You’ve seen them a million times, and in many circumstances, they have helped create that perfect touch to the setting within the comics you’re reading. Backgrounds seldom receive much attention, but are vital part of adding depth and mood to your comics. Here’s a few pointers on how to develop the right backgrounds and make your comics more realistic.

Seek Out Reference Material

I can’t stress this enough when you’re trying to develop a scene, use as much reference pictures as you can. Build the scene in your head and in roughs before you commit to putting it on paper. Some of the best reference pictures come from stock photography sites – they’re free to browse, and you can often save low-resolution ‘comp’ photos for your photo library. Here are a number of stock photo resources I’ve used for building backgrounds.

Getty Images
Fotolia
istockphoto

You can also rummage through Google’s image search option as well. The results aren’t always the greatest – but sometimes you can come up with user-based pics that can fit the bill better than a stock resource. Remember, don’t try to take these photos and repost them as your own – that isn’t cool – nor is it legal!

Draw Rough Sketches and Establish Perspective

Is the frame a birds-eye view or a street-level view? Do you require one, two or 3 point perspective to get your idea across? Where are your characters standing? Is this an establishing shot? Do details matter? Is the focus on the foreground or the background?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself prior to working out your composition. Having these all answered will make background drawings very easy. Sometimes, all it takes is a mere blend of colour or simple linework to get your point across. Other times, you need to have immense detail in order to build the mood or add depth to the story.

Establish where your horizon line is, and your focal points. From there, build your images according to the focal points – remember that the horizontal lines lead towards the focal points, and create a sense of depth. Practice this with photographs – determine where the focal points are, where the horizon line is, and how the lines in structures and objects all lead to the focal points to create depth.

Kevin Hulsey has a great primer on perspective drawing here.

Simplified, or extremely detailed… the choice is yours – and its dependent on what mood you’re trying to evoke. The important part is to plan it out first.

It’s all in the details…

As mentioned before – perhaps your comic relies on a lot of details in the backgrounds to increase realism, or it is important to advancing your story – or maybe you don’t require as much emphasis on details, and simply use backgrounds to give the viewer a hint of the setting, and allow them the imagination to fill in the blanks on their own. Depending on your style or inclination, background detail is important.

Every leaf, every lily pad, and every blade of grass has its purpose. Its a visual stimulus and the way to establish an exact location and a moment in time.

Fantasy art often relies on intricate backgrounds in order to visually demonstrate the differences between the ‘fantasy land’ and the land we are accustomed to seeing. This detail is necessary to help immerse the viewer into the world that the artist has envisioned.

In these two frames from Kapow Express by Xia Taptara of idrawgirls fame, you can see the simplicity of the backgrounds. Its the interior of a noodle house – with some characters milling about in the background – but as you can see, its merely some blends of soft tones and some hazy silhouettes behind the main character. The emphasis is all up front, yet the feeling of being in a dark, seedy environment is achieved.

The Final Rendering After your Composition

With colour and inks, your background can take a new life of its own and set a dramatic stage for your story – in this pin-up of Captain America – the rooftops are clearly rendered and the details of the buildings are quite intricate – window panes with reflections, dilapidated planks on the wooden water towers, concrete bricks with mortar in the spaces – these elements all add to the overall piece and visually guide the viewer along. With colour and ink work, the background comes alive and enhances the mood – even though its a subtle, drab and dreary shade of grey/blue… We can sense that is probably dusk or close to a night-time hour. We know we’re in a big city (possibly New York) and there is a general feeling of foreboding and mystery. The viewer receives all this information from looking at ONE panel with no descriptive text. Just a super hero hopping across a series of rooftops.

The background is what completes the story here.

In stark comparison, here is Captain America again, running towards the viewer with a look of urgency on his face. If you look at the image overall, it is quite powerful – there is a feeling of strength and intensity. This is due to the emanating action lines and a red wash tone applied to the background. Simple, yet extremely effective at building a mood.

Now if you eliminated both of those backgrounds, all you would have is Captain America running towards you – but add in those backgrounds and their subtleties, and there are two totally different moods achieved. Backgrounds are absolutely essential in trying to build momentum in a story, or establish location, feeling and general ambiance.

Think carefully as you are plotting your comic – make sure you pay attention to the importance of a solid background image or color/linework. It can make or break your overall presentation.

