Argon Zark! is created directly on the computer with the following toys... er, I mean tools. In addition to links and information about the software and hardware, I've included links to some relevant resources of tips and tutorials. Last updated: July, 2003

Apple Power Mac G4 1.3.

Yes I know there are faster machines out now, but I'm waiting to see how the G5/Intel Mac thing is going to shake out before I buy a new box. I just got a new 23" Apple Cinema Display which I like a lot.

 

Just so you don't think it's necessary to have high-end equipment to do this kind of work, bear in mind that the first 30 or so pages of the first story were done on a faithful little Quadra 610 with 16 megs of RAM, 250 MB drive, a 25MHZ processor and a 15" Sony monitor.

 

Matrx Systems

I buy my hardware, and most of my software, from an Apple VAR (Value Added Reseller). You might find slightly cheaper prices online or in a computer chain store, but if you find a good VAR, the advantages far outweigh the small difference in price. I'm in the Philadelphia area and I deal with Doug White of Matrx Systems.

 

Wacom Intuos

6x8 pressure-sensitive graphics tablet. This is The Tool! Take up thy stylus and draw!  No trees were killed during the creation of the Argon Zark! webcomic. The entire comic is drawn directly on the computer with my trusty Wacom. Their name comes from "Wa", Japanese for harmony, and "Com" for computer, meaning a tool that puts one in harmony with a computer. Aptly named.

I've been using Wacom tablets for over 10 years and they are without question the best. Versions are available for both Mac and PC.

Model: The Graphire is inexpensive and good enough for most tasks. I carry a 4x5 Graphire around with my Powerbook.

For more serious work, like actually drawing Argon Zark! and doing digital illustration, I use an 6x8 Intuos.

The Intuos has more features, but the main difference is levels of pressure sensitivity. You wouldn't notice the difference unless you were actually drawing in Painter or Photoshop. If you're just applying color or want more precise control than a mouse, but are not really "drawing" or "painting" in the sense of creating digital art similar to the way you would with traditional media, the Graphire is probably good enough.

Size is a matter of choice. 4x5 is adequate for most tasks and convenient to carry around, but for drawing I like the 6x8. I've used bigger but haven't found them to be much better than 6x8 (this is a matter of taste, of course). I am contemplating the new wide-aspect models to go with the Cinema Display.

The Graphire 4x5 is about $100, 6x8 about $200. The Intuos 4x5 is about $200, 6x8 about $300.

 

Painter 8

If I have a single favorite computer graphics application, this is it. Rembrandt would have loved it. Does nifty stuff that even Photoshop can't. I actually draw the strip in Painter, its drawing tools and response to the pressure-sensitive tablet can't be beat. This is an amazing program with an uncanny ability to emulate traditional drawing and painting tools, and then take those tools into the digital beyond. Cool stuff.

If you tried a previous version and found the interface difficult to deal with, you owe it to yourself to try Painter 8.

Amazon's listing: Mac & Windows

 

Adobe Photoshop 7

Still the King Jumpjumping graphics app. Because of its unequaled selection tools, transparent layers and terrific filter suite, I do most of my image manipulation, compositing and special effects in Photoshop.

Amazon"s listing: Mac, Windows

 

Kai's Power Tools (KPT)

The toy box in the toolbox! Most of the ARGON ZARK! special effects start with this fantastic set of plug-ins for Photoshop. KPT and Bryce are the main reason I rarely play computer games.

Amazon's listing for KPT Collection: Mac & Windows (For both OS's as far as I can tell - Amazon doesn't list OS version f for this.)

 

Bryce 5

Absolute power in a box. Transforms you from a mere mortal to a maker of worlds, A 3-D application specialized for creating landscapes, real and surreal. I also use it to render some objects and interiors when I want a 3-D rendered look. The atmospheric effects are stunning.The "Virtual Conference Environment" and most of it's backgrounds were done in Bryce.

Amazon's listing: Mac & Windows

 

Artmatic

Created by Eric Wegner, creator of Bryce, this cool little app generates dazzling fractal patterns, and lets you control their parameters with almost infinite variety. Download the demo and play with it or just check out the gallery. Cyberdelic!

 

Once again I'll stress that, although it's nice to have access to the best tools, it's not necessary to use high-end tools to do good work.

Painter Classic

A stripped-down version of Painter with most of the cool drawing tools (about $99). If you like the program and decide you want the full version , the upgrade only costs the difference between the two, so you don't lose anything by trying the smaller version first. If you don't have a pressure sensitive tablet, you can frequently get Painter Classic bundled with an inexpensive 4x5 Wacom for not much more than the cost of the tablet alone.

 

Color It

For an inexpensive alternative to Photoshop for the Mac, try Color It from Microfrontier, a very powerful little image editor that's a steal at $50.

