later comics might be on the verge of an artwork revolution.

previously: penciling, inking, erasing, scanning, laboriously cleaning up scans, digital painting. the scan clean-up killed it for me: time consuming and something always got lost in the translation.

now: upgrade to wacom’s medium intuos4 pen tablet, and while i was already busy learning, i decided to give sketchbook pro 2010 by autodesk a try.

and … wow! drawing with this power pack is fun. the tablet fully lives up to my expectations.  i’ve been using a little bamboo, so i’m thrilled with the size and responsiveness of the intuos.  less expected was how much i enjoyed sketchbook pro.  pure simplicity.  i love the clutter-free interface.  it doesn’t have all the commands other programs have, but by being paired down to drawing basics, it’s easy to learn and use.  it was designed to best emulate sketching with pencil or pen on paper, and it feels as quick and straightforward as that.  the pen strokes are so smooth and natural, it’s as easy to draw a fluid line as a straight one, and it integrates smoothly into other programs.  suddenly drawing digitally is a real possibility.

We’ve passed the midway point of November. So how am I doing? Let’s review:

17 days in November

= 8 good comics + 5 okay comics + 2 you-will-never-see-them comics

= 13 published comics

= the most productive month yet! but I have some serious work to do to reach 30. 2 comics in a day is doable for my hand but hard for my brain!  so you know, look for 17 pretty things and we’ll hope half of them make sense.

later comics is one year old today, yay!