Supermassive Black Hole A*, or simply A* (pronounced "A star"), tells stories of a human civilization at the center of the Milky Way galaxy: an area of space dominated by a gigantic black hole, where energy is abundant and life is cheap. How humans got there, and how they survive, remains to be seen.   A* comics arrive daily Monday through Friday--usually more than once per day, since I tend to upload them as soon as I'm done making them.   The art prints that can be ordered of almost any piece of art on this site--look for the "buy as hand-signed print" link next to an image you like--are printed on heavy 8.5"x11" glossy cardstock and individually hand-signed by me. By default I remove any subtitles--so you get the art without distracting lettering--but I can leave them on if requested.   In case you're wondering, yes, there really *is* a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy: Sagittarius A*, so named by scientific observers because it appears as the brightest part of a high energy radio source, denominated "A," located in the constellation Sagittarius when viewed from Earth. Sgr A*, the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 26,000 light years from Earth, is roughly 4,000,000 times as massive as the Sun.   ····· Get A* updates via RSS via Facebook (my FB) via Twitter A* around the web: on deviantART on DrunkDuck on Smack Jeeves on ComicFury in Italian by SEPET on YouTube (playlist) on Newgrounds on Blogger on LiveJournal (my LJ) Around the site: A* icons and banners you can use An account of how the idea for A* originated The A* animated movies How the A* movies were made Related links: more comics by me comics I follow A* in webcomic lists and indexes: in thewebcomiclist in topwebcomics (vote!) in comiclisting in Belfry Webcomics in WebcomicZ.com (vote!) in TV Tropes ·····   I'm Ben Chamberlain, the guy who makes A* and a few other comics on this site. If you'd like to contact me, you can PM me on the A* forum. You can also reach me on any of the networking sites in the link list above.   I've previously worked in web design and game design. For A*, I use Photoshop 4's Lasso Tool with a Wacom Intuos3 6x8 tablet.   ·····   A brief history of A*'s development: Feb, 2009 - work begins--offline--on the first episode of A* Mar 18, 2009 - A* episode 1 goes online as a silent Flash movie Apr 15, 2009 - A* episodes 1 & 2 redone with sound: my voiceovers, and royalty-free music from the Internet Apr 17, 2009 - First A* episodes appear on YouTube Jul 1, 2009 - With the start of episode 5, I began converting my daily A* animation work into comic pages so that viewers would have something to follow in the long gaps between animated episodes; I also converted the previous four episodes to comic form Jul 6, 2009 - With episode 5, page 20, I started using gradient fills to spice up the black and white drawings with grays Sep 17, 2009 - Episode 5 was too big to ship as a Flash movie, so it debuted strictly in YouTube format, and I switched the display of the earlier episodes on the site from Flash to YouTube Feb 27, 2010 - Switching entirely from animated movie to comic format for episode 8, comic image size is upgraded from 717x375 to 956x475 Apr 9, 2010 - With episode 8, page 98, I started doing grays with sharp lassoed layers, rather than the fuzzier gradient fills Jul 27, 2010 - With episode 10, page 47, started regular use of more subtle 33% grays, mixed in with the 50% grays I'd been using Aug 24, 2010 - With episode 10, page 80, started drawing the comics at 4x their screen resolution (previously was 2x) Sep 2, 2010 - With episode 10, page 95, started adding the subtitles in high-res, rather than after shrinking

 
 
 
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