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions what the best method is for keeping an organized schedule and remaining committed to producing and releasing comics in a timely fashion. You have all heard the common reasons as to why things go off schedule – now its time to understand the method on how to make a successful schedule and how to stick to it.

Before we begin, you will need to take your personal schedule into consideration – if this is NOT your full-time line of work, it will be much easier to manage. But for many of you, this is a starting point or a hobby, and often you will find your ‘free-time’ taken up by things you may consider more important. The key to making this work is to remain focused and committed – if you are finding that you have too many other personal obligations, perhaps the comic book schedule is not right for you.

For those willing to dedicate the time, here are a number of methods that will keep you on track and in a routine of regular updates, with ample time for life and its other time consuming pursuits.

Step 1: Create a Spreadsheet for Tracking Purposes

In order to determine how much time you really put into producing your comics, you will need to make a personal log that tallies the number of hours spent. This tracking summary of your work will show you where your time is spent, and allow you to analyze which parts of the day you are most productive, and how to improve upon the times when you are NOT productive at all.

Take into account the amount of time used doing the following:
Writing (if you also write your comics)
Producing (this includes pencils, inking, coloring, typesetting, etc)
Research (any time spent looking up research material)
Administrative (any work related tasks that do not involve actual production or writing – e-mails/phone calls/meetings)
Down-Time (this includes all interruptions during your dedicated work time)

From this list, you will be able to determine what is taking up your valuable time if you are unable to make deadlines – perhaps you are working too hard on administrative tasks, or are spending too much time goofing off on the internet. By tracking your hours (honestly) you will make better use of your time when the facts and figures are laid out in front of you. Your production depends on it.

Step 2: Create a Monthly Schedule

Once you have created your time-sheet, now you have to decide how you are going to break out your production cycle. Given that the average issue is approximately 20-22 pages in length, and you need time to plan/lay out each page, then pencil/ink/colour/typeset, you will have to organize your time accordingly. You do not want to over-exert yourself and risk burn-out, nor do you want to give yourself TOO MUCH time to procrastinate. Find the optimal working environment, and plan around that. Most artists have a month to crank out an issue – create a schedule that works around your life. Here’s an example schedule using a full month:

Week One
Day 1 – Review Script & Gather Reference
Day 2 – Layout pages 1-5 (thumbnails and rough layouts)
Day 3 – Layout pages 6-10
Day 4 – On Call (use this day if you haven’t completed your work from the previous 3 days, otherwise, it is a day off)
Day 5 -  OFF
Day 6 – Layout pages 11-13, Pencil / Ink pages 1-2
Day 7 – Layout Pages 13-15, Pencil / Ink pages 3-4

Week Two:
Day 8 – Layout Pages 16-18, Pencil / Ink pages 5-6
Day 9 – On Call
Day 10 – OFF
Day 11 – Layout Pages 19-22, Pencil / Ink pages 7-8
Day 12 – Ink Pages 9-10 / Color pages 1-2
Day 13 – Ink Pages 11-12 / Color Pages 3-4
Day 14 – On Call

Week Three:
Day 15 – OFF
Day 16 – Ink Pages 13-14 / Color Pages 5-6
Day 17 – Ink Pages 15-16 / Color Pages 7-8
Day 18 – Ink Pages 17-18 / Color Pages 9-10
Day 19 – On Call
Day 20 – OFF
Day 21 – Ink Pages 19-20 / Color Pages 11-12

Week Four:
Day 22 – Ink Pages 21-22 / Color Pages 13-14
Day 23 – Color Pages 15-19
Day 24 – On Call
Day 25 – OFF
Day 26 – Color Pages 20-22
Day 27 – Review and Refine (last minute edits)
Day 28 – Package Pages

Day 29 – On Call
Day 30 – OFF

Now this works if you’re committed to an issue per month schedule. If you are producing a web-comic or a weekly, this schedule won’t exactly work for you. This is the 30 day cycle you could follow if you had a webcomic you were trying to update weekly.

