Archive for the 'tools & tech' Category

Nov 09 2011

Gifts From the Gods – process

Here’s the process post I promised for Gifts From the Gods. This process is an evolution of the techniques I used for The Odyssey.

First I read through the text a few times, then started doing some rough sketches on paper. At the same time, I was discussing the page dimensions, typography, and other design factors with my designer at Houghton — in this case, the extremely talented Scott Magoon. Once we nailed down some of that stuff, I scanned my sketches and started experimenting with the page layouts.

I also made sketches directly in InDesign, using the vector pencil tool, as you can see in the right-most panel.

When the rough layouts were edited and approved, I printed each page in very light blue on cheap drawing paper and did a pencil drawing over it. I scanned that back in and removed the blue lines (using the “black and white” filter in Photoshop), darkened the lines to a truer black, and made any necessary edits to the drawing.

In some cases, I “test-colored” the drawings in Photoshop, so that I could play around with the colors a bit before using watercolor.

I enlarged and printed out the darkened-and-corrected pencil drawings on a piece of 140lb. cold-press watercolor paper, using my Epson Stylus 2200 printer, which prints up to 13×19″ and uses ink that is waterproof under most conditions. Actually, it kind of repels water, so I often have to go over each stroke twice to get the paint to cover the linework. I painted the art with watercolors, scanned it back in, and made any additional corrections — for example, I decided later to remove Achilles’ helmet, since he was bare-headed in the previous battle scenes.

Lastly, I had lots of fun creating the decorative borders at the beginning of each story. The linework for these was drawn directly in InDesign and cloned for symmetry. Again I printed them out on watercolor paper, and I painted them with acrylic. I composited the faux-stone painted texture behind the borders using Photoshop, because I didn’t want to accidentally splatter paint over the border art.

That’s it! Sorry, I didn’t take any videos this time — but I AM taking videos of Romeo & Juliet as I go along, and I will start posting a few tidbits from that soon.

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Oct 21 2011

Credit cards via iPhone – two great apps that work great together

Published by under reviews,tools & tech

I have a bunch of trade shows going on this fall and winter, particularly NCTE‘s annual convention, and customers frequently ask if they can pay by credit card. I now have an iPhone, and one of the main reasons I got it was because I knew I could use it to take credit cards (via any of several apps.)

I only go to a few shows a year, so I ruled out most of the services which require an actual merchant account, as those involve a monthly fee*. The leading services with no monthly fee are Square and Intuit GoPayment. I decided to sign up for both of them, try them out for myself and compare the results.

Both services require personal info such as your birthdate, SSN/EIN, and bank account, so they can pay  you, and presumably also so they can run a credit check. GoPayment also called me to verify some information before they would complete processing on my first batch of transactions. Both services also have a weekly maximum, and this is a sore point in many of the negative reviews. Square will only release $1000 per week, and anything over that they hold for 30 days. Intuit does the same thing, but the limit is $1250. If you do a lot of large sales, you may want to go with a merchant account for this reason. If you’re like me and you have small sales that occasionally exceed those limits in aggregate, you can split them up between the two services, which is what I’m planning to do next month at NCTE.

The software:
I went to a small trade show last weekend where I used both services without the card-swiper hardware. I found that both apps performed very well. My customers were amused that we live in the future, and not at all squeamish about entering card info on my phone. I definitely captured at least a few sales that would have otherwise escaped.

Square starts up quickly and allows you to immediately punch in any amount for a charge, but it does not allow you to keep a list of individual products and prices, so if you sell multiple products like I do, you’ll have to do the math elsewhere — in your head, on a piece of paper or a calculator — and then enter the total. You can also enter any description you want for the transaction. The signature box is nice and big, which is important because it turns out to be a challenge signing with your finger.

GoPayments requires you to log in every time you start the app (even if you switch back and forth using the tray; though not when going in and out of standby mode while still in the app). This is annoying when you’re in a hurry. However, they DO allow you to create a product list, so tallying up a multi-item sale is much easier, AND the receipt it generates is itemized. This is a huge advantage for my purposes. If you want to charge an arbitrary amount, however, you need to add a new item, which is a bit of a pain.

