Ames Guide guide!

To accompany a post on my new Making Comics course site.
makingcomics.spiltink.org/ames...
Get my comics here.
www.spiltink.org/
Help me get my comics done, and even get private tutoring, sign up to my Patreon!
/ salgood

[@petemarquez8759]

Thanks a bunch, always wondered how this tool is used, I didn't want to read the instructions because I read too many reviews complaining about how hard this is. You made it simple to understand and now my brother and I can proceed with the graphic novel that we're creating. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

[@faustochinchilla1915]

Thank yo...fo...the info...brbrother.i purchased an awesome guide...now I can get started...thanks again...si chin

[@ruthcarter8895]

Man, I needed this!😊❤

[@belle7437]

I didn’t know that circle can be rotated lmao 😂 Also, your voice is so soothing.😊

[@philjudd3473]

Thanks for this...brilliant and clear explanation

[@BrendanMcGinley]

This is very useful, thank you so much.

[@cheesegoddess1]

Thank you!

[@Phrophesy]

Yes, you're the very best!!!

[@megdel8]

So helpful!! I appreciate the in depth explanation. Also, your voice is very soothing hahaha. Do you know what the angle of the slanted side is?? I do copperplate and struggle with actually drafting work.

[@Copperjewels]

megdel8 if you place the slanted side against the ruler, it will give you upright lines at 55 degree slant to the right for copperplate and Spencerian.

[@juliofalkenhagen]

love it, thanks for this!

[@adardarnov2445]

Very helpful

[@EastofSublime]

Thanks so much! I have to ask... why the blue pencil first? Easy to see? Hard to erase?

[@Salgood]

It's col-erase pencil, so no it's easy to erase! And a light blue, in fact because it's easy to tell apart and ignore over the black of ink, far more than you can graphite from ink. And easier to get rid of in photoshop too.

[@ghostzart]

Blue pencil used to not show up on reproduction/photocopy/scanning (not true anymore for good scanners) as well, no?

[@Salgood]

That was a specific shade of blue, called non-repro blue. Still won't show up on most scanners though some I think can. But it's not practical for drawing with either. very very light. But some letters used it for sure. it wasn't really ever for drawing with, it was used to make notations by graphic designers and paste up artists working in publishing. It's super faint, hard to see what you're doing. Light blue like i'm using here is more of a sky blue, it sometimes drops out of scans and photocopies but more becuase its so light than it can't register in camera.

[@ghostzart]

I asked someone with more experience and they said the main advantage of a blue pencil is indeed that even if doesn’t fully erase, the remnants of the blue lead in the crannies and valleys of the paper are less prominent than graphite. He mostly used blue pencils when watercolor or acrylic were going to be laid down over the ink for this reason.

[@Salgood]

it's one, their 'main' maybe, but for comics and animation it was more about being able to tell it apart as you worked from either other colours or ink. It has a number of attractions. In animation doing design in the 90s we used it a lot and then finished the art with a soft graphite pencil over the blue line col-erase, and left the blue there. The wax of those pencils made the graphite go down smoother and you could use the contrast trick on a copier to make the blue vanish, leaving what looked like inked lines but over all working in graphite was faster and easier to fix on the fly. I've been using them since before i started working because my mother worked in animation, so I was introduced to them as a kid, that was over 30 years ago now.