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Tripp 3tych Gustin

@trippgustin.bsky.social

210 followers 510 following 560 posts

Comic creator, illustrator, animator, graphic designer. Freelancing & making @TrueniverseComics! I like stuff that is weird, queer, colorful & from the heart 🌈 (he/they, 35, Atlanta) Portfolio: www.trippgustin.com Comics: www.trueniverse.com

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · Jul 8

Hey #PortfolioDay! I'm Tripp, a trip(p)le threat in #graphicdesign, #illustration & #comics. Currently looking for contract work in commercial illustration, book covers & comics, as well as char commissions & logo design! Thx :)

🌐 trippgustin.com
💬 trueniverse.com
✉️ [email protected]

Celestiopid: A colorful digital illustration of a "celestiopod", a massive nautilus with a moon-like crater-covered shell. It has floated high above Earth’s orbit for eons, but pieces of its shell are beginning to breaking off in a crescent moon shape as it slowly loses its memory. It floats high above the earth during a peaceful purple and orange sunset over a grassy and mountainous countryside.

You Are What You Eat: an image of a book cover illustration and print layout designed by me. The title reads “You Are What You Eat” and the author’s name is “Lynn Faiola”, with both written in a delicate serifed font. The cover illustration features a green dragon claw reaching out for a strawberry cake. The dragon claw is green and scaly with sharp white claws and a ridged crest on the arm. The strawberry cake has fluffy yellow cake, light pink frosting, and strawberries decorating the top and the middle. The cake sits on a floating wooden platform with a delicate doily in the center, and is surrounded by pink and white sparkles. The background has pink magical clouds on a yellow background.
The back details the plot and has the following text:
“William Wright has a dream. A big, scaly dream: he wants to be a dragon. As a cook in a small café, he spends his days cooking delicious food and his nights making experimental desserts with illegal ingredients from magical creatures. Mama always told him you are what you eat.
After a success that tastes like pixie dust, tiramisu and a hangover, a mysterious stranger offers a shady proposition with the promise of a dragon scale. William now faces a tantalizing choice: embrace the stability of his life as a cook or indulge in the exhilarating life of a dragon. Will he savor the sweet taste of freedom or stick to the recipe of normalcy?
See that smoke rising in the distance? LYNN FAIOLA has, once again, burned dinner & accidentally set something on fire. They reside somewhere in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains with their two dogs, partner, & progeny, away from well-populated areas.”

A photo of my graphic novel, True Colors: Book One. It features the four main characters (Iro, Kit, Ben, and Sonia) walking away from their college dorm on a sunny day, talking animatedly. Iro is a friendly and optimistic GNC biracial individual with long blonde hair who is wearing a tanktop with a blue feather on it. Kit is a snarky and hot-tempered white woman with brown hair in a high ponytail, and she is wearing a shirt with a magenta sun on it. Ben is a nerdy and down to earth black man with locs holding a robot, and he is wearing a green hoodie with a skull gear on it. Sonia is a sweet but shy white woman with shoulder-length black hair, and she is wearing a purple top with flowing sleeves that has waves on it.

Behind them is their dorm, where their RAs are watching the residents leave; Kit waves cheerfully but Carlos looks suspicious. In the background is a mysterious Man in Black standing in the shadow of a tree. The text reads “True Colors: Book One” at the top with my name, “Tripp Gustin”, at the bottom.

A graphic promoting my illustration commissions. In it are three panels, one with lineart only (featuring a high elf rogue with Cruella de Ville vibes), one with flat colors (featuring a colorful merman styled after the mandarin dragonet fish), and one with full colors and shading (featuring a scholarly silver dragonborn druid in an icy tundra). The text reads as follows: "Character Commissions Open! Line Art: $100 full body, $80 waist-up, $60 bust/head. Flat Colors: $125 Full Body, $100 Waist-up, $80 bust/head. Full Color/Shading: $150 full body, $125 waist-up, $100 bust/head. Price may vary with the addition of extra characters, props, detailed backgrounds, etc. Graphic Design, Comic, & Illustration services starting at $50/hr, contact for estimate! www.trippgustin.com, trippgustincreative@gmail.com, Facebook/Instagram @trippgustincreative, Bluesky @trippgustin"

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 3h

Yeahhhh, I don’t think it’s a BAD thing to be able to work cleanly, but flexibility is good too! Especially for comics, where one can easily spend several hours on a panel that people will be looking at for all of 2 seconds 🫠 I’m trying to get back into the “good enough!” mindset…

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 4h

Right??? I want to learn the secrets

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 5h

I genuinely love seeing looser messier styles (Haus of Decline, Alex Krokus, just about any punk comic zine) but it's always been really hard to make MYSELF do it outside of a sketchbook. But maaan, I could make comics so much faster if I wasn't spending so much time being a perfectionist...

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 5h

I've been reading a bunch of cool indie comics and realizing that I have GOTTA learn how to draw looser and shittier (complimentary)

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 7h

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee rep?!? You love to see it

Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

🐊 @kyssimmee.com · 7h

logainne schwartzandgrubenierre

cartoon drawing of a child wearing a way-too-big suit and tie. Her hair is tied back tight and her jacket is covered in activist buttons. Her face is sweaty, flushed, nervous, and manically smiling.

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 11h

I really don’t think it is; there are tons of actual artists and animators who worked on it with established histories. It does look like rigged/puppet animation, which might be where the uncanny valley effect you’re talking about comes from, but that’s a totally different thing than generative AI.

