Today I’ve been thinking about the digital tools I use to make my process of creating comics an easier and speedier process. Ever since I invested in my iPad Pro two years ago, I’ve nearly doubled my productivity. Consequently, I’m always on the lookout for new tools to improve things even more.
Currently, for the actual drawing, I go back and forth between Procreate and Clip Studio paint. I do all my sketching On Procreate with my iPad. Then I export it back to my office computer, where I move everything into Clip Studio Paint. There, I’ll ink it using iPad as my computer’s tablet by mirroring it using a program called Sidecar. The only problem I have with this is Sidecar isn’t very good with pressure-sensitive brushes such as pencils. This makes sketching difficult. I’m told other programs might work better but since Sidecar is free, I find it easier to move the drawings back into Procreate.
Along with this, after my ancient copy of Adobe Creative Suite died, I replaced it with the cheaper equivalents made by Affinity. While I haven’t yet used them to their full potential, I still find them very useful. I’ve been using Affinity Designer for creating background graphics, and while I haven’t used a fraction of Affinity Publisher’s capabilities, I have found it extremely useful for organizing and planning ongoing storylines.
All my other tools are apps on my phone and iPad. I have versions of Affinity on my iPad, as well as some modeling software. However, it’s hard to use many of these apps while I’m drawing. Therefore, I still use most of them in conjunction with my phone.
I may have mentioned in the past that I always endeavor to turn my phone into an efficient graphics ‘Swiss army knife’. I’ve said several times how useful the camera is but recently I have also found it useful to take advantage of the video capabilities. Rather than take individual pictures I’ll put my phone on a tripod, point it at whatever I’m drawing, and I then have minutes of reference video when I’m done.
Along with this, I have several reference apps that I can lay next to what I’m drawing. All of these continue to help my workflow and I can’t wait to see the next innovation that will make things even easier.
Following up on New Year’s resolutions, I’ve been thinking about the state of Cartoonists Northwest, and where we can go from here.
While I have no problem with the status quo, I am certain we can do more.
I am as eager as everyone else to go back to in-person meetings, but the continuing advantages of streaming cannot be ignored. Over the last two years, we’ve had far more attendees than we’ve had in years, and rather than being limited to people living in King County, we’ve been able to have diverse speakers from as far as Malta. Even when it becomes safe to congregate in small, crowded, poorly ventilated rooms again, these are advantages I don’t want to give up. There are far too many people who are unable to attend in-person meetings, no matter where they are. And I wouldn’t dream of taking that away from any of them.
But I think we can go farther than merely having a choice between in-person and virtual meetings. I think it’s time to consider the possibilities of other kinds of meetings we can have and how to have more of them.
Beyond providing more variety it also occurs to me that there are numerous possibilities to help everyone become better creators.
The first obvious choice is it’s been a long time since we’ve done any workshops. While going back and forth between workshops and speakers makes sense, it’s perfectly acceptable to do special events at times other than the monthly meeting. It certainly makes sense to do a lot of these physically, but there are also quite a few topics that will work just fine using screen share.
Other things that occur to me are writing and critique groups. We all need help improving our material and what better way to improve than being able to exchange advice with your fellow creators.
So, these are the possibilities that have occurred to me so far. I look forward to hearing other suggestions.
rhapsodies.wpmorse.com
Another New Year is upon us and, once we finish recovering from all the partying, it’s time to look at how we can try to make this new year better than the last. By which I mean that other great New Year’s tradition, resolutions.
Generally, my resolutions tend to be so repetitive, I barely even articulate them. The basic list is the usual stuff about trying to improve myself both personally and professionally. I will, of course, keep the more personal stuff to myself; for this column I’ll just stick to the professional part of the “usual stuff”.
Such “usual stuff” includes the classic “I will improve my productivity”. This is so I can get ahead of my deadlines and get far enough ahead that I can start working on all sorts of other projects I’ve wanted to try.
Next comes “I will get better at organizing”, this includes working on getting at better at house cleaning, filing, scheduling, and writing a lot of lists. After that come the more ambitious things. This involves resolutions about marketing and self-promotion. Things like, “I will touch up my professional web page“, and “I will do a better job marketing my work” which leads to my least favorite professional resolution: “I will do a better job at using social media.”
These things are quite a handful, but I think they are manageable. (There is a reason this year’s resolutions includes “write more lists”.) Essentially, these resolutions are my strategy for the year.