Week One:
Day 1 – Review Script, Gather Reference, Layout Page
Day 2 – Ink & Color Page
Day 3 – Review & Refine, Publish Page
Day 4 – On Call
Day 5 – OFF
Day 6 – Review Script, Gather Reference, Layout Page
Day 7 – Ink & Color Page

Week Two:
Day 8 – Review & Refine, Publish Page
Day 9 – On Call
Day 10 – OFF
Day 11 – Review Script, Gather Reference, Layout Page
Day 12 – Ink & Color Page
Day 13 – Review & Refine, Publish Page
Day 14 – On Call

… and you see the pattern emerging. One day to review script, plan and layout, one day to ink and color, and one day to refine, followed by a floating spare day and a full off day. This will earn you one update a week, and in some cases, two. For webcomic artists and daily comic producers, this is a manageable timeline if you’re dedicated to just your comic. You could push for a 4 day cycle which eliminates the ‘on call’ day and pushes you straight into the next update. This only allows you one full day off from production, where the standard cycle allows you 2 – one flexible day and one mandatory day. You will have to find the schedule that is the best for you.

Step 3: Setting Deadlines and Keeping Them

Now that you have established a schedule, and you are tracking your hours, it is time to establish some firm deadlines for ensuring your comics are completed in a timely manner. You have already created a foundation for this through your schedule, but there may be some days where you can not physically produce (due to illness, vacation, unexpected occurrence). Your schedule may be completely useless at this point – unless you set an absolute deadline with a goal attached. Decide on a reasonable deadline date for achieving your goal (30 days is perfect) and aim to surpass or equal the goal every month.

When you have decided on a deadline date, it is time to decide on an attainable goal. For example, if you are a weekly creator who updates on a 5 day cycle – aim for 6 updates in your deadline time. When you attain your goal, count it as a point. Once you’ve accumulated 10 points, you have earned yourself a week’s vacation from your production cycle. This banked time can be used at anytime to ‘buy’ you some extra time in the event that you cannot do any work on your comic. It is similar to receiving vacation at work. These mental goals give you an added incentive to get your work done in a timely manner, and reward you for hard work later on.

If you find that you are not meeting your goals from month to month, lower the standards for the goal until you are producing at a comfortable level. Once you consistently surpass your goals with ease and time to spare,  you can elevate your production and make loftier goals to achieve.

Conclusion:

To recap, in order to get yourself into a ‘work-ready’ mode, you need to be prepared and organized so you will always work at an optimal level. Spending time back-tracking or trying to play ‘catch-up’ will land you in some serious production troubles later on. Iron out your poor work schedules with something more concrete – follow them for an extended period of time until they become habit. Remember the guidelines – take account of your working time, create a schedule dependent on your comic style (monthly issue or weekly page/strip) and set a deadline with some achievable goals.

Following this workflow method will make you extremely productive, and your results plentiful.

Webcomics can be the easiest and most cost effective method of spreading your stories to a large audience. The benefits are quite extensive – you have extremely low costs for operation, you have instant publishing features and a broader reach for potential readers. Producing comics online can prove to be a very successful endeavor, which pays off in nice dividends once you have established yourself as an artist/writer with a catalog of work in your portfolio.

But you have to start from somewhere, right? Here are a few tips to get you started on how to make a webcomic.

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Step One: Translate your ideas into a story, character, place or theme

You’ve come up with a great idea for a webcomic. Your first order of business should be to fire up your word processing software or grab a pen and a notepad and start jotting down al the scenes that are playing out in your head. It doesn’t matter if the scenes are out of sequence or brief flashes or if it is just an idea for some attire a character is wearing – make a note of it. If you spend too much time trying to establish the image and committing it to memory, you may lose the thought.

Once you have taken down the idea, you can arrange it into categories – scenes, characters, plot, theme. From there, you can mix and match components to create a bigger story or add depth to your current story idea. The most important thing to note is you MUST get it down on paper or in a file for reference.

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Step Two: Organize your elements and add details

Now that you have established a setting, some characters and a rough story or theme, organize your material to fill in the blanks. You should have a main character (or characters), a main setting, and a main theme established. You can develop more as you go along – but to begin, you should have all of your details worked out for your main elements first before you move on to the next step to make a webcomic.

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Step Three: Character Sketches

Before you jump into drawing your webcomic, you should familiarize yourself with your main character(s). Create numerous character sketches from all sorts of angles and actions. If you consistently draw your character numerous times, your character drawings will develop into repetitive action and you will draw your characters in the same consistent manner.

Many webcomic artists often struggle with a consistent look to their characters due to the lack of practice sketching and development of repetitive action. Of course, you can draw your figures and continue refining them, but the key is to make sure they are always consistent when drawn.

