Fredarting Justin.tv FAQ
Contents
About the show
What is fredarting?
Fredarting is the Justin.tv broadcast of Fred Gallagher. Fred is an artist in Michigan, USA. He is the writer and artist for the webcomic MegaTokyo. Most of his live drawing sessions on justin.tv involve pages for this comic. More information about the comic and Fred can be found in the main MegaTokyo FAQ.
Is this live?
Yes, subject to a bit of lag.
Is there a schedule?
No. Generally Fred will alert people via his Twitter when he's broadcasting, but this doesn't always happen.
What does Fred use to broadcast his desktop?
Fred uses CamTwist and Quicktime Broadcaster for the video, and streams at a resolution of 1280x720 using h.264 video encoding. He uses GarageBand, iTunes, and Soundflower for the audio. Be warned, Soundflower has been known to contribute to kernel panics.
Is there 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. You can see what's listening to on his last.fm playlist page unless the song files have bad tags or he's playing songs from YouTube.
When he wants to make sure he's not playing any restrictively licensed music, he'll play Creative Commons licensed music. Thinner Netlabel is a particular favorite.
When will the comic be posted?
When it's ready. It largely depends on how much of the dialogue he still has to work out after the artwork is done (or mostly done). The RSS and Twitter feeds will give notice when the next comic is up.
Can I view older drawing sessions?
You can watch the recordings of recent video streams on the archive page.
Why do I see bars scrolling horizontally across the video?
Those are compression artifacts, caused by the upstream limitations of Fred's net connection restricting his broadcasting ability. He tries to get the settings right to prevent those, although not always successfully.
What's all this about a ducky?
About the comic-making process
What kind of computer does Fred use?
It's a Mac Pro 2x 2.8 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon.
What does Fred use for drawing?
Fred uses a Cintiq 21UX. You can see his drawing desk here: 1 2. Drawing is done in Photoshop CS3. Frame layout and lettering is done in Illustrator CS3.
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 large is the page that Fred draws on?
5.375 by 7.5 inches at 600dpi, or 3225 by 4500 pixels. The final web-size comic is about five times smaller than the orignal full-size image.
How is the comic 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 spam.
- No bots.
- No porn.
- This is not the place to be flaming, trolling, or making other personal attacks.
- If you hate Megatokyo, that's okay, but don't be disruptive about it.
- Keep things 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.
Are there any topics that are off-limits?
As a rule of thumb, if you have to ask then you probably shouldn't bring it up.
Using the chat service
How do things work in the chat box?
Please refer to Justin.tv's Chat Guide.
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. Also note that while Justin.tv will let you log in and chat using a Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace account, this will cause everything you say to be cross-posted back to that account. If you create a Justin.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 Justin.tv web page?
Justin.tv uses IRC to power their chat rooms. As such, you can use any IRC client to join the channel. Connect to fredrin.jtvirc.com (port 6667) and sign in with your Justin.tv user name and your password set up as the server password in your client's server settings. For 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 Justin.tv web chat and still watch the stream?
You can view the stream by itself here, use the popup link found there, or the popout link underneath the video on the justin.tv page.
How do I do "actions" in the chat?
Type /me at the start of your text.