SHOP TALK: My New Graphics Tablet!

As mentioned in a previous post, I recently upgraded my home computer system from a 10-year-old Win98 PC to a new 20" iMac. The transition has been amazingly easy, especially when one considers that I have Windows XP running within the Mac operating system so that I could continue using some old Windows software and hardware on the new computer that either don't exist for the Mac or would be a waste of money to re-purchase a Mac version.

The only piece of equipment I had to replace as a result of this transition was a graphics tablet—replacing a 4"x5" Aiptek HyperPen 5000 drawing tablet that I've also had for about 10 years but which featured an obsolete PC serial connection. Being the model of thrift I am, I initially had planned to purchase a small Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet, priced under $100 (Wacom is the gold standard for computer graphics tablets).

Fortunately, before I made the purchase, after doing a little research and scrutinizing more closely the tablet's specs, I realized the tablet, while within my price range (under $100) was, with its 5.8"x3.7" active drawing space, smaller than even my old tablet and probably way too small for my needs, especially given the fact that I now have a wider-screen monitor. I then looked at the medium-sized Wacom Bamboo, which with a 8.5"x5.3" live area seemed a bit more suitable. But priced at $199, I must admit it was a bit steep.

I conducted additional research (thank goodness for Google!), and began to focus on the Genius G-Pen F610 tablet. Not only did the tablet feature a much roomier 6"x10" live drawing area, it was also priced just under $100 on Amazon! There were some negative user reviews of the tablet, but fortunately I've learned to sometimes take such comments with a grain of salt, especially when taken as a whole with other comments and reviews. What also finally drove my decision was the realization that the Wacom tablet that actually was more comparable to the F610 wasn't the medium-sized Wacom Bamboo, but the Wacom Intuos3, which sold for $299! Given this, I thought it worth it to take the risk with the G-Pen.

I've been delighted by the results—the tablet works perfectly with both my Mac and Windows graphics programs. Admittedly, I've never needed to use a drawing tablet to its fullest capability. I primarily have used the tablet for coloring, which does not require the kind of finesse that drawing does. (For a good example of what can be accomplished with a drawing pad, check out the work of Benton Jew, who did the cover of issue 12 of Rob Hanes Adventures. Benton now works exclusively on a tablet, no more pen and ink for him!)

However, now that I'm using it, I cancertainly see that the larger tablet is much more conducive to drawing. Up until now, I primarily limited my tablet "drawing" with minor digital touch ups on my art after it had been scanned in. With the larger, roomier drawing space, I can project myself using the drawing function a little more, though at this point not exclusively.

Initially, when I first connected the tablet, I did experience a "lag" with the pen, which some user reviews had complained about. In fact, the pen dragged quite significantly, usually causing a very ragged line very different than what I had drawn. The instruction manual also was very minimal and useless, which others had noted. You can imagine I was aghast at this development.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to do some research and though the company that makes the tablet surprisingly doesn't have the most visible website, I eventually tracked down a version of the tablet's driver that was more recent than what shipped with the tablet, and that immediately solved the problem! (I ended up posting a review of the product at the Amazon website, partly to let Mac users know about the newer driver.)

So my new system is now fully decked out for me to do post work on my comics pages!

RIP Windows 98 PC—Hello, iMac!

I'm sure I've mentioned in past blogs that my primary computer is a PC that runs Windows 98, purchased back in, of course, 1998. While I enjoy watching people's jaws drop when they hear that, I'm always quick to note that the system—with only 128 MB of RAM—always got the job done for me, so why fix what ain't broke?* The brunt of my post production work on my comics work has been done on this Win 98 machine running Photoshop 5.5 and CorelDraw. Long ago, I learned that it's not the tools that matter, but the skill of the artist, and the same applies to computer hardware and software. After all, no one can tell (or cares) whether the final piece of work was produced with Photoshop 4 or Photoshop 7. (Above right: A promotional shot of my Windows 98 system from a 1998 newspaper advertisement.)

I knew that upgrading the system one day would mean not just replacing my desktop computer, but also probably require me to also purchase new hardware (an 11x17 scanner and graphic tablet), as well as some software—especially if I chose to migrate to a Mac.

Nevertheless, aside from the growing obsolescence of my system, my computer needs and ambitions were gradually outstripping the capabilities of my Win 98 system, and it was coming time to upgrade my computer. After having been mightily impressed with the new iMac,* over the past year or so, the call to upgrade had become stronger. The capabilities of the new Intel processor Macs, plus the ability to run Windows programs at native speeds with third-party software, seemed to offer the possibility to transition to the Mac without necessarily having to completely sacrifice all my PC legacy programs, files and equipment. My earlier reluctance to go Mac wasn't just due to the cost, but also because some of my PC software programs simply were not available on the Mac.

