August Brown
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skullamity.bsky.social
August Brown
@skullamity.bsky.social
880 followers 120 following 400 posts
Dad, queer, he/him. Illustrator & graphic designer. Artist & co-author at endcomic.com!
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skullamity.bsky.social
Back to work! My girl is having a terrible time (of her own making) in this and the next batch of pages, and I am so excited to be fixing it up. Lot of good expressions in this batch! #makingcomics
A panel from the webcomic The End. I am currently fixing the colours in this chapter, original chapter made in 2018. It features the character Sam with a very stupid, perturbed expression on her face in response to a dig an off panel character has just made about her. The new colour scheme invokes "seeing red" because she is about to lose her entire shit.
November 15, 2025 at 3:46 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Okay, got all but two of the pages I spent the morning prepping fixed up, which in retrospect was going to happen no matter what because most panels in this 8 page scene are full of fancy alien food. Here are some panels I liked! Gonna finish the last 2 up tomorrow. #makecomics
An illustration of four alien celebrity athletes. Three of them are bipedal, small and spindly, with slimy snail-like heads, and bodies made varying shapes of carapaces. The fourth is a quadroped--each of its legs have very long, shovel-like claws. It is wearing a fancy cloak, and it's snail face has a lot of long dangly protrusions that look a little like a mane. An illustration of Max, from the webcomic The End. Max is a brown-skinned man with a short beard, wearing a green sweater. He's sighing in relief because he (wrongly) believes that he has prevented an argument between his dining companions. I have always really liked this panel, and fixing it up made me like it even more.
November 14, 2025 at 9:03 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Here's what my current adjustment layers for this page (which has two different colour schemes because there's a scene transition, so twice as many layers) looks like. It's a mess! But it's much faster than any alternatives I tried early on. #makingcomics
a screencap of my current adjustment layer list in photoshop, showing everything I described in the thread up until this point
November 14, 2025 at 1:35 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
This is still a weird one to me. 🤔
Picard and Kirk chillin' in Star Trek Generations
November 14, 2025 at 4:44 AM
skullamity.bsky.social
Okay, good start! Found a colour treatment that still invokes 'artificial sunrise lighting' that isn't yellow, lets you see more of the lineart and makes things pop. Gonna set up the next 5 pages of this scene with my adjustment layers and then speed through them! #makingcomics
The 2018 version of a page from the webcomic The End. In the top panel, Max is crawling back to consciousness with the mother of all hangovers. In the bottom panel, Sam is looming over him, interrupting his wretched awaking and they exchange the following dialogue: Sam: Still alive, huh? I'm impressed, Max. I never thought a grumpy bastard like you would be such a party animal. Why'd you sleep in thr trunk, anyway? Remind you of home? Max: Um. ...how long have you been standing there? The old version of this page's shadows are overpowering and obscure a lot of the line art in a way that destroys a lot of detail and makes the page weirdly blurry. The colour scheme is blacks and sepia, which was unintentional. The 2025 version of this page. The dialogue remains the same, but I've made major adjustments to the colours and toned down the shading. The page is now saturated yellows and reds, with blues and purples for contrast. The blacks that remain are no longer overpowering and a lot of small lineart details that got lost in the 2018 version of this page are once again visible.
November 12, 2025 at 2:37 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Best possible way to wrap up the day was colour-correcting this cover! Excited to dig into fixing this chapter tomorrow, can't wait to find out what kind of art landmines past me has left for present me to step on! #makingcomics
The colour corrected cover art from chapter 21 of the webcomic The End. It features Sam, a scappy looking woman with a scarf and long, messily braided hair and Max, an unkempt middle aged man wearing electro-shock gloves and a sweater. Their vibe is suspicious and untrustworthy. The new colour scheme is all over the place in a way that ticks all of my good vibes boxes. I'm not posting a comparison pic because I saved over the old cover without exporting a copy of the original to compare to the new version, whoops!
November 11, 2025 at 8:49 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
I will never get tired of drawing her more unhinged expressions. Only one page left in this chapter after I finish this one! #makingcomics
Two panels of the character Overseer Xia from the webcomic The End. In the first panel she's sweating and looking calculating baout the fact that there was a witness to her committing a murder and being really emotional about it. In the second panel she is...smiling? Grimacing? She's making A Face, for sure. She has decided to double down on how unhinged she is currently feeling. The lighting is red and menacing.
November 11, 2025 at 6:46 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Huuuhhh...so, while cleaning up this page, I found a toggled off folder with the word SNAP on it. The version that went up on our site in 2018 did not include it, but looking at it years later, I kinda like it? I like it without, too. Unsure which one I will use in the updated page... #makingcomics
A comic panel from the webcomic The End. It features Overseer Xia at the moment she loses her entire shit on Kana, a spoiled merchant princess. The top version includes the sound effect SNAP, a direct statement that she has snapped. The word is in the same style as the lightning effect in behind it, and the letters sort of look like how writing letters with sparklers in slower exposure photography looks. The bottom version of the panel is the same, but without the sound effect. This version is the version that was previously live on our website when this page was originally posted in 2018. I feel like I must have been on the fence about which version to use back in 2018, too, because I didn't delete the folder to cut down on file space, even though I did end up choosing not to include it.
