I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I bought a Cintiq 22HD last November. It took many months of planning and thinking to splurge $2000 on one single piece of equipment. Overall, I’m actually really happy with my purchase even though I haven’t drawn with it all that much…I think I’ve done about eight pieces so far, all fanart, which gets a ridiculous amount of “likes” on Tumblr compared to my original work, but that’s a story for another time. Mostly, I really like the big screen of the Cintiq, because my laptop is very small. But in terms of drawing, I still need to get used to the slick surface of the Cintiq…I didn’t realize how important paper grain was to my drawings until now.
Apart from learning to create drawings digitally, I’m also learning After Effects and Premiere. Funny story is that I actually started learning these two software 6 years ago, but then I got cancer and my motivation to learn anything went out the window. Learning is such a long and boring process, and when you have the looming specter of death on your mind, spending time on long tedious things is really the last thing you want to do. Anyway, now I’m ready to get back into it because, as I may have mentioned before, I’d like to transition from making books to movies…That is the plan anyway, which at the rate I’m learning may take a long time to go in effect (After Effects is seriously complicated).
While I’m brushing up on my technical skills, I’ve also made some headway on my book project “The Carboniferous”.I am very VERY close to finishing the drawing stage. This project has taken too much time, I am beyond sick of it, but I just have to focus on getting it done. Next steps include coloring, writing the text (which I’ve already started) and of course printing and manufacturing the books which I’ll do in the summer. Given I’m about one year late on this project, I’ve started doing research for the next book in the series “The Permian”. The good thing about the Permian is that there were a lot of deserts, so I won’t have to slave away drawing weird-looking plants. Also, there was a massive extinction at the end of the Permian so I can dedicate some pages to drawing barren desert landscapes :)…that shouldn’t take too long. Who knew there could be an upside to catastrophic extinction events? Anyway, I really want to finish this series of prehistoric books this year because once that’s done my “plan” (see above paragraph) can go into motion. Mwahahahaha!
On a completely unrelated note, I’ve taken up knitting once again. I have a problem, and that problem is getting into too many hobbies. As a result, I’ve got a box full of yarn, a box full of fabric, a box of polyester stuffing taking up valuable apartment space. So now I’m making stuffed animals (2 bunnies and an octopus so far). I next need to use up all the art supplies I’ve stupidly bought over the years.