So long story short, Amy recently became convinced that Michael was gay because she could see no other explanation for his apparent lack of interest in her.
Long story long, I wrote a story all about this little misunderstanding. It doesn’t go where you probably think it’s going.
If you notice some slight differences between this and the last comic, it’s because this one was created partially in Clip Studio Paint. I am migrating my whole process over to CSP one video tutorial at a time.
I had a recent “come to Jesus” moment where I realised that CSP isn’t just a knock-off of Photoshop, it has all these powerful tools specifically for people drawing comics.
I always used to think it was kind of funny when people talked about powerful software tools. Like when I worked for a software company customers would say “Ooh, that’s very powerful,” and we would nod and say “Yes, it is very powerful,” and I was just mildly astonished that this was the accepted nomenclature.
Normally, when people talk about power this often they’re characters in He-man, or fallen Jedi, or the lesser Ainur of Tolkien’s legendarium, and here are a bunch of professional adults in suits and ties saying it.
“Yes, our programming team delved deeply into the code, deeper than the mind can fathom, and there they unearthed powerful secrets you cannot imagine. Now watch as I hold the shift key and select multiple icons at once, you FOOL!”
“Nooo! The tooltips! They’re too powerful!”
But something that the world of software development taught me is that anything you do the same over and over again can (and should) be automated. So if, for example, you always draw the same perspective lines every time you draw a background and it takes you hours each time and if, hypothetically, you find a program called CSP that automatically generates one-, two- and three-point perspective rulers at the click of a mouse within seconds and, let’s say, CSP can make your brush strokes automatically snap to the perspective lines, that is going to save you a lot of time. That is the software anticipating something you’re going to need to do, a lot, and using its magic to automate that process. That is what powerful software really is.
And it’s got all kinds of things like that. It can do word balloons, panels, sketches, 3D models, everything a young up-and-coming cartoonist needs, and stuff I need also.
So yeah, the choice was pretty much made for me. It’s going to be tricky to learn a new drawing program, but I know that every new feature I spend a day or three learning is going to lead to hours and days and months of work cut down to nothing. So time-consuming in the short term, time-saving in the long term.
Another thing that might slow my progress a tad, I was hit by an SUV a few days ago. Like, full blown run over. Like Regina George at the end of Mean Girls ploughed into by a vehicle. Six hours in the hospital, some x-rays, a plaster cast on my broken arm (not my drawing arm, thankfully) and a handful of strong painkillers later, I was back home… and back on CSP, drawing this comic. Within hours of nearly dying. What can I say? I love this comic.
Almost as much as I love Dice Fall and Everyone Dies, our benevolent patron.
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