November 11, 2025 at 5:15 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Psyched that there are only 4 more pages before I get to colour correct on my favourite chapter I have ever worked on! Very pleased with how much more vibrant the colour correction made both of the scenes in this comparison, and how much easier it is to see what's happening. #makingcomics
A page from the webcomic The End. This page features the end of one scene and the beginning of the next, and was a good demonstration of some of the colour correction work I've done for this chapter. The first panel is a zoomed out establishment panel featuring a dingy hover-truck speeding through a giant mushroom forest/mesa, off into the distance. A nearby gas giant looms in the night sky. The second and third panels are a scene switch and feature Kana regaining consciousness amidst some rubble. Xia stalks towards her, her shadow ominously cast over Kana. This is the original colour treatment for the page, and it's dark in a way that obscures a lot of line art. This page was better than the pages from the rest of both scenes, but needed heavy colour adjustment because of how much colour adjustment the rest of both scenes did/will require. This version has a bit of a yellow tint throughout both scenes that a lot of my original pages had, and I am trying to move away from that choice specifically. This is the colour-corrected version of the previous page. The first half of it is still darker because it is outdoors and night time, but I've replaces a lot of the blacks with very saturated blues so that more of the line art is visible and easy to parse. It also looks very nice in contrast to the second two panels, which still have a bit of a yellow tint, but that tint is now meant to temper very saturated red lighting that I replaced the initial yellow with. Once again, the line art is much easier to parse and the shadows are still there, but not as overpowering.
November 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
To elaborate: This is my tablet, a Yiynova MVP27U+. It has a glass surface, it's HUGE and I have used yiynova tablets for the past...wanna say almost 20 years? I LOVE it. Which is unfortunate because the company that makes them folded thanks to covid.
Product photo for the Yiynova MVP27U drawing tablet monitor. It features a 27 inch screen with a smooth glass surface, a hand held remote for custom shortcuts and is extremely adjustable.
November 10, 2025 at 2:26 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
How I have spent my 41st birthday so far!
I am sitting on the couch, and Parsnip, a fluffy black cat, is in my lap. He is making bad mouth noises, but he is very cuddly so it balances out.
November 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Powering through Ch20! Cannot believe how visually incomprehensible most of this chapter was, also cannot believe that they looked mostly fine on my old tablet??? I can't see ANYTHING in the before. 💀
A page from the webcomic, The End, before colour correction. The shading is so dark that the contents of the page are basically a big black blob. A page from the webcomic, The End, after colour correction. Most of the blacks were replaced with blues, and the result is that all of the line art is visible and the final page doesn't make my eyes hurt while looking at it. I also redrew the scream sound effect because the old one was ugly.
November 3, 2025 at 4:38 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Came here to post this! I can't believe this was made in 2001, hunting down the poster on IMDb instantly turned me to dust 💀
October 31, 2025 at 11:58 AM
skullamity.bsky.social
so it turns out that my liquid silicone is fuuucked, but we got them stuck on there and as long as he doesn't stand in the rain without an umbrella, they should hopefully stay on the whole day. Had to use the cheapo backup horns because the other two pairs are too big for his head somehow lol
my kid wearing a pair of plastic devil horns with a black and silver belly dancing sash as a bandana over a black and white tentacle patterned t-shirt
October 31, 2025 at 11:53 AM
skullamity.bsky.social
They turned out GOOD! No recipe this time because I didn't use one. Crust was super crisp, will be making agian, probably with some modifications on the seasoning.
a whole chicken pot pie in a clear glass pie plate a slice of chicken pot pie in a red bowl
October 22, 2025 at 10:29 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
they were so good, the crust is also simple enough that I'm definitely gonna fill it with leftover taco stuff, curries and stews in the near future!
Quick and Easy NO-Knead, No-Rise Pizza Dough Recipe Ingredients: - 1 pkg dry, active yeast (equivalent of 8g or .25 ounces or 2.25tsp) - 1 tsp sugar - 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F) - 2.5 cups bread flour (we use all-purpose flour) - 2 tbsp olive oil - 1 tap salt Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees 2 In large bowl, stir yeast and sugar into warm water and let it sit for 5-10 minutes until it looks creamy. When the yeast is frothy, add in the flour, oil and salt and stir until well mixed. At this point your dough will be loose and messy looking. That's ok. There's no need to format smooth ball like you would with traditional pizza dough recipes. Let the dough mixture rest for 5 minutes. 5 transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and roll or pat into 1 12" crust or 4 individual crusts.