Both services allow you to send a receipt by email or text message, and both keep a transaction history which you can refer back to.

This week I received the card-swiper hardware for both apps. Square’s hardware is a tiny white square. Intuit’s is a sort of half-circle. They both plug into the headphone jack. They both feel a little flimsy, partly because they’re small and light, partly because the jack allows them to rotate. Intuit’s has a little bar that catches on the phone and keeps it from rotating in one direction, but it still freely rotates in the other, so this doesn’t make much difference. Intuit also includes a potentially handy plastic case and a lanyard, so it might be harder to lose. Both readers worked well in initial tests. I did about half a dozen swipes using 3 different cards, and square only made me re-swipe once, while Intuit made me re-swipe twice on one card and once on another.  I will let you know how they hold up after I stress-test them at NCTE next month.

Bottom line, I think these are both great little services. If your primary use is selling a bunch of products with fixed prices, GoPayment is easier and gives an itemized receipt. If you are selling a service and want to easily charge arbitrary amounts and enter custom descriptions, Square is easier. I should also mention that Square’s support is basically email-only, while Intuit has phone support.

Since there’s no sign-up or monthly charge, there’s also no reason you can’t get them both and try them for yourself.

On a side note, I find that this technology fills me with glee. Perhaps it simply appeals to the greed and techno-lust which lurk in the twilight parts of my psyche, but I find myself excited to “play” with them more than any game on my phone. It’s a game where you make money! I just need to get more people to play 😉

 

(*Merchant account services have a lower percentage fee for processing each transaction; you can see which route makes more sense based on your monthly sales using this handy calculator.
GoPayment offers two pricing plans, one like Square and one like a merchant account.)

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Sep 09 2011

Cartooning isn’t all fun and games, kids

Section of coffered barrel vault celing I’m working on for the party scene in Romeo & Juliet:

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Apr 02 2010

Manga Studio test #1

Published by under tools & tech

I’ve been playing around with Manga Studio, which is a drawing program specifically tailored to drawing comics. It’s got a lot of crazy features, and I’ve barely scratched the surface, but here’s a quick inking test I did. The pens have a nice feel to them, and this is drawn with vectors, so it’s resolution-independent and fairly easy to scale or manipulate line-by-line.

Hrothgar inking test

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Mar 22 2010

Pirates of the Carribean

Published by under reviews,sketchbook,tools & tech

I finally got around to watching the last POTC movie. The plot and editing were a complete mess, but of course it was visually very cool. I drew these in OpenCanvas 1.1, which is a fabulous freeware drawing program. It’s not very feature-rich, but there’s a lot of control over the behavior of the pencil/pen tool, and I think it gives better results for digital “inking” than any other program I’ve used. I tried coloring the shot of Geoffrey Rush with both OpenCanvas and ArtRage for comparison.

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Mar 19 2010

Glyptodont

Published by under animals,sketchbook,tools & tech

I forgot how neat the Harvard Museum of Natural History is. Or to be more precise, I forgot how FULL it is. I remembered the awesome glass plant collection, the mineral room, and some cool fossils. But the collection of animals is MUCH bigger than I remembered. It’s a shame that a few of the large mammals are literally coming apart at the seams, but they have some really awesome dinosaur skeletons. Here’s one example, the Glyptodont.

(ink + Photoshop)

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Mar 11 2010

Cover girl

Published by under sketchbook,tools & tech

Just playing around with more techniques for digital coloring.

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Mar 09 2010

Random concept

Published by under sketchbook,tools & tech

I’m not quite sure who these two guys are, but they may show up in a story at some point.

(ArtRage and Photoshop)

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Mar 01 2010

Celtic Gladiator

Published by under horses,sketchbook,tools & tech

As part of my practice drawing horses and painting digitally, I did this Celtic gladiator piece:

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Feb 26 2010

Bond

Published by under sketchbook,tools & tech

Mustn’t leave out men’s fashion, by which of course I mean James Bond. This was done with Photoshop and ArtRage.

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