 

Paint Shop Pro

On the Windows side, try this very capable image editor (about $99).

Amazon's listing: Windows

 

I don't actually know of a current source for the font I use but these are close and the best I'm aware of.

ComicCraft/Active Images

The folks at ComicCraft make a number of balloon lettering fonts that are used professionally in the comic book industry. These are expensive but very good. ComicCrazy is their most versatile (and wildly expensive) font ($395!!! Ouch!). It includes lower case letters which are uncommon in comic fonts. WildWords is a more reasonable alternative at $129. Astro City is a nice, somewhat older style also at $129. They also have a selection of display lettering for sound effects and specialty lettering for comics.

 

WhizBang

A less expensive alternative is from Studio Daedalus at $35. They even have an older, more limited version (1.2) for $24

 

Blambot Comic Fonts

I've just come across this outfit recently. I haven't had a chance to use their fonts yet, but they look pretty good. They have a wide selection of comic book fonts, some of which are free for use by independent publishers and for non-profit use. The Pro fonts are very reasonable ($20 - $30) and the free ones are, of course, free. Check out their license.

 

BBEdit

I write my HTML in BBEdit from Bare Bones Software . BBEdit isn't as "friendly" as some of the other editors, but its powerful text editing, scripting, global search and replace, Grepp search, template, and includes features make it an outstanding tool for anyone who is doing serious web site work on a Mac. You can download a save-disabled demo and get a nice feel for how capable it is. Even if you don't want to invest in the full program, get their free version of BBEdit Lite. Mac only.

 

Macromedia Homesite.

Often mentioned as the closest you can get to BBEdit on the Windows side.

Amazon's listing for Homesite: Windows

 

Adobe GoLive 6.0

An excellent professional-level WYSIWYG HTML editors/site management tool. I use BBEdit to write my code, and GoLive for site management, table editing, and imagemaps. The site management features are nothing short of amazing.

Amazon's listing: Mac, Windows

 

Macromedia Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is comparable to GoLive and also excellent. Dreamweaver has become the defacto standard for WYSISWYG HTML editor/site management tools. It's a fine tool, but it's unfortunate that it's overshadowed GoLive, which I think is a bit stronger and easier for a professional to use. Dreamweaver is a bit more helpful for those with less experience.

Amazon's listing: Mac, Windows

 

Front Page

I usually don't do this, but I'm going to take the time to disrecommend a piece of software. If you're thinking of buying Front Page, please consider one of the professional level editors above (GoLive or Dreamweaver) instead. Yes, Front Page is cheap, but in this case you get what you pay for. Like most Microsoft products that write HTML (Word, etc.), Front Page writes terrible, junky code full of proprietary garbage. I can't tell you how many tedious hours I've wasted cleaning up sites that well-meaning but misinformed clients fouled up by editing them with Front Page. Like many Microsoft products it's popular because Microsoft pushes it in your face, not because it's good.

 

GoLive & Dreamweaver

Both Dreamweaver and GoLive (above) write dHTML, provide a palette-based environment for creating Style Sheets and write some JavaScript. I like GoLive because I think the site management tools are a bit stronger, and because of its Adobe-style interface. Many people prefer Dreamweaver. You can't go wrong with either if you want a professional Web authoring tool.

 

Style Master

A great little Style Sheet editor for Macintosh from Western Civilization. Their web site is also a useful source of CSS information.

 

PhotoGIF

A plug-in for Photoshop from Boxtop Software. (Windows / Mac OS 9 only). Although Photoshop's "Save for Web" feature is very convenient, PhotoGIF still gives more control and allows you to really squeeze high quality GIFs into their smallest file size. Until I switched to OXS X, I used it for all of my professional web design work and the GIFs on the AZ site. I also like their ProJPEG plug-in, which I used to make the JPEGs of the Argon Zark! comic pages. Both PhotoGIF and ProJPEG work as filters from within Photoshop or other image editors. You can download them over the net in save-disabled versions and make them fully functional on paying the fee. They're excellent products at $45 and $35 respectively. You can also buy them bundled for $70. These are available for Mac and Windows. I wish they would carbonize them for OS X.

 

Macromedia Fireworks

I think Fireworks is stronger than Adobe's Imageready. Fireworks is vector-based and is sort of a mini-Freehand specialized for the Web. It also includes a nice Export feature that, like Imageready and Photoshop, allows you to preview your graphic in 4 different versions simultaneously to determine the best choice for file size and image quality. It also is a strong GIF animation editor. (So is Adobe's Imageready, which ships with Photoshop.)

I not only use Fireworks to output my web graphics when size and control is critical, it's become my primary tool for doing initial web site design. The flexibility of the vector shapes, easy-to-manipulate text boxes, as well as layer sets and good vector drawing tools make it a nice choice for thinking up site designs. More flexible than Photoshop, with better web graphics features than Illustrator.