During the Martin Luther King holiday weekend I took the plunge. I purchased a base 20" iMac computer, added 4 Gigs of third-party vendor memory, and at the time of purchase installed Windows XP along with Parallels Desktop software. Parallels allows users to run another operating system natively and side-by-side with Mac's operating system, OS X. (You can even cut and paste between the systems and share folders.)


When it comes to technology, I know to take with a grain of salt the claims computer manufacturers make about their products and know that such installations don't always run so smoothly right out of the box.

So I must admit even I have been shocked at how nearly flawlessly this transition has been given the complexity of this migration. Within Windows, I have been able to install my Quicken 2003 and Quickbooks 2001 programs, and import all the related personal and business financial data.

The real test was connecting my Mustek 11x17 scanner to the system. The scanner is another discontinued dinosaur that I purchased because it was compatible with Windows 98 (and fortunately also XP) and not at all with Mac. Crossing my fingers, I installed Photoshop 5.5 within the Windows environment and installed the appropriate drivers for the scanner—and the scanner came up within the application just as it's supposed to!

I also was able to install an old Epson color stylus printer to the system that was originally purchased to work in tandem with the Win 98 machine. No Mac drivers even exist for the system. After doing some research online, however, I found some third party printer drivers. The printer now not only works within Windows, it also prints from the Mac side as well!

The only item I'll have to upgrade is my graphics tablet due to it being a serial device that only interfaces with an old PS2 style keyboard/mouse connector.

So it's farewell to another piece of equipment that's done great service for me over the years.
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* At my "day job," I've had the fortune to have access to state-of-the-art Macs over the years, which is how I became pretty famiiar with Macs and learned how to work seamlessly between PCs and Macs.

SHOP TALK: Google SketchUp

Like a lot of cartoonists, I’ve gradually embraced the digital revolution in varying degrees. Being the lazy bum I am, I’m always interested in making my work easier. However, I’ve also always made a point to only adopt methods that don’t detract from the overall quality of the work, or call attention to itself by clearly looking like it was done on a computer. The best examples are my transition to using Photoshop to emulate classic halftone screens, and CorelDraw for my lettering and balloons (which I blogged about here). Again, the priority for me was to ensure that readers didn’t notice any change in the work, and to add other effects gradually and subtly.

At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, a well-known industry pro who has been an acquaintance for many years turned me on to Google SketchUp, a 3D modeling program available as a free download. Only recently, however, did I begin to take baby steps with it, and I must admit I can anticipate it becoming a more regular part of my artist's toolbox.

The program allows users to build and edit 3D models that can then be rotated and viewed at any angle. The model can then be combined with other models, and saved, downloaded and printed in a variety of usable formats. (There are also plenty of filters and features to turn it into a wireframe drawing, or to make it look as photorealistic as possible.) Even better, thanks to the generosity of the online community, there already exists an extensive database archive of objects available for download and customization. As any artist who has struggled with getting the angle just right of a gun, a chair, a staircase, an automobile, an airplane, or even a building or cityscape knows, the applications of such a program is mind-boggling.

I’ve never used a 3D program before, so have no point of comparison for it. But the program is fairly intuitive, though of course once you begin getting more ambitious, you’ll no doubt need to delve into the manual.

I first used the program for a shot of an airplane in an upcoming story. I found a generic plane in SketchUp's online library, rotated it to the right angle, saved it as a TIFF, then used a lightboard to bring it into the finished art.

My next project was a bit more ambitious. A fictitious building in New York City, the Drakorp Building, which is the headquarters for the title character of my comic-book series, Rob Hanes Adventures, occasionally appears in the book. Initially, I had found a generic skyscraper model in SketchUp's library. However, given the distinctive look of the Drakorp building, I thought it might be worth it to take the time to build a 3D model of the building that I could then always have on file to use whenever I needed it.

Though it required some fiddling and more learning about the program, I actually built the model from scratch in just a few hours. You can see the model in its entirety in the image at the top of this post. It's actually a fairly simple, straightforward model, especially since each side is identical. The only part that turned out to be a challenge was cutting and pasting each side of the building with the window slat features down the structure's full length intact. Cutting and pasting in a 3D space turned out initially to be a bit tricky to figure out, but I finally got it to work.

In addition, I decided it might also be a good idea to place the model within a larger city environment to create atmosphere for the structure whenever I used it. After finding a generic cityscape and integrating my Drakorp building model into it, I also imported into the space a completed model I found online of the Empire State Building. (See below for a shot of the final model at a dramatic angle, with the Empire State Building in the background.)

