After much hemming and hawing I decided to take the plunge. For just over a month now I have been the owner of a new Wacom Cintiq 21UX.
I’ve always drawn my comics old school, with a pen and ink. In fact it’s one of my favorite parts of creating a comic. However, after attending a fantastic Sketchbook event, where I actually had the opportunity to test drive one, the idea of going digital started to appeal to me. Pretty much all of my workflow is digital. Comics are scanned into a computer, corrected, adjusted, text might be added and then colored. I started to notice that, even though I liked to have an original inked comic, I no longer thought of it as the finished artwork. What I mean by that is, I would ink a comic and fully expect to alter it later in Photoshop. For example, if a character was drawn a little too far to the left in a panel, instead of erasing and redrawing the character I would ink it and adjust it in Photoshop later. Sometimes whole panels would be rearranged when a better idea came to me. There are a lot of changes that take place as a comic is developed.
Also an important consideration is time. I’m drawing a daily comic strip 365 days a year…no breaks. Those deadlines happen every single week. So to get a week off you have to be an extra week ahead (for me, an amazingly hard thing to do!) Anything that can speed up your workflow is fantastic. This is an especially important point in this day and age of newspaper comics. Many cartoonists are starting second strips or doing extra illustrations/projects just to make up their loss in income from struggling newspaper sales. Besides income, extra time means a chance to be more creative and experiment….which can only benefit all of the comics you draw.
So how has the last month of transitioning to the digital dark side gone, you ask?
In some ways it feels like when I let go of buying CDs and downloaded my music online. Not having the physical drawing seemed odd. Also, your field of vision is different when you draw on paper as opposed to sketching on a screen. I find it much easier to to quickly layout a sheet of bristol board than panels on the display. Of course each approach has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Mistakes on the paper require erasing or fixing digitally in Photoshop later. On screen, all those design decisions are made on the fly so your sketch is pretty close to your final inked drawing which saves tons of time. Another thing that became quickly apparent was the freedom to try out new things. Because whatever you draw can be quickly undone and no paper is wasted or drawing wrecked you can experiment with different angles and expressions etc. It felt a bit like it took the anxiety out of inking….as I discovered when I went back to inking the traditional way. I had a line go off badly and I reached for the “Control Z” keys (amazing how quickly that mindset had taken hold!)
But like all things, you gain some and you lose some. The digital pen nib doesn’t flex and bounce like a real pen nib. Sometimes you get a really terrific unexpected line just by the steel flexing in the pen and the pressure of your hand. Sometimes the unexpectedness of drawing with real ink is what makes the process so much fun. Sometimes there’s disaster (dragging your knuckles through a wet drawing) but often there’s an energy to the lines that is hard to replicate.
So….hard to say which technique is better…maybe neither is. I guess it depends on which tools works best for each artist. After an awkward adjustment period, I’ve now done a couple of weeks of comics 100% digitally. Already I can see things that aren’t quite the way I’d like them so more tinkering with tools and settings are needed. However, I’m surprised to find that for me, inking digitally is just as exciting as inking the old way. Sure it’s a bit different but it’s still the part of the process where the comic really springs to life. Also, I kind of feel like I have more freedom now to to get better at drawing. Like I said, there’s no paper to waste so you can just see what happens….ironically, I think this can only benefit my traditional work as well. As for being faster, I can begin to see that as well. Fellow cartoonists have told me to expect the learning curve to last about a month and that’s pretty much spot on. One thing I’m glad I invested in was a pair of Gunnar computer glasses. Staring at a screen for hours was one thing that worried me about the Cintiq. Inking (for me) is an intense process so I knew I would be focusing hard on the screen just as I do with paper. The glasses really make a huge difference as far as dryness and fatigue…I highly recommend them.
The digital strips should appear in June some time…it’ll be interesting to see if anyone notices the change!
I’ve wanted one of those things for a long time. More and more artists are getting them these days, so you are in good company. I love the strip, keep them coming, I hope to be reading Bleeker for many years to come!
