I tried my hand at creating a diary comic with Procreate on the iPad Pro this morning. It was a good way to start the day. I’ve started doing roughs within the Procreate environment. I found I enjoyed working that way. So today, I thought I’d try to make a comic about all the work I’m doing right now. I even left several projects off my list in the second to last panel. There are some that I’m better off not devoting a lot of brain power to yet. Sometimes it’s better to let some stuff simmer on the back burner.
I try to do longer, focused posts every couple of weeks, about 2000 words. Since I’m crunched for time I decided to try this format. I’ve been wanting to see how the combination of using an iPad Pro with Procreate would be like to create a comic. This first try is a little rough. I’m going to create a panel template and a lettering guide template in Illustrator. I’ll save them as PNGs in Dropbox and import them into Procreate as guides for future pages. But all in all, I’d say this first attempt was successful.
I used to do diary comics every week when I was in my first year at the Center for Cartoon Studies. They were assignments. I don’t like talking about myself. I find myself boring. I just work all the time. Not exactly riveting stuff. Maybe I’ll try this once a month? I can make something interesting monthly.
2016 has been kind of a crappy year so far. I’ve had friends struggle with losing jobs and losing their loved ones. I lost my grandfather at the end of January myself. He was diagnosed with cancer (his third) on December 31st, 2015. At 90, he decided to refuse treatment. He passed on January 28th. The loss is profound. He helped me learn about business. I set up a corporation for my comics and he taught me how to do accounting. Every year about this time we would close out my books for the year and prepare my corporate taxes. It’s weird that I’m not doing it with him right now. This was the first year I did it myself, and after a ten year apprenticeship, I think I did okay. Some day I’ll write more about him, but not today.
Something that brought me joy this morning was reading Carolyn Nowak’s Girl Town comic. Check out her blog for more diary comics. I did. Very funny. She may have unintentionally inspired this post.
It’s almost March, and the weather is starting to get nicer. Listen to some David Bowie. Watch an Alan Rickman movie. Get outside and get some sun on your face. Spring is coming.