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A picture of Ashley Davis

Ashley Davis

Cartoonist (Jailbird)

in cartoonist, illustrator, windows

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Ashley Davis, a freelance cartoonist and webcomic artist! My work has been featured in dozens of books, gallery shows and pieces of merchandise. I even do a little acting and animating!

My webcomic, Jailbird, has been running since July 2012.

What hardware do you use?

Most of my work revolves around a PC that I built myself a few years back. Every so often, I'll just put in some new parts here and there; as of now it's got an AMD Phenom II X4 processor (just recently unlocked its fourth core for some free extra power), 8GB RAM, an a graphics card not worth mentioning by name because it's a few years overdue for an upgrade. It's not the most powerful machine, but it suits my simple needs pretty well!

I have a dual monitor setup with a 23 inch Samsung LED and a Cintiq 12WX. All of this rests on a standing desk that I cobbled together to try to make my job a little healthier (it has!). When I need to write scripts on the go, I use my iPad 3. And if it counts as hardware, I'll use pretty much any paper I can get my hands on and a pen to do my sketching and comic thumbnailing.

And what software?

After a concept sketch is done, I usually go to Corel Painter X to do all of my inking and coloring. Sometimes I'll go to Flash CS3 for inks (especially if I'm doing a shirt design), Photoshop CS3 for color correction (Painter doesn't deal with CMYK very well), and a really old version of Jasc Animation Shop for pixel art, but for me, nothing beats Painter's brushes!

For writing, I use combinations of OpenOffice.org Writer and Notepad. Again, nothing fancy!

Recently, I've been using a program called Workrave to help me time work breaks, which has helped me a lot with staying productive! It also gives you stretches to do while on your breaks, which is a great bonus.

What would be your dream setup?

My current setup is actually pretty close to my dream! All I'd want to add is a better graphics card (and a better PSU so it'll work), maybe that new Cintiq 13HD, and a comfortable drafting chair for when I need to sit down. Maybe a plusher carpet for my feet when I'm standing too!