Amazon's listing for Fireworks: Mac, Windows

 

 

GIFmation

Boxtop Software, who makes PhotoGIF and ProJPEG (above), also makes GIFmation 2.0 (Mac OS 9 and Windows), for making animated Gifs. It's $50, but you can get a 30 day free demo from their web site. It features a clear interface and rich feature set. I now use Fireworks and Imageready, but before I switched to OS X, I used GIFmation to do the bulk of my GIF animations.

 

GIF Construction set

For Windows

 

WhirlGIF for UNIX

For Unix

 

Fireworks and Imageready

Macromedia Fireworks (above) and Adobe Imageready (ships with Photoshop) are good GIF animation tools. Fireworks has nice tweening features and Imageready has a good interface and convenient cell preview windows.

 

Little known fact:

Macromedia Flash (below) is an excellent tool for making GIF animations. (What?) You heard me right: Flash is a great tool for GIF animations. Instead of the tedious frame by frame construction involved with a lot of GIF animation building, you can set up and manipulate your motions as tweens, adjust and change them, alter the timing, turn layers on and off and manipulate your animation in most of the same ways you would handle a Flash animation, and then simply save it out as a GIF animation! If you have some knowledge of GIF animation file size factors and know how to keep the file size down, this is a great way to construct easily editable complex GIF animations. The only drawback is that there seems to be a bug in the Mac OS X version of Flash MX that crashes the app when you try to save out a GIF animation with a palette other than web safe. Till they fix that, I'll save out my Flash-created GIF animations in Flash 5.

 

Flash

The Flash plug-in is becoming so popular (95%+ according to some sources) that it's now reasonable to expect most people to be able to view Flash files. And Flash is so amazing and versatile that it's become an indispensable part of the Web.

Amazon's listing: Mac, Windows

 

I'm hoping to expand this section to include some of my own techniques for Argon Zark!, but for now I'll try to provide some how-to links for graphics and web design.

See the Computer Graphics section of the Books page.

Painter Techniques.

Tips, techniques and tutorials.

 

Painter Tips

Some tips by Jeremy Sutton, author of Fractal Design Painter Creative Techniques.

 

Artistry Online

Site for Artistry Magazine, which is largely devoted to Painter Techniques. Some online tutorials.

 

Tips and techniques

Some of Adobe's own tips and techniques, including info on preparing images for the web.

 

The Pixel Foundry

A good source of info on Photoshop, including Kai's Power Tips and Tricks.

 

Photoshop Web Reference.

An excellent overview of the app, it's tools pallets and features, examples of filter effects, etc. also links to other Photoshop sites. Nicely organized and presented.

 

Ultimate Photoshop.

Searchable lists of Photoshop sites arranged by category. Tips and techniques, tutorials, archives of filters and actions, forums and more.

 

The Bryce Forum

For KPT Bryce, stop in on The Bryce Forum, The Bryce Forum Gallery, and The Terraformer's Guild. (I'm not sure what the current status of the Terraformer's Guild is.) Also check out the Bryce Gallery from Eric Wenger, creator of Bryce.

 

See the Web design section of the Books page.

WebMonkey

HotWired's guide. They do really good basic tutorials and also have lots of advanced stuff.

 

WebReference.com

The works.

 

WebReview

more good reference, great stuff on Style Sheets.

 

Devhead

The works, from ZDNet

 

Web Developer's Virtual Library

Just that. Lots of good information and links to other resources, pretty well organized.

 

A List Apart

Online news and forum of ideas for Web designers

 

Web Developer's Journal

News, information and opinion

 

Web Developer Channel

Internet.com's listing of lots of associated sites, some of which are listed individually above. A huge amount of information is accessible from this point.

 

See the GoLive section of the Books page.

Adobe's tutorials

Quick time movie training videos and user forums.

 

GoLive Heaven

News, techniques and forums.

 

GoLive Headquarters

News techniques and forums.

 

RealWorld Adobe GoLive

The support site for this excellent book is informative in its own right.

 

See the Style Sheets section of the Books page.

If you want an idea of how powerful CSS is, spend some contemplative time in the delightful CSS Zen Garden

Click through the "Select a design" links. Every page you see is a version of the very same HTML page, controlled by different style sheets. Even the images (the pages do use different images) are called from the style sheets as background images. Amazing. The CSS is there for you to see and learn from. This is a little advanced so you may want to get a grasp of the basics first.

 

WebReview

Good stuff, including an overview of the CSS specification, and a definitive listing of CSS browser compatibility. Essential, since the big problem with CSS, (As well as HTML, JavaScript and everything else on the Web, is wonky implementation on the part of the browsers. I keep an offline version of the browser compatibility chart for quick reference.

