Rasta Love

ArtRage painting

How to Become a Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel Artist

DIGITAL TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Software

RASTER-BASED IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Adobe Photoshop

• The industry leader. It is used for drawing, coloring and painting. Not good to use for lettering.
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download at http://www.adobe.com/

ArtRage

• This is a powerful and easy to use drawing and painting program. You can currently get ArtRage Studio Pro for $59.90 and ArtRage Studio for $29.90.
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7
• Download ArtRage

ArtWeaver

• An alternative to Corel Painter. Artweaver is available in two versions: The Artweaver Free version at no cost and Artweaver Plus version at 29 Euros with more features than the free version.
• Available for Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download at http://www.artweaver.de/

Corel Painter

• Very popular leading digital art software.
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download at http://www.corel.com/

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

• A powerful open source image editor application 
• Available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7
• Download for free at http://www.gimp.org/

GIMP tutorials
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/10-websites-to-help-you-master-gimp/
GIMP video tutorials
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/gimp_video_tutorials/

Paint.NET

• A image and photo editing software. 
• Available for Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download for free at http://www.getpaint.net/

SketchBook Designer

• A hybrid paint and vector application
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download at http://usa.autodesk.com/

SketchBook Pro

• Offers sketching software capabilities.
• Available for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista/7.
• Download at http://usa.autodesk.com/
• SketchBook Express is a free version available on the Mac App Store.

A word about software choices. Photoshop was created to to be used by photographers for retouching photos. It was the creativity of artists that started using it for drawing and painting. So don't feel badly if you can't afford an expensive application. Use the free or low cost tools available. Your creativity can make the tool sing and come to life to fit your needs and style of art. Much like the early creative visionaries did with Photoshop by taking a tool that wasn't intended to create art and bending it to their will.

After all, people have made professional looking movies on iPhones! There's nothing to stop you from creating a professional looking comic strip, comic book or graphic novel with whatever tool you choose right now. Start today! Just create something!

Next… page layout programs.

to be continued....

read next - Wow, What a Spread!

previous -What's our Vector, Victor?

Keep reading and follow me. If you have found this helpful, please let me know and share with other creators. Feel free to ask me questions.

Remember… Just Create!

If you are interested in further expanding your knowledge, then I recommend these books.

You can support this blog when you purchase a book by clicking the link below, I get a piece of the action and helps me to continue doing this blog. Support an artist today.

copyright 2012 H. Simpson

Tweedledee and Tweedledum

How to Become a Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel Artist

DIGITAL TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Software


As much as I've tried to avoid using brand names, so you the artist can experiment and find what you like, it is unavoidable with software. I still encourage you to do the same with software and try them all to see what you like by using demo versions which usually last 30 days. Some demo versions are full and let you use all the tools while others are crippled and you cannot access some tools, can't save or only save with a watermark.

No matter; try a demo before you buy any software.

The Adobe suite of products is the beast that can't be avoided and is the expensive poison of choice for the creative, advertising, entertainment, print and comic book industry. So while it it is expensive, there's no way to avoid having Adobe software in your tool set. If you are a teacher or student you can get an education discount which is really great. It's not like the Apple educational discount on their computers which is a measly $50 approximately.

DIGITAL IMAGING SOFTWARE

There are two types of digital imaging.

RASTER - A paint program. A rectangular array of closely spaced rows of pixels that form an image by defining values. It is resolution dependent. When you scale up rasterized/bitmap art there is an immediate loss in quality.

VECTOR -  A draw program. Mathematical expressions of points, lines, curves and shapes to represent images. A growable array of objects called control points which have a definite position on the x and y axes. The size of a vector can grow and shrink with no loss in quality.

Vector graphics require less memory than raster images.

Next time we'll look at the actual software applications you can use to create that popular form of entertainment known as comic books.

to be continued....

read next - What's our Vector, Victor?

previous - Rolling In The Deep

Keep reading and follow me. If you have found this helpful, please let me know and share with other creators. Feel free to ask me questions.

Remember… Just Create!

If you are interested in using these tools, then I recommend these products.

You can support this blog when you purchase a product by clicking the link below, I get a piece of the action and helps me to continue doing this blog. Support an artist today.

copyright 2012 H. Simpson

Rolling In The Deep

How to Become a Comic Strip, Comic Book and Graphic Novel Artist

DIGITAL TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Software

Computer software is a collection of computer programs and procedures that perform actions on a computer. The software are also called applications and programs.

The first piece of software to concern ourselves with is the operating system (OS). The OS manages hardware resources and supplies common services for application software. The operating system is the heart of the beast. Your mouse, tablet, scanner, keyboard, etc. can't work without it.

The root of all operating systems is either UNIX or MS-DOS.

Microsoft Windows was added to MS_DOS in 1985 to provide a graphical user interface similar to that which Apple gave to the Macintosh in 1984.

The current Unix based operating systems are Mac OS X, Linux, Andriod and BSD. All other operating systems are flavors of these.

Which one to choose to create comics?

First you want an OS that will run the various applications needed to create comics. That immediately cuts the choices to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.

Mac OS was created to be used by creative people. Because of that most professionals, publishers and printers use the Mac OS. You will run into situations where a publisher and printer only accept Mac files. So you will have to convert a Microsoft Windows file to a Mac file or neutral/common file type.

Technology keeps marching on and with the rise of the internet and cloud computing it may all be homogenized soon and platforms won't matter.

There are professionals I know doing great work on Microsoft Windows. I find that whatever  OS you start with, that is the one people tend to stay with, which is odd to me. I use both, but I favor the Mac for ease of use and I can troubleshoot it myself.

If you are starting out, then I suggest you start with a Mac. I will be speaking from a Mac perspective as I continue. No need to get alarmed though as most applications are available on both platforms, such as the Adobe collection which has become the industry standard.

Next time we'll look at the two types digital imaging applications you can use to create that popular form of entertainment known as comic books.

to be continued....

read next - Tweedledee and Tweedledum

previous - Ghost in the Machine

Keep reading and follow me. If you have found this helpful, please let me know and share with other creators. Feel free to ask me questions.

Remember… Just Create!

If you are interested in using these tools, then I recommend these products.

You can support this blog when you purchase a product by clicking the link below, I get a piece of the action and helps me to continue doing this blog. Support an artist today.

copyright 2012 H. Simpson