About the show

What is fredarting?

Fredarting is the Twitch.tv broadcast of Fred Gallagher, an artist in Michigan, USA who is known mainly for his long-running webcomic MegaTokyo. Fred streams almost all of his drawing work live on Twitch, including MegaTokyo pages and other illustrations. More information about the webcomic and Fred can be found in the main MegaTokyo FAQ.

Is this live?

Yes, subject to a bit of lag. There are also video replays of recent drawing sessions available for viewing if you missed a live session.

Is there a schedule?

No. Fred draws live most days. He will sometimes alert people via his Twitter or Facebook when he's broadcasting, but this doesn't always happen. The best way to know when Fred is drawing live is to follow his Twitch channel and have Twitch notify you.

What does Fred use to broadcast his desktop?

Fred uses OBS for the video and streams at a resolution of somethingxsomething using something encoding. He uses somethign for the audio.

He has a something webcam mounted on a something boom to get overhead shots as he draws. He also has a secondary something webcam to show his Copic Sketch markers or his cats Khufu and Meowy when they visit.

What kind of audio?

Fred likes to listen to music while he draws and usually will include it in the video stream. Some of it is kind of strange, so consider yourself warned. He usually shows what song he is playing in the upper-left of the screen, and it also usually scrobbles to his last.fm page.

When he wants to make sure he's not playing any restrictively licensed music, he'll play Creative Commons licensed music.

When will the comic be posted?

When it's ready. Once he finishes the basic artwork, he will shade and hatch. Then he'll scan the panels, clean them up in Photoshop, and assemble the comic page in Illustrator. He generally does all that live, but then he'll go offline to add the dialogue.

Once the page is finished, he will post it first to his Patreon page, announce it on his Twitter, and start a new story discussion thread on the MegaTokyo forums. Supporters of the Patreon get to see the comic a day early. The next day he will post the comic to the main MegaTokyo site. The RSS, Facebook, and Twitter feeds will give notice when the next comic is up.

Where did he go?

Fred works at home, and he'll sometimes have to leave the desk to take care of his son, make dinner, and other family things like that. Sometimes he remembers to put a "back in a few minutes" note up, sometimes he doesn't. He'll be back.

About the comic-making process

What does Fred use for drawing?

Fred draws most of his work using a 0.4mm Pilot S5 mechanical pencil. You can get them at JetPens. He draws on HP Bright White InkJet paper, often using a something light table with a something disc. Fred does not ink his comics. Many other comic artists ink, and Fred is totally cool with that. He just thinks his art looks better in pencil.

When he wants to color, he will scan the pencil drawing and print it out on Epson Ultra Premium Photo paper using an Epson SureColor P600 printer with pigment ink. Then he'll color using Copic Sketch markers or occasionally watercolors. Fred has all 5 of the 72pen Copic Sketch sets, and you can often see them on his desk in a custom case that his father-in-law built for him.

For comic cleanup and some other digital drawing, Fred uses a Cintiq 22HD. Drawing and cleanup are done using Photoshop; comic layout and lettering are done in Illustrator.

What are Fred's Photoshop settings?

Take a look: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. These have been tweaked by Fred to best simulate the pencilwork he did before transitioning to the Cintiq.

How is the comic pages laid out?

Each frame is set up as its own masked area. The gray underlayer is so Fred can see what he has framed out. The red dotted line is the standard frame boundary. The thinner dotted line is the 'safe' zone to keep text inside for the books. The green line is the cut line for the webcomic version. The outer edge is a 1/8” bleed for the books.

Chatroom rules

What are the rules?

• No politics or religion (unless Fred starts it)
• No spam, bots, or porn
• No flaming, trolling, or personal attacks
• Keep it PG-13. If it's NSFW, it's not safe for the channel.
• No warez or anime/manga download links. This includes fansubs and fanscans.
• Do not share personal information.
• Listen to the ops/moderators (people with Mod or @ before their nicknames). They run this place.

Anything else?

This isn't like most chats on Twitch. This is a chill place to listen to music and watch Fred draw. It is polite to ask first before posting any links. Please be nice, especially to new folk.

Using the Twitch.tv chat service

How do things work in the chat box?

Please refer to Twitch.tv's chat guides.

Do I have to be logged in to chat?

Yes. Due to a system limitation of not being able to ban troublesome anonymous users, we have disabled anonymous chatting altogether. If you create a Twitch.tv account, you can add Fredarting to your favorites and receive an e-mail notice when Fred begins a broadcast.

How do I access the chat outside the Twitch.tv web page?

Twitch.tv uses IRC to power their chat rooms. As such, you can use any IRC client to join the channel. Refer to the Twitch.tv support page for IRC clients for further details and instructions. For more details on how to configure your IRC client, see your client's documentation. If you don't know what IRC is, Wikipedia has a list of IRC clients.

How do I leave the Twitch.tv web chat and still watch the stream?

You can use the video popout link underneath the video on the main Twitch.tv page, and then close the page.

How do I do "action mode" in the chat?

Type /me at the start of your text.