Salt & Battery Comics

Salt & Battery

Salt & Battery got its start as a small comic strip commissioned by and printed in The California Aggie, the student newspaper of the University of California at Davis, where it ran for 76 strips over a year and a half. Though no longer affiliated with the Aggie or the university, the reincarnation of Salt & Battery carries with it the same brand of reality-inspired, wandering humor as its predecessor. This is what happens when a college newspaper comic strip loses its initial purpose yet continues to exist despite lack of focus, reason, or alcohol-fueled insanity.

Materials:

Since the first strip back in 2005, Salt & Battery has been drawn using a variety of black and white media and computer software from Pilot V5 Rollerball pens, No. 2 pencils, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Copic Multiliner pens, Sakura Pigma Sensei pens and, most recently, Manga Studio.

Most recently the strip is being drawn first in pencil, then scanned and ‘inked’ in Manga Studio to take advantage of the versitile pen tools, tones, and layering capabilities. After completion, it is cropped and re-sized in Photoshop. To draw, I use a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet that I bought some years ago back in college, and it has served me well despite having developed a conspicuous divot in the drawing surface.

Salt & Battery currently uses the free font ‘LetterOMatic!’ for most copy, as well as various other free fonts found at www.blambot.com.

Hunter

I’m an Art teacher by profession, and comics are merely a light hobby of mine at this point. I graduated from UC Davis with a BA in Technocultural Studies, and received my teaching credential from CSU Sacramento. Recently married, my wife Natalie and I currently reside in the East San Fransisco Bay Area.