One thing I know for sure is that the next time I need to integrate a stairwell into a story, I will be using SketchUp!

SHOP TALK: Using a computer to produce comics

Like a lot of cartoonists, I’ve become more dependent on computers to produce comics. Though I remain “old school” in many ways where Bristol board, photo-blue pencil, and an ink pen and brush are still essential tools of my trade, the computer has also now become an increasingly indispensable part of the process for me.

I adopted Photoshop early on for coloring my comic-book covers, of course, primarily because it's the industry standard, and comics colored any other way look amateurish and unprofessional—and the first impression a reader gets from your title is important. However, over the past few years, I’ve really ramped up my use of digital effects in my work.

The first two major priorities and eventual breakthroughs in this regard were learning how to emulate zipatone in Photoshop, and figuring out how to digitally letter and draw word balloons with CorelDraw. (Zipatone is a transparent adhesive sheet that creates the classic shaded dot pattern, as seen at right.) Both took quite a bit of patience and trial and error, but my efforts finally have paid off.

It’s a treat now to gray tone my art at will, without being limited by the number of zipatone sheets I have on hand and their cost, which previously required me to use my precious supply sparingly. Though for the most part I continue to use a flat pattern, I now have the freedom to add second darker tones to add further depth, and gradients. (As in any such tool, overuse of such effects risks making the art look too busy and distracting.) In addition, since the zipatone patterns, lettering and word balloons are no longer on the original art, my pages look "cleaner," giving me the freedom to more precisely place word balloons and adapt the art for other needs in the future, such as for color and advertisements.

(A detailed technical description of the process of creating the zipatone effect in Photoshop has been posted here.)

I should note that one of my priorities when I adopted these techniques was to ensure that it did not compromise the quality of the final product, and that it was transparent to readers—in other words, that the final work looked the same as before, and it wouldn’t be obvious that a computer was now being used. (A good example of this was to slightly skew the word balloons pages so that they are not perfectly round or oval, and look organic and hand-drawn.)

One of my earliest experiments was to drop into a background a scanned photo of an aerial view of a cityscape in issue 10 of Rob Hanes Adventures, as seen below (btw, all the lettering and sound effects were also done on computer as well, using CorelDraw):

This, of course, is one of the oldest tricks in the field, with cartoonists as diverse as Will Eisner and Jack Kirby occasionally integrating photographs to some extent into their work.

More recently, I’ve gotten a little more creative in relying more on these digital tools to assist me, borne out of the desire to avoid the drudgery of some of the more tedious aspects of drawing.

A couple of examples can be seen below, both from the issue (#11) I'm currently working on. In the first, I dropped in a tiled floor in the panel. In the past, I would have set up 2-point perspective vanishing points and painstakingly drawn in the pattern in accordance with the grid.

Taking advantage of my digital tools, however, I drew a checkerboard pattern in CorelDraw, then used the software’s perspective/skew capabilities to angle it and place it in the panel at the appropriate perspective, using an imported version of the art to position it correctly. (The file is then saved as an EPS file, imported into its own layer in Photoshop on top of the final digital version of the page, then cropped to fit into the space around the foreground elements of the picture. You'll notice that the graytones on these examples are continuous gray washes, not a zipatone pattern. This is what the art looks like before it is bitmapped, which converts the graytones into a pattern.)

I used a similar approach for the railing design on the balcony in the upper left part of the drawing below. The railing pattern was laid out in CorelDraw, then skewed to fit the art at the correct perspective angle. (The Chinese characters on the ceiling banner and the design on the backdrop of the stage were also dropped in with a computer. The design behind the stage is a piece of clipart.)

Other advantages to working digitally include the ability to re-draw panels (or even parts of panels, such as a headshot), and cutting and pasting it on top of the original scan digitally; similarly, if I’m not sure of a certain effect or a placement of black, I sometimes leave it blank and do it on the computer. If I’m not happy with the results, it is very easy to erase or change it.

Compared to some artists, I’m still on the early curve of taking full advantage of the full capabilities of this digital tool. Some artists, for example, are now entirely penciling and inking digitally, eschewing India ink entirely; others use a variety of programs, like Sketchup and Poser, to help them draw backgrounds and props that are in perfect perspective.

Ultimately, in cartooning and most arts, it’s not the tools that matter, it’s the final product, limited only by the skill and ingenuity of the artist. At the end of the day, a human being must put down those lines, and those patterns—digital or not. Regardless, it’s a treat for someone as lazy as me to have these tools at my disposal to help cut some corners on the production end without sacrificing the quality of the final output.