I’m trying to transition my digital drawing over to the ipad and away from the big desktop. Partly this is about space, partly display quality (ipad pro vs cintiq lo res) partly about affordability – if my current big computer system goes (a 27” cintiq and a mac mini) I couldn’t afford to replace it, but I could afford to replace my ipad. (Maybe… probably not actually)
So, my I pencilled, inked, coloured and lettered this on the iPad Pro running Clip Studio Ex.
Now, on to the art. The colours here were inspired (of all things) by a screen saver running on my apple tv (YES, I AM ENTIRELY AN APPLE HOUSEHOLD, I’M SORRY) it was a great shot of Hollywood with a weird coloured sky. It may not even have been pink, but that fused in my head with the colours of cherry blossoms, and here we are.
I googled the Kodoma – and you’ll largely get these cute looking sprites that, I think, are from a Studio Ghibli film so I ruled those out. That said, I couldn’t help myself and added little eyes to the stars of twinkly light-sprites.
Next an animal, I thought fox would be fun, and because I’d drawn two stars it seemed right to draw two foxes. Ditto with the humans.
And the final panel was gonna be black and white but the rest is pretty monochrome anyway, so I thought I’d change the background colour to orange for the fire.
Anyway, that’s it. Just the facts this time. Hope you’re keeping well!
I love Clip Studio and have been using it for years, it IS full featured – to a remarkable degree, but there’s things it doesn’t have (and, unbelievably things it used to have too) and here’s my person wishlist:
Auto Actions expanded to include settings for export / print options. I export for two reasons: one is to send preview png files to editors/writers and the other is to send tiff files. I do both from the export menu, but I need to remember the settings between the two – please let me save those settings so I don’t forget and have to redo exports. It’s driving me mad!
Give me a toggle to automatically hide/show draft layers. Clip Studio is smart enough to allow you to ignore draft layers when you use the fill tool (so if you have four layers and a draft and fill on layer three, it will look at the four layers as a complete unit and ignore the draft, super handy for digital inking) – but sometimes i want to see the lineart with the clutter of the pencils, and I have to go to the layers option and turn off draft layers individually (though, if you’re smart you keep all your draft layers in a single folder)
Smarter perspective rulers – let’s see the perspective line you’re about to draw before you draw it – there’s precedent here both Paint Tool Sai and Lazy nezumi Pro (both windows only) allow you to see the perspective line you’re about draw before you draw it (great for ensuring you’re following the same perspective of a building when you’ve drawn it with gaps)
PDF Export on desktop. Come on! I can do PDF export on the ipad but not the desktop. That’s just bonkers.
AI Flatting. Let me select a layer, ask for flats, and get a new layer with flatted fills in one smart go. Come on. Clip Studio in Japanese apparently has a plug in feature and this (or something like it) exists as a plug in. But I’d love it as a standard feature in clip studio. I realise there are people out there earning money as professional flatters, and I suspect they still will – because any automated flatting will never be as smart as a human flatting (esp if you’re working with a colourist for a long time) but for me who does the odd colour job, what I wouldn’t give for an AI flatter.
OKAY ONE MORE BONUS – please for the love of god, give this to me – feature request:
Let me save and share document presets. I use two document presets, 2000AD and US Comics, and every install of clip studio I have to recreate them (and it’s not easy since the numbers try and automatically correct themselves which means you key it in right, but then find the numbers have changed themselves and now you’ve to fix those) every time I recreate presets it’s a 20 minute job laden with mistakes. JUST GIVE ME SAVED/SHARED PRESETS – I can save and share brushes, why not this one thing?
Look there are probably loads of other features missing, and many people will probably think these features hardly matter – but honestly, I think these are things that could really improve workflow.
Now, someone at clip studio, go ahead and do these, thanks!
Yeesh. Missed a week of the weekly reviews. And nearly missed this weeks. It’s been chaos, and not just at Holden studios – the world is just. Yeesh.
So, to catch up week 15: pencilled a new episode of a four part Dredd. I might have done other things. I can’t remember.
Week 16: determined to get the Dredd all inked. Ok – did most, missed a page. Gonna finish that tomorrow. Also finished off a cover (suddenly remembered the deadline for it was the 20th – ie tomorrow – and while I’d coloured up the main figure I needed a background, necessity being the mother of invention I figured I’d add a pencil/greywash combo – and I think it turned out pretty good.
Next week:
Monday 20th gotta do this weeks folklore thursday. Finishing inking this Dredd.
Tuesday 21st– got an 8 page charity thing I’ve gotta pencils, so I think I’ll try and get layouts done, then layouts of the second part of this Dredd.
