Frequently Asked Questions?

How do you do those backgrounds?
I’ve taken photos with my digital camera of several backgrounds from real life locations that have been ‘homes’ to me through my years, such as the living rooms, schools, universities, and back streets. In a way a3s sometimes becomes a personal comic diary due to them. Actually, that’s a lie because some of the high school shots have university backgrounds until I visit my actual high school.
After a lot of experimentation I found a way to make the photo backgrounds look like they belonged with the line art rather than standing out as actual photos.
The photos are then layered between two copies of the scanned line art and grayscaled with the rest of the comic. I then use a filter called poster edges, blur it a little, and then brighten it up depending on the distance of the background from the characters.

Why do you do those backgrounds?
I choose to use the backgrounds from the very beginning for the main reason that it was different from other web comics. My normal style would just be penciled backgrounds and inked foregrounds but a lot of other people do that and I wanted mine to ‘stand out’ and look more original. I’ve thought about dropping the idea as it takes me so long to do them but people have grown attached to them and they look kinda funky so I’m keeping them for A3S.

How did you come up with the comic title?
What is ‘a3s’?
See the full explanation here.