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--although sometimes they don't get finished and uploaded until the wee hours of the next morning, technically speaking.   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 via Twitter via Google+ (my G+) via Tumblr Around the site: A* icons and banners you can use How the idea for A* originated The A* animated movies (playlist) How the A* movies were made

A* around the web: on deviantART on Etsy on Smack Jeeves on ComicFury on DrunkDuck on YouTube (playlist) on LiveJournal (my LJ) Related links: more comics by me comics I follow A*'s Amazon wish list

A* in webcomic lists and indexes: in thewebcomiclist in topwebcomics (vote!) in comiclisting in Belfry Webcomics in WebcomicZ.com (vote!) in TV Tropes in Webcomic Tweets in Piperka in webcomics.biz (vote!) in Comic Rocket

Hello! I'm Ben Chamberlain; I live in Seattle and make this comic. If you'd like to contact me (yay! :) email me at smbhax@gmail.com, PM me on the A* forum, or contact me at any of the networking sites in the link list above.   Before A*, I worked in web design and game design. A* began in 2009 as a digitally produced animated webcomic; currently I make it traditionally, using good ol' pencil on paper.   Currently using: a Platinum Pro-Use II 05 drafting pencil with Pentel Super Hi-Polymer 0.5 mm H leads on Canson Artist Series Illustration paper, cut from 18"x24" to my 17"x7.5" A* page size with an 18" Dahle Vantage Paper Trimmer. I work on a 24"x36" Berkeley Drafting Table and a 20"x26" Airlite Drawing Board. I scan the pages into Photoshop 4 (the ancient one) with a Mustek Scan Express A3 1200 Pro USB Large Format Scanner.

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, began converting daily A* animation work into comic pages so that viewers would have something to follow in the long gaps between animated episodes Feb 27, 2010 - Switching entirely from animated movie to comic format for episode 8; comic image size upgraded from 717x375 to 956x475 Aug 24, 2010 - With episode 10, page 80, started drawing the comics at 4x their screen resolution (previously was 2x) Sep 14, 2010 - With episode 10, page 109, started touching the art up with GIMP's Ink tool Feb 22, 2010 - With episode 12, page 23, started drawing the comics at 8x their screen resolution Apr 8, 2011 - With episode 13, page 2, started drawing the pages with an Intuos4 tablet; I had broken my Intuos3 tablet after finishing most of the line work for episode 11, page 67 Jun 9, 2011 - With episode 13, page 47, started putting colons around the main character's subtitles to aid identification--previously I'd been doing it by rendering their subtitles gray rather than white Oct 11, 2011 - With episode 13, page 136, started making the pages using traditional ink wash, rather than all digitally with the Lasso Tool in Photoshop as I had been doing before ·····   Older A* links: in Italian by SEPET on Newgrounds on Blogger

 
 
 
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