Wednesday 22nd– Dredd pencils, 1-2
Thursday 23rd– Dredd pencils 3-4
Friday 24th – Dredd pencils 5-6
Saturday 25th – Charity Pencils 1-2
Sunday 26th – Charity Pencils 3-4
Other things that happened this week:
I started inking the Dredd by hand on paper, then switched over to digital inks on the ipad. Finally figured out an optimum way for me to ink on the ipad – I’ve turned off pinch to zoom, I can still use two fingers to rotate but the only way I can now zoom in is in the fixed zoom in amounts using the on screen +/- or to keys I’ve mapped ‘0’ to ‘Print Size’ and ‘-’ and ‘+’ to zoom out and zoom in (strictlyspeaking, on my keyboard I’ve mapped ‘=’ to zoom in because the plus key is actually above it, and I’d need to press shift to do it.
Oh I cut my own hair. I’ve got a thing about my hair, I like it short – my usual setting is 1 at the back. And so, I figured I’ve got a beard trimmer I’ll give this a try.
It turns out, among my many many talents, self-hairdressing isn’t one. So, unable to figure out how to give myself a reasonable short back and sides, I ended up shaving it all off (well, giving myself a number 1 all over – or close to a one, my beard trimmer doesn’t quite have the same settings)
BUT NOT BEFORE I DID THIS!
Look, i’d’ve left that mohawk on but for the fact my wife hated it. And I love my wife far more than I love that mohawk. So off it went. (But goddam a mohawk suits my hair).
(My wife also hates my hair entirely shaved off but I lack the skill to do much about that one)
My weekly whiteboard has been largely ignored but gonna try and get it back in to shape. Need to be able to keep track of invoicable work – I’m starting to hit the blockages in work, I’ve work on but not as much as I normally do, and – from chatting with Pals it appears I’m lucky to have that. So many have been told to down tools (or, worse, the work just simply vanished).
It’s gonna be a blood bath for the creative industries, I’m hoping we’re all smart enough to pivot to whatever the new future is but even if we manage to, who’s to say that people can afford to spend money on comics?
It’s pretty bleak out there.
(btw this is why I shouldn’t blog late at night, I get very melancholic…)
Originally posted at patreon this Thursday. I’m running a bit late on the old blog updates.
Ok, I feel like this may make little sense, there’s a logic in here, I swear…
So my first step was to google “Gandreið” which took me to a google book reference, and I kind liked that, but I’m in hock to the words of the tweet, so had to cover both bases…
Google book result was “Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe” and (and I hope I’m not stepping on John’s toes for any blog posts) it covers a Gandreið – (not being as smart as John, I just lifted the paragraph I was interested in and didn’t do any outside reading)
Here’s the paragraph:
“A man in a ream before the burning took place heard a tremendous crash which shook earth and sky, and then saw a man black as pitch riding furiously on a grey horse and holding a blazing firebrand, while around him was a ring of fire. ‘It seemed to him that he hurled the brand eastwards towards the fells, and that a great fire blazed up with such a fury that the fells were blotted out. He though that the man road eastward to the fells and vanished. ‘ When he told this dream, the response was: “You have seen the Gandreið, and this always means that momentous things will happen’
So anyway, thunder lightning (it sounds like a meteor falling to earth, no?) and I wanted to get that in, and the idea of it all being a bit dreamy.
So, does it make sense now? Probably not, but then right now, does anything?
John has posted an article with more background over at patreon.
My all-powerful white-board/schedule has it today listed as “Script Caduceus” – which is the three part creator owned thing I’ll tell you about (I will probably never do, but it’s good to keep your brain occupied, right?)
Anyway, spent the morning at Tescos – my wife and I went (I realise we should probably have gone either me or her, but she can’t drive, and she’s been desperate to get to the shops – next time I’m gonna drop her off).
The queue was snaking around the entrance at the car park, then there were queues to get in to each aisle, so that ate all morning. In the afternoon I sat and realised I don’t function well without a task to do, so spotted a thing on boing boing about making zines, I thought “oh sod it” I’d make one for Thomas to laugh at.
So here it is, Dad-A-Zine #1
I’ll pop the comic here for you to read, and you can download the larger image if you want to print it out to keep (why???) (To print it, just print, the follow the instructions for folding a zine and boom, you’ll have a hardcopy!)
This one was a bit of a struggle, I admit my motivation is starting to feel a little battered by everything going on, and then I decided to draw animals (I’m not a nature artist). Still, found this one fascinating. Sometimes folklore can be educational! ( nearly included Bugs Bunny in this strip, then thought better of the copyright law…)
Ok, things (well, me) are starting to slow down. There’s a walking-through-treacle effect starting to happen now as the pile of projects to-do moves to the pile of projects completed, and nothing new is filling that to-do pile up (it’s ok, still have enough to keep me going – and it’s probably a more healthy amount of work)
Last week finished the pencils for the WWI story I’m drawing, finished that around Thursday. Friday I did some layouts on the new Dredd, and the weekend has been a washout. I did watch Pirates of Caribbean with my youngest son, Thomas (age 11), so it wasn’t completely wasted.
I’ve enough invoices out now, if they all come in I’ll be ok for a couple of months, but still need to keep forward momentum while it’s there.
So, next week: pencilling Dredd all week, and then the next probably, inking the WWI story, then inking the Dredd. And getting some invoices out.
I can pencil and ink 7 pages in one week, but that’s a pretty hectic pace to work, and I’ve tried to slow things down to 2 pages of pencils then 2 pages of inks, but done over two weeks (which is the set deadline anyway). That was giving me time to think about other projects, and start looking at creator owned stuff. But in the beginning of the current pandemic chaos I felt like creator owned stuff might be a luxury I can ill afford to think about just yet. But, I think, as the year progresses, I suspect short creator owned gigs might be worth looking at again. If only for a sanity check, and, lets be honest, if the government are gonna pay me 80% of my normal income for a month or two, it’s actually a good time to do a creator owned book!
Originally available on Patreon. Which remains free to read, but if you help support us you can see the strips early!
The henbane here is a trace of the henbane image available on wikipedia, and is in the public domain. (Still, I think this is quite a pretty rendition of it)
First step was googling the flower and when I saw that big long stem I thought Oh! I could use that for guttering (literally I make this stuff up as I go along)
Witches flying first was the pointy nose cliched witch that was losely based on my memory of Mog and Meg, then the naked witch after I remembered the painting Witches going to the Sabbath.
I don’t mind admitting the Necromancer was loosely based on Alan Moore, but that’s how I feel about all big bearded Necromancers – he’s pretty much the archetype for me. And the demon is, of course, based on me.(not really)
I think I drew the witch holding the flower and I hadn’t thought about the necromancer holding a flower but just sort of drew his arm up and then realised he could be doing the same thing.
It always looks like there’s a grand plan, but, honestly, it’s all made up.
Trying to count up the work I did in march, but, as you know, it’s been a crazy month.
So let’s start with stuff I know I did:
10 pages pencils and inks for a new 2000ad series. Hurrah.
Four folklore Thursday (pencils, inks, colours and letters)
Sundry drawings for a TV show thing (which I’ll be unlikely to talk about for a couple of years, given how TV works)
Completed a 14 page thing for a charity comic, (Though I came into the month with 2 pages done already) so let’s call it 12 pages.
Pencilled a WWI story, it’s 8 pages, but have only done 6 so far (getting the last two done today, but that’s gonna be an April finish)
So, my total for March is… 26 pages finished, and 32 pencilled. Actually that’s not bad.
So, here’s how April stands:
Gonna finish this WWI story, pencils have to be finished (two pages), then approved (probably next week) for inking next month.
I’ve got a new Dredd to do, it’s a four parter, though only the first script for it. Starting that next week and, hopefully rest of script will arrive (hoping the writer remains able to work in this, the not-quite-end-times-but-it-doesn’t-half-feel-like-it) and I can plough through at least two parts of it.
Then, May, finish the remainder of Dredd and… that’s it. I have a 20 page project which will pop up at some point, waiting on script (but it’s an unusual comics/not comics publisher gig)
I suppose it’s a mark of how weird this month has turned out that I’ve lost track of updating the blog (I try and update every Sunday and just sort of forgot the day of the week)
Anyway, here was last week plan: finish pencilling a WWI strip I have on the board. It would’ve been finished a week early. The move on to inking the new 2000AD strip I’ve got on the board to finish.
How it went:
Well, minor panic when I looked at the invoices I had out for the month and realised I needed to shift some stuff around to make sure I got an invoice off for the 2000ad gig. So it got finished last week.
I can pretend comics is nothing but glamour and fun, but as someone once pointed out to me: I draw comics for fun, but I get paid to invoice.
I’ve lost a little bit of focus on slowing down, checking there’s not too much on the board to do and giving myself one day at least to do creator owned work.
This week, I’ll be finishing pencilling this WWI strip, and moving on to a Dredd, but might take a day.
I’ve been working every minute and hour to get work done. It’s not healthy, and it feels horrible in a house with my family and me just constantly working. Hoping to start pacing myself better. BUT I’ve been lucky enough to have work, and I don’t know how long it will last during this, what I think we’re all gonna start calling, the lost year. So I’m torn.
Anyway, hope you’re all coping with this ok, this, right now, though, this is probably the easy part.