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Step Four: Write a script

A number of artists tend to jump right into their pages/strips without having a clear idea of where their comic may be headed. This works fine if you are simply doing random webcomics here and there, but it is difficult to establish any continuity for the future. You should have a plan.

The easiest and most efficient method of developing a script is through the use of point form. You don’t need an elaborate movie style script to develop your webcomics, but it does help. If you’re a one-man show, you may want to stick to 15-20 brief point form notes for each page as your guide. If you are anxious to get into drawing your webcomics, make sure that point form plan is in place.

If you have more time, consider extending the details in your script, and include dialog, pacing, and various visual cues/effects. A detailed script will help the artist visualize and render the artwork for the story properly.

Another tip – try to hammer out a script for at least 20 pages worth of your story. Once you have that many pages established, you can make edits ahead of time, rather than writing one page, drawing one page then repeating the process and trying to make it flow. You spend more time figuring out problems than producing the webcomic. Plan ahead, and you can modify things if they do not work to your satisfaction.

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Step Five:  Render your pages.

Another pitfall most webcomic artists encounter is a lack of updates once their site is up and running. If you have already generated a script for a story arc, try and render as many pages as you can prior to launching your website. Once the site is live and operational, you will already give yourself a bit of a head start if some unforeseen circumstance appears and you are unable to do your regular update.

My suggestion is to render a complete issue (roughly 20 pages) prior to launching your site. If you plan on doing weekly updates, this gives you 20 weeks of leeway and ample opportunity for script and drawing refinements. By having your pages in a ready-to-go status, you will also create the illusion of being dedicated (which you are) and a prolific artist (which you will become!)

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Step Six: Set up your website.

If you do not have a website or domain name, you should decide on creating a site that is easy to navigate and memorable for your readers. This step requires an yearly investment, but now that hosting packages and domain names are abundant, the prices are a mere fraction of what they were years ago.

For domain names, visit NameCheap: http://www.namecheap.com – You can obtain a domain name for less than $9 a year. With coupon codes, it could be even less.

For hosting, you can’t beat Host Gator: http://www.hostgator.com – Hosting packages start as low as $4.95 a month, and they offer great technical support and loads of features.

If you can afford a yearly investment of $70 to $100, you will have full control over your site and its development. There are a number of options you can pursue in building your site – WordPress allows for blog styled setups, or you could create a Flash-enhanced site, or a simple HTML setup. The possibilities are endless.

For those on a tighter budget, you can try free alternatives for webcomics hosting such as:

SmackJeeves

Comic Fury

The Webcomic List

Drunk Duck

Comic Genesis (KeenSpot)

Comic Dish

Some of these hosting services require memberships and linkbacks to the main site, and ad banners placed in prominent areas of your pages. The upside is the support you receive from other contributors, as well as some pre-made templates to get you up and running quickly.

Your site can also double as your portfolio!

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Step Seven: Launch and Promote

Many artists worry about readers and statistics right off the bat. With any new website that appears, it takes time before the masses stumble upon it and pass it on to their friends. Therefore, it is very important during your quest to make a webcomic to continually update and provide new content to your readers. Over time the content you have produced will continue to draw in newer visitors passively.

In order to get readers interested in your site, you will need to do some active promotion.  The easiest way is to make allies and friends within like-minded communities on the web. If you are producing a sci-fi webcomic, then target the fans of sci-fi webcomics. Seek out communities and online forums, and contribute in their discussions and be a part of their community – once they see that you have valuable input and commentary to add, you can ask for their feedback on your project and have them visit your site.

A large portion of startup traffic comes from the cultivation of relationships with groups. If you do not have the benefit of a group to get you started, you will have to do some work in order to gain the respect of your peers. Be engaged in your targets interests and discussions. Support their projects and in time, they will reciprocate. Comment on blogs, give positive encouragement, jump into discussions and make friends – its the equivalent of networking in the first person. This activity is absolutely vital to expanding your reader base when you are just starting out.

Once people come to your site and experience what you have to offer, their word of mouth advertising will work for you and offer huge returns.

The key is to be patient, and not rush headlong into it. Avoid the common mistakes when you’re learning how to make webcomics, and you will become successful and ‘internet famous.’ Popular webcomics such as Penny Arcade, the Order of the Stick, xkcd, Applegeeks and countless others all started with a handful of readers. As the years passed, and based on the creators involvement with their readers, the comics and the site grew in popularity and referrals. Some of the artists have been able to make an honest living through their site, as well as additional side projects related to the webcomic.