Hey thanks Paul! Yeah, like I said I’ve been looking at them for awhile and it just seemed like the right time to give it a try. Fortunately there are enough people out there using them now that any trouble you have getting started someone has a video or blog post up. Actually I had more trouble getting the hang of Manga Studio EX…
As much as I lament the death of traditional media, I do appreciate the need for this. Traditional animation has been cel-free for a long time, which I guess saves on resources (I see a huge difference between a finished piece of art and hundreds of thousands of cels, about 80% of which are in-betweens) but it was fun when you could actually buy cels that were used in a film.
I’m actually doing this in reverse, I love traditional media too much but I am not a very good artist, so I bought a tablet to practice with so I don’t murder a forest (of course with manufacturing and power consumption it probably all evens out in the end!). Also the need for improved workflow is especially important to comic strip artists, especially those with deadlines. It just bugs me how many artists have completely abandoned traditional media altogether, though I think for a lot of people the only thing stopping them before was the price (and availability) of going digital, from Disney CAPS being pretty much the only thing out there to Cintiqs being (relatively) affordable.
Actually, I’ve been reading a few blogs about guys using the Cintiq to layout and sketch a page…..then print out the blue line drawing on bristol or water color paper and then ink it traditionally. Seems kinda backwards but then layout is often the longest part of the process. This way you get the flexibility of digital and the uniqueness of traditional inking. Too labor intensive for a daily comic strip but interesting for other projects.
Yeah, the cost of all this tech is still not really cheap. However, I figure I spend about $300 just in paper each year….so all of that begins to add up as well.
Seems kind of weird, especially since I doubt you can erase the blue lines off the paper once you’re done inking so you have to be perfect with it. I see what they’re trying for but at that point why not ink it on the computer and apply one of those “faux real brushstrokes” filters to it?
Yeah, it’s still not all that affordable to go full Cintiq/Creative Suite/Manga Studio, etc, but it is relatively affordable to get a Bamboo or Monoprice (better in my opinion) tablet (why are Intuos still so expensive!?), with Inkscape and GimPhoto. Watching Devian Tart I see less and less traditional works being posted. Joann seriously cut back on their art supply section last year. Meh. I don’t want to sound like an art snob saying digital “isn’t as good”. I just wish people would still use both.
Hey Jonathan. I’ll be interested to see the digital Bleeker. I suspect a lot of folks won’t notice a difference at all. I’m always amazed when I meet artists who do everything digitally and I had no clue.
For myself, I’m wary of the Control-Z function. I use Photoshop and Illustrator all the time for my day job as a designer and couldn’t live without the flexibility it allows me there, but I don’t like having that undo button when I’m drawing. When I was in school, teachers would tell me to sketch in pen because it forced you to think things through before you made your lines and so not having that ability to erase supposedly made you a better artist. I’m not sure if its true or not (and whatever works for one person doesn’t work for everyone), but I still cling to that theory. Wasn’t it Doc Savage who wouldn’t carry a gun when fighting crime because he felt he would become dependent on it? That’s really old school, but it’s kind of how I think about the undo stuff.
For sure Trade…all good points. I can totally see that undo option can become a real crutch in a way. Just like Doc Savage, it becomes easier and you don’t have to try as hard the first time. On the other hand, I notice I’ll try things I wouldn’t try with traditional ink because I know I would blow it (and wreck the drawing) There’s a lot of freedom going digital and that’s kinda fun. I didn’t expect that and I wonder if, after awhile, going back to real ink, I’ll take some of that with me.
One thing that still bothers me about inking digitally is I feel a bit removed from the page. Unlike real paper and ink, where I can see exactly what I’ve drawn, onscreen those pixels aren’t sharp enough. That slight blur is like having on a pair of dirty glasses so you can’t quite see things. Maybe resolutions will improve but it’s the one trade off that I’ve found hard to accept.
Like any tool it takes time to learn and already I can see changes since I first started with the Cintiq. I think mixing digital and traditional is the way to go if you have the time…always that time thing!
BTW Trade I’m loving the Captain’s Quest and everyone should go read it!
http://zipandbit.com/captainsquest/2012/05/20/page-55/#comments