October 21, 2025 at 11:04 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
usually when I meal plan for the week my aim is to have as many leftovers as possible. this week we switched it up and decided to make a bunch of one-off meals that are contenders for the regular rotation. tonight was calzones with from scratch crust, turned out GREAT
three big calzones on a baking tray, fresh out of the oven a calzones split down the middle to reveal pepperoni, a mozzarella/sharp cheddar cheese mix and tomato sauce on the inside
October 21, 2025 at 10:30 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
I don't really collect figures anymore because I can't really afford to. I have also never bought anything from youtooz. But the temptation on this thrumbo is inexplicably mighty. Love these guys. I need to play more rimworld, but also my laptop may explode. Don't have the DLCs, either. :(
A product picture for a youtooz figurine of a thrumbo from Rimworld. It is a large fluffy horse-like creature with long white hair, blue paws and it has a huge sharp horn on it's head. Viewed from the side. A product picture for a youtooz figurine of a thrumbo from Rimworld. It is a large fluffy horse-like creature with long white hair, blue paws and it has a huge sharp horn on it's head. Viewed from the other side. A product picture for a youtooz figurine of a thrumbo from Rimworld. It is a large fluffy horse-like creature with long white hair, blue paws and it has a huge sharp horn on it's head. Viewed from the front. A product picture for a youtooz figurine of a thrumbo from Rimworld. It is a large fluffy horse-like creature with long white hair, blue paws and it has a huge sharp horn on it's head. Viewed from the back.
October 21, 2025 at 1:36 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
never has there been an emptier head
A fluffy black cat stares into the middle distance, his tongue slightly sticking out of his mouth. He has never known anything, and never will know anything.
October 20, 2025 at 11:32 AM
skullamity.bsky.social
he's so normal
A fluffy black cat in the cubby of a grey cat tree. He is upside-down, his teeth are sticking out of his mouth and his eyes are staring intently at ACTUALLY NOTHING. His head is empty, and he is snorting slightly.
October 14, 2025 at 11:18 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Didn't think to take a comparison screencap before I colour corrected this page. Happy with how these panels turned out, they were so hard to parse before this! Now on page 41 out of 55.
Three panels from Chapter 19, page 41 of the webcomic "the end" that have been colour corrected for relaunch. The first panel features Xia, an imposing, middle aged woman, lecturing Sari. In the second panel, Sari is looking chastened as Xia continues to lecture her. The final panel is a zoom in on Xia's lower face, as she tells Sari that this conversation is over whether Sari wants it to be or not.
October 7, 2025 at 3:26 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
It turns out that if you cut all the vegetables for soup so you don't chop your fingers off and start drinking slightly before the soup is supposed to have dry white wine added to it, the soup turns out SO good and also you get to be kinda drunk while eating the best soup you've ever eaten!
a bowl of Italian sausage and 3 cheese tortellini soup I made while drunk. it has parmesan, fresh ground pepper and parsley on top of it. it's SO good I can't even describe it
October 6, 2025 at 10:14 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
Every once in a while I look at my layers list and am struck by how horrifying the layer names would seem to literally almost anyone else with even just a vague idea of what layers are and how they work...
A screencap from a file's layer list in adobe photoshop. Four layers are listed, and their names are "Layer 95 copy 52," "Layer 95 copy 51," " Layer 95 copy 50" and "Layer 95 copy 32."
October 6, 2025 at 2:44 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
This creature has never known a moment of stress in his life. You would think that not being able to hear would make him timid or cautious, but instead it has made him Too Powerful and extremely unbothered by the universe.
A small black long haired cat named Parsnip is sleeping on the couch. He is upside down, all four legs are up in the air, tummy exposed. I tried to wake him up several times and he actively ignored me until I gave up. A small grey cat, Ham, is sleeping in the background, curled up into a fuzzy or.
October 1, 2025 at 5:43 PM
skullamity.bsky.social
33/55 pages done for this chapter! Everything is so much more visible, and I'm breezing through them pretty quickly. Plan for this week is to wrap this chapter and start on the next. I am SO close to all of the fixes being quick and mild, I cannot wait!
A comparative image. The art is a panel from Chapter 19, page 33 of the webcomic, The End. A hand is holding out a small tool to a person of indeterminate gender. They have pale skin and hair, which is cut in a short bob and covering their left eye. They are looking blankly at the object being held out to them. The left side of the image is the original image--it is dark and low contrast, making things hard to see. The right side is the colour-corrected version of the same image. Monochrome grey-green has been replaced with bright blues, pinks, oranges and teal. There is contrast between the line art and the shading that actually lets you see what's going on in the panel, and helps separate the foreground from the background.
September 30, 2025 at 3:14 PM