You too can achieve that success with some careful planning and passion. Don’t ever quit when you feel it is hopeless – it’s a labour of love that pays off with perseverance. During your journey to become a successful webcomic artist, always remember this phrase: Those who quit following their dreams will never know how close they came to success.

Good luck!

So you have a WACOM tablet. Now what?

I see a lot of people out there who are talented or aspiring artists looking to get into the digital drawing world and are overwhelmed because they have absolutely no clue where to start. I’ve scoured the internet looking for a pile of easy to learn tutorials for beginners looking to get their feet wet. These tutorials are also decent for intermediate users who need a refresher or some reinforcement from some key fundamentals they may have forgotten along the way.

Setting Up Your Tablet Settings & Preferences

This next informative tutorial comes from Kevin Hulsey, who shows you how to set up your tablet and stylus through the settings and preferences. The examples shown are for an Intuos tablet, but the settings panels are roughly the same for the Bamboo and Cintiq.

Tablet Sensitivity and Pen Pressure

This DeviantArt video tutorial by user Lucky13 explains the concepts behind Tablet sensitivity and Pen Pressure.

Illustrator Pen Pressure with Wacom Tablet

This video tutorial by Terry White shows you how to set up your pressure sensitivity options and the explains the integration of the Tablet into Adobe Illustrator and how to use these options to your advantage.

Bamboo Setup and Basics

This tutorial by Dr Diablo at the Republic of Code will shows you how to setup a Wacom Bamboo on Windows Vista and configure it to run well in Adobe Photoshop.

Basic Inking and Coloring Techniques using a Tablet

This tutorial shows Tablet users how to ink sketches with varied line weight brushes and coloring techniques within Photoshop. Make sure you watch both parts of this tutorial for the basics on how to achieve great results in a digital comic-book style rendering.

Skull Drawing Time Lapsed

This drawing technique is a time lapse video from Jeff Finley of GoMediaZine. He goes through his process of creating a skull drawing based off a reference photo. Pay close attenton to the brush settings and the techniques (you can pause and rewind as you see fit!). You may want to turn down your speakers – the music may be a bit much for some.

WACOM’s Tutorial Repository

WACOM has a section on their site dedicated to basic tutorials to get novice users well on their way to using their Tablets in Photoshop (or any other graphic editing program).

Digital Painting for BIOSHOCK

Roberto Campus explains how he used Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom Tablet to paint a character from the new videogame Bioshock for GamePro Magazine. His walkthrough gives you an overview on how to use texture in digital painting.

And there you have it. These starter Tutorials should get you set up and ready to tackle your illustration goals. If you’re new to using the Adobe Illustrator, try the Illustrator Pen Tutorial in conjunction with some other tutorials to build up your skill. Practice makes perfect!

This is probably the most common question most aspiring illustrators bring up. We’ve all been there before – you have all these great ideas in your head, you’re totally prepared to put pen to paper (or stylus to tablet) and you start scribbling like mad – unfortunately what your brain conjures up and what your hands create are two totally separate things.

You say to yourself – how the heck do I draw [enter item] ?

Well, I can’t tell you how to draw everything. I can point you in some promising directions though. Check these tutorials out for some help!

1. How to Draw Comics on the Computer

A lot of people want to skip the pencil/pen to paper idea and would like to start from scratch using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I found this two-part tutorial on DaniDraws.com that shows you how to go about making your own comics from blank canvas to a complete inked and colored illustration.

2. How to Draw in Comic Book Style

Here’s another great lesson from GoMediaZine on how they’ve created a ‘comic book styled’ look to their promotional posters – and the process behind it.

3. How to Draw Animals

Ever wondered how to draw a Kangaroo? How about a giraffe – or maybe just how to draw a dog or cat? Here are a bunch of simple tutorials you can follow to get you started – from how-to-draw-and-paint.com

4. How to Draw Cars, Trucks, etc

Most people understand how to draw a basic vehicle, but not all vehicles are equal. This series of tutorials from HowStuffWorks.com shows you how to draw cars, trucks, vans, classic cars and more.

5. How to Draw People

DrawingCoach.com has a wonderful video series on how to draw people for portraits effectively.

6. How to Draw Buildings Using Perspective

From sketchinghouse.com comes this simple tutorial on how to use perspective to create realistic looking buildings within the city.