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 12h

“Reelancing”

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 1d

I honestly love this idea, there’s so much you could do with adding tactile interactive hidden elements to zines 👀

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

✪ Jonathan H. Gray: “Professor of Halloweenery” ✪ @jongraywb.bsky.social · 1d

If you are willing to throw away entire groups of people to protect your insular strategy that will only protect you instead of protecting everyone then I don’t want your leaders and I sure as hell don’t want to be associated with you.

the tallest stone @talleststone.bsky.social · 1d

I hate to say it but the majority of the country is not going to die on the hill of trans rights. We can’t protect ANY groups if we can’t win a national election, so purity tests only serve to make specific groups feel triumphant. That’s not “erasing” them; it’s long-horizon strategy.

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 1d

You’re such a good storyteller lol

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 1d

If I start doing more motion design/animation work I might need to get a computer that’s just devoted to rendering and encoding videos… I don’t wanna overload my GPU by running other art programs, but it sucks having my computer occupied for 30-90 minutes at a time when I’ve got other stuff to do 🥲

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 1d

And a looooooot of Instagram scammer “commissions”!

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 1d

I honestly think the only social media I’ve ever gotten any real work from is Facebook and Discord 😅

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Isabel Zaw-Tun @izzyzaw.bsky.social · 2d

everybody’s jealous of me since I decided to get plastic surgery to have Cuttlefish skin. they‘re resentful because I camouflage myself as a brick wall or a gorseberry bush in order to steal their croissants off their plates at cafes. I’ve never felt so beautiful

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Boper9 @boper9.bsky.social · 3d

Today's challenge piece is Exeggutor hanging out with an ekans, a reference to two of my beloved pokemon from my 'train anything you catch , overlevel, and catch nothing extra' run of pkmn red from back in the early 2000s.

an ink illustration of the pokemon exeggutor sitting among some rocks with a curled up ekans on its knee.

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 2d

Also sometimes those neural pathways are there because we’ve spent our careers honing our sense of design and composition and whatnot, plus consuming a lot of cool art that speaks to us, so we don’t gotta overthink it when we think something would look cool, because good taste is half of the job lol

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 2d

It’s def a balance! I have read that our immediate mental associations tend to be the shortest existing neural pathways, IE the more obvious ideas to us. But there are always exceptions, plus something that’s obvious to one person’s brain might be wildly new to everyone else’s! So trust your gut ✨

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Ben Passmore @benpassmore.bsky.social · 2d

today is the day my book Black Arms To Hold You Up officially comes out. about 5-7 years of hard ass work finally in the world. i’m mfing terrified 😂

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Zac Thompson @zacthompson.bsky.social · 2d

TODAY

INTO THE UNBEING: PART TWO is in shops everywhere from @darkhorse.com

An adventure into an Eldritch whale fall centuries in the the making. For fans of Alien, Annihilation, and Scavenger's Reign.

Words - me. Letters - Jim Campbell. Art and colours - the visionary @cleanlined.bsky.social

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 3d

Appalachia, 1900. Things ancient and dead haunt the green hills. A young woman — cast out by strange tragedy — walks the road on her wooden leg, practicing witchery and settling spirits. (The hardest to settle might be her own.)

Digital copies of GHOST DAYS are $6! Grab one for spooky season!

Ghost Days ebook — ASHER ELBEIN

A short story collection about a wandering witch in 1900s Appalachia

www.asherelbein.com

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Alanna Smith @alannamode.bsky.social · 10d

Give folks their flowers

No, I mean right now. Go tell someone you loved their work right now. They're on social media just say it, it has never been easier

"They know how much people love--" no they don't go say it right now to a composer or artist or game dev or writer or anyone AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH

Murlin @murlin.bsky.social · 10d

From bravewave.net/interviews/t...

Mo: Do you remember the first time you met someone who said they loved your work on Mega Man 2?

Tateishi: You’re the first, in 2013. No one else has.

Mo: Wow. I’m surprised. I don’t even have a follow-up question… how could no one come up and say something.

Tateishi: …

Mo: Now that you know how big Mega Man 2 is outside of Japan, do you look fondly back at the soundtrack?

Tateishi: Yeah, my thoughts have changed since I met you and became more aware of how people felt. But even when I was at Konami, I didn’t even bother telling anyone I did Mega Man 2. So the fact you came all the way to Japan to tell me these things makes me very happy I worked on the game all those years ago.

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Reposted by Tripp 3tych Gustin

Matt Aytch Taylor @matthtaylor.com · 6d

I don't have a hot comics take.

Uplift your peers, celebrate your friends.

that's it.

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Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 5d

Thanks! Yeah, there were probably smarter ways I could have built my site (like using databases at all lmao) but I like having control over everything 😛

And YES, I really miss how the internet 20 years ago was way more customizable 🥲 Another reason to not just rely on bland corporate social media!

Tripp 3tych Gustin @trippgustin.bsky.social · 6d

In case you forgot, we met all 5 of Sonia's younger siblings waaaay back in Chapter 1!

A panel from the webcomic True Colors. In it we're introduced to Sonia's five younger siblings. Beth is a moody goth girl fixated on her phone; Trey is an excitable boy obsessed with "Wallet Warriors", a pokemon parody; Tessa and Finn are oddball twins; and Seth is a very quiet boy who carries around a stuffed rabbit everywhere.