 

WebMonkey

HotWired's guide. Features Mulder's excellent CSS tutorial.

 

WebReference.com

Part of their HTML resources and tutorials.

 

House of Style

Good info about CSS from the authors of the StyleMaster CSS editor for Mac (See above in software)

 

W3C style sheets

Info from the horses mouth, also very useful are their testing pages in which you can see how CSS declarations actually work (or not) in the browsers.

 

RealWorld Adobe GoLive is a site in support of the excellent book by the same name.

The site is informative in its own right and you can actually download the book in PDF form or read it online in HTML. Here is the CSS section, which, while specific to GoLive, is also a nice short introduction to CSS.

Thou's JavaScript Tutorial

Part of HotWired's Webmonkey site.

 

Doc JavaScript

Columns and tips from webreference.com

 

The JavaScript Directory

From developer.com, columns and canned scripts

 

ScriptHead

Part of ZDNet's DevHead site

 

IRT.org

I go searching here when I can't answer a question quickly elsewhere. They have huge lists of FAQs that cover a lot of territory.

 

Coolnerds JavaScript

Reference, links and canned scripts.

 

Timothy's JavaScript Examples

Lots of canned scripts.

 

JavaScript guide

Netscape's own reference (They should know, they created JavaScript.)

 

Lynda Weinman

Lynda has become the most recognized expert on Web graphics. This site is largely in support of her many books, but also informative in its own right.

 

The Bandwidth Conservation Society.

Excellent information on keeping web graphics small

 

GIF.com

Internet.com's Web graphics resources

 

Doc Ozone

Great general information on web graphics, including transparency, lighting effects, buttons, tiled backgrounds and more, in theHands On tutorials. His site itself is a prime example of creative (and somewhat enigmatic) web design.

 

I teach a course in Macromedia Flash at the Delaware College of Art and Design. I have a class site that includes an extensive list of Flash Resources.

LiveMotion tips

From C-Net's Builder.com

 

Tutorials

From Adobe, as well as user forums. The best of the tutorials are their Quicktime movie LiveMotion training videos. To my mind Livemotion plus these videos is the quickest path to doing Flash animations.

If you're really serious, though, learn to use Flash

 

Draw!

This is a newsstand magazine with an accompanying website. The magazine chocked full of tutorials, articles and artwork from comics pros about all aspects of comic book art and illustration. The contributors really know their stuff and so does the editor, Mike Manley, a long-time comics pro himself. The magazine is well-designed, lavishly illustrated and always full of great techniques.

 

ComicColors.com

A wonderful site with contributions from a number of people. Tips and tutorials on comic book coloring, penciling, inking, lettering and writing. Also includes galleries a message board, links to resources and more.

 

The Drawing Board

Tips, techniques, tutorials, articles, advice, interviews and other resources for pencilers, inkers, writers, colorists, letterers, etc. Part of the Figma.com site which also includes 4-Color Review and The Launchpad, a webzine for aspiring comic creators.

 

Comic Book Art Tips

Professional pencilling and inking techniques from Gerry Alanguilan.

 

Creating Comics

A good list of links to sites about writing, pencilling, inking, coloring, submitting, promoting and publishing comics, much more extensive than I can give here.

 

Comic Book Inking Survey

Larry Dempsey's Comic Book Inking Survey. Questions asked of over 200 comic book inkers, plus tips, techniques and more.

 

Wahoo

(ComicBookWebsites.com) a comic book sites search engine. Here is their list of sites devoted to creating comics.

Draw Comics

Interviews articles, gallery and more.

 

Joe Kubert's World of Cartooning

An offshoot of the school in New Jersey that is dedicated to teaching comic book art. They also have correspondence courses.

Quebecor Printing, Inc.

The Argon Zark! book was printed by Quebecor Printing, Inc. (Impremieres Quebecor) in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. They did a beautiful job. I could have gone to a cheaper printer without the hassle of shipping across the border and all, but their work with this kind of printing is unmatched. They do most of the high-end printing for the major comic companies. My sales rep was Juan Campbell (514) 494-5451. Both he and Sales Coordinator Annie Dauphin were extremely helpful in my quest to achieve a print quality that would do justice to the intense color of the images.

 

Copy Craft Printers

I recently had Argon Zark! business cards printed by Copy Craft in Lubbock Texas. Not only was I impressed with the quality of the work and the excellent price (they did a beautiful job from my digital file), I was knocked out with the fact that they got a last-minute rush order to me ahead of schedule. If you deal with printers very often you'll be impressed with the level of service. They're also a full-service printer. My sales rep there is Jaime (pronounced hi-may) Todd. Check out the site, or you can e-mail him or call them at (806) 794-7752.