Going digital

[bcholmes]

I’m currently on vacation. Which, y’know, is pretty awesome. I spent a coupl’a days in do-nothing mode, sitting on my couch and watching movies. Which is about all that I’m capable of when work has drained me somewhat.

But now I’m in pet-project mode: I want to focus on something interesting. My pet project has been about going digital on the cartooning stuff. None of the instructors I’ve had have been terribly positive about computer-based art. Anthony (my primary instructor during my cartooning programme at George Brown) didn’t quite poo-poo digital art, but fundamentally believed that one had to learn how to draw using traditional tools before learning digital art. He also felt that most of the computer-produced art that he’d seen was very flat and lacked expressiveness.

Ty hasn’t taught us anything related to computers — he seems to draw and ink using traditional media, but he uses tools that Anthony would have turned his nose up at (markers! Pen brushes! Oh noes!) Ty also seemed to think that it was pointless to learn hand-lettering because nobody hand-letters these days. (I notice that Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? seems computer-lettered, whereas Fun Home looked hand-lettered). And Ty’s Bun Toons often include digital colouring and probably a bunch of other computer tweaks. So he seems more pragmatic about the use of computers than Anthony ever did.

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Mirrored from Under the Beret.

Comments

[jiawen]

At Minicon a few years ago, one of the programming items was Dan Dos Santos creating a M:tG-style piece in one hour. He was so skilled and confident that he didn't even use layers, just occasional undo. Watching it unfold in real time was... amazing. Almost dispiriting.

Drawing with a mechanical pencil hurts my wrist less than using my tablet, but I think most of my art output these days is Wacom-based.

[heyfoureyes]

I'm a die-hard Bechdel fan. So I'll say, she has said that she did the lettering for both Fun Home and Are You My Mother? in Photoshop.

Artistically, AYMM looks different in that there is a layer of digital color added after the fact. On her art-sales page there is a breakdown of all the elements of the work.

All of which is to add, best of luck with the tablet! I hope it works out.

[maize]

My sample set is most certainly going to be skewed, since I tend to mix with pretty tech-positive people, but just about everyone I know who draws as part of their art does so digitally. About the most non-digital that I seem to encounter regularly is where people do an initial sketch by hand, then scan it and do the final inking and colouring digitally.

I have one friend who is a professional writer and illustrator of Children's books who, as far as I can tell from her posts on the subject, does most or all of her work on her iPad. Another friend of mine just started going down that route after discovering iPad styli that can sense pressure (which they send to the tablet via some low-power version of Bluetooth).

[bcholmes]

That's a useful datapoint. I'm guessing that print comics are still primarily made using traditional media, even if so many other art fields have moved to computer-based media. I wonder when comics will hit the tipping point.