There are many other tutorials out there for drawing basics – if there’s one you’d like me to showcase, let me know and I’ll add it to this list.

I bought my WACOM tablet about 8 years ago, and I remember the feeling after the first time I tried it out – something just wasn’t right. It was oddly uncomfortable and unnatural. I looked on the internet and turned to colleagues for some answers, and I found that I wasn’t alone. I’ve noticed that whether you use a WACOM Bamboo, or a Genius MousePen the first reactions for brand new users are often the same.

“It’s hard to get used to this thing.”

Don’t get discouraged! Everyone goes through a beginner stage where you have to get the hang of drawing facing forward and in proportion to the size of your screen. Its all about hand-eye co-ordination. You may have great physical skills when sketching on a pad of paper, but you totally stink when you pick up the stylus and try it on the digital canvas. Never fear – here’s 5 ways to make the transition from paper to plastic easier.

1) Adjust your tablet settings

You would be surprised how many people use the default settings for their tablets and complain that they do not work as expected. The tablet software allows you to manipulate axes and angles for maximum comfort of your hand/wrist and arm positions, sensitivity/pressure options for drawing and painting control, and position options and sensitivities for cursor control. Also, you have additional functions for other programs beyond the artistic ones you would typically use a stylus for. Experiment and find the settings best suited for your method of drawing until you are most comfortable. Make the tablet work for you – not the other way around!

2) Make your drawings a drag.

Now, when I say drag, I don’t mean it in an unpleasant sense – like you can’t enjoy what you’re doing. I mean dragging physically. The biggest knock rookie users have for tablets is the surface gloss makes it difficult to replicate the feeling of real paper and the control you have with the stylus. This increased friction is called ‘drag,’ and you can achieve this feeling easily with a tablet if your drawing area is too smooth for your liking. To do this, draw your image on a piece of paper first, one that will fit within the confines of the live area on your tablet. Tape the paper to your tablet, and trace over top of it. You’ll get used to the movements and eventually you wont have to physically trace on the tablet itself – you can scan and trace using the program instead. You can keep a clean sheet of paper on top of your tablet later on to retain the feeling of drag. Newer models of tablets actually have a rougher surface to create the drag, but there are still some models that do not.

3) Clearer control of Linework with Zoom + Resolution

Many users have the initial habit of drawing at equivalent viewing size on screen, and complain of jagged linework and lack of control. This can easily be avoided by zooming in closer and taking smaller steps and strokes while creating their work. This allows the user finer control of their strokes and eliminates jagged edges at 100% of print size. Another method of increasing the linework control is by raising the resolution of your working area. Generally for print, 300 dpi is the industry standard at full size. If you work at 72 dpi, you do not have sufficient pixel depth/data to display smoother lines. The more depth you have, the more data can be crammed in because more pixels are used to render your linework. Your file size may go up, but so will your quality. Always work big, because it will retain a good portion of your data when you resize it to something smaller, but its not the same when you work the other way, as data must be added to fill in the blanks, and the guesswork is often not so pretty.

4) Learn how to use the Pen Tool for precision

Brushes and pencils are fine for starting out or achieving a certain effect, but if you want clear control over your smooth lines, learn how to use the pen tool to make your basic linework. This will create sharp, consistent, clean looking lines and greatly reduce your filesize with less anchor points and line segments. Click here for a starter tutorial on the Pen Tool.

and finally…

5) Keep swatches on your working area

If you’re frantically painting away and are tired of going over to the colour picker, switching colors and getting back into drawing/painting, only to have to switch again, here’s an easy tip to remember. Put some blobs of color on an area of your screen you can easily reach with your cursor, and as you need to switch colors, find your key command for accessing your ‘eye-dropper’ tool (most of the time its the letter I, but it can vary from program suite to suite) click on it and select your color, then switch back to your drawing/painting tool with the key command for that. This is a basic efficiency technique as well – using shortcuts to speed up your work flow.

For you new users, try out some of the techniques until you get comfortable with the tablet. You’ll be surprised at how much easier drawing can be when you move to digital. Of course, nothing beats pencil/pen and paper, but it comes close. There are advantages and disadvantages (try doing an undo on a pencil sketch… heh!) but only you can decide which method is best for your style. I hope I was able to assist those looking to make the transition.

That’s it for now!