Comic art in Manga Studio
Friday, October 14, 2011 at 09:10AM 
Dexter and Dinger is a comic about a boy and his dog that love baseball. They are either late for practice, playing against their arch rivals, collecting baseball cards or pitching with an oven mitt instead of a pitchers mitt. Lucky for Dexter he has a Dinger. Dinger is to Dexter what Spot the cat is to Hong Kong Phooey. Dinger usually watches all that goes on with great amusement but helps Dexter keep his head on straight.
The comic has evolved over the years in it's look. Like most of my work it started out in vector form, but I wanted the look of a traditional comic strip or comic book. I recently found that in SmithMicro's software Manga Studio. MS allows you to create a comic from the blue pencil sketches to the panels all the way to an inked color piece. Best of all it allows you to draw with varying widths using a thick thin brush.
Out of the box the software was pretty easy to use especially when armed with illustrator Eric Merced's MS tutorials. If you purchase the software I highly recommend Eric's tutorial. It got me up and running in no time and helped me finished the piece very quickly.
The best news of all was the email from the client that said they loved the new look of the comic.
