#146: You Make a Good Point

A pink eraser is chatting with a very sharp #2 pencil. The eraser says, "You do make a good point".

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The Story Behind You Make a Good Point

When sketching this comic I came to a crazy realization: taleas hasn't actually been drawn on pen and paper since 2014. The Robot Manager was the last character I sketched on sketch paper, inked on vellum, and scanned in to digitize. I don't have any kind of aversion to technology, as my career shows quite the opposite. I used Paint Shop Pro in the '90s and switched to Photoshop in the early '00s for all of my digital artwork projects. I tried for a long time to replicate the "imperfect wet ink lines on slippery vellum" feel that I was going for - with characteristic bled-out line edges, and small line wiggles that give each drawing the right amount of imperfect character - but the technology just wasn't there. The astonishing improvements in stylus