A: Refer to front page blurb!
Q: How long have you been drawing? How long have you been drawing anime or CGing?
A: I've been doodling since elementary school like everyone else. I started drawing anime fanart with traditional media in grade 4 or 5, and started drawing digitally after I got a tablet at christmas of 2001 or 2002!
Q: Have you had art education?
A: No; I am mostly self-taught.
Q: Can you teach me how to use photoshop / write html / write php / make a chatbox / etc?
A: As much as I'd like to help out, I can only answer very specific questions/problems. For general tutorials for anything and everything, Google is your friend!
Q: What do you use to draw your manga pages?
A: I use letter-size printer paper (8.5"x11"), 0.3mm and 0.5mm HB mechanical pencil, Photoshop CS with tones downloaded online or shared by friends.
Psychobob is an excellent screentone source for webcomics.
Q: How do you draw your manga pages?
A: I sketch lightly to plan out where everything goes (panels, bubbles, figures), then I "ink" the sketch with a pencil. Then I scan it, adjust the levels in Photoshop to make the pencil lines appear darker, then cel-shade it and add effects with tones or whatever else at hand. Lastly, I put on a layer of screentone on Overlay mode to give the page a texture, and draw out a fake scan-shadow in the middle.
Q: How long does it take you to draw each page?
A: About a whole day.
Q: Do you have it published? Why don't you publish it?
A: I plan on at least self-publishing each volume as I complete them. I have never pitched to a company because the series is not set in stone, and I would still like to improve the project before I try to make any bold moves.
Q: How did you create the story/characters? Who/what inspired you?
A: Blackbird was the result of an effort to create a story for my original characters, not the spawn of inspiration. Although I am inspired by a lot of different things, I can't really name anything that I can call the root of Blackbird.
Q: How long is this series going to be?
A: This is a very meaningless answer, but very, very, very long ):
Q: Can we exchange links?
A: I am not accepting any link exchanges at the moment ): link housekeeping has been bothersome in the past.
Q: How did you make this site?
A: I wrote it from scratch on Notepad using html and php.
Q: How did you make your forum / manga reader / chatbox?
A: I've obtained the chatbox from
http://cbox.ws/. The forum is phpBB. I wrote the manga reader myself using php.
Q: Who is your host? Is it free?
A: I am currently using paid hosting from
DreamHost.
Q: Can you host me?
A: Sorry but I only provide free hosting for friends ):
