Cartooning on the iPad
About a month ago, I bought an iPad. My main rationale for this extravagance was that I would begin doing my cartooning on the device. I’m happy to report that I have now become comfortable producing my single-panel gag cartoons on the iPad, although I am by no means at the stage of producing drawings that rival some of my plain paper and pen/Sharpie productions.
SketchBook Pro by Audodesk Inc. for iPad: I’ve been using SketchBook Pro for a number of reasons. It supports free hand sketching, I can set the width of the line easily as well as apply semi-transparent gray or color washes. The software allows layering so that if I need to produce a square drawing for a certain newspaper, it’s easy to create a square and them add a layer for a quick sketch and then add a third layer that is my final drawing.
The software also makes it extremely easy to delete strokes or you can select the eraser and size it to a very thin line or a wide one to erase delicately over a small detail or quickly over a large area. With a two-finger pinch it’s easy to enlarge the drawing and zero in on the details of a selected area.
When I have finalized my cartoon, I can then delete all layers except my final sketch, save a version, save two versions, whatever, and when I am ready I simply email the copy to my gmail address. There are also lots of other options such as send to flickr and much more.
I then switch to my laptop, where I resize, crop, convert to .jpeg if needed, then paste it and other cartoons into a word document and save as pdf to send as a submission to magazines that do all by email. All the versions I create from the original SketchBook Pro version I upload and store in the Documents section in my Google account. I have just started to create, name, and number a “Collection,” which is really just a folder, for each of my cartoons so they are now all stored on the web (free).
The SketchBookPro for iPad costs $7.99.
Griffin Stylus: There are a number of stylus brands out there and several are highly recommended. One that was recommended was the Griffin. I shopped around Austin, but a couple stores that had it had sold out, so I ordered it from the Griffin web site. It’s the only stylus for capacitive screens that I’ve used with the iPad and it is absolutely perfect for my needs. I love it. I have got so used to using it that I use it whenever I check other apps I have on my iPad and when I do email.
The Griffin Stylus from the Griffin web site is $19.99.
As an art supply store junkie, I guess I can say I’m now a convert to the iPad for almost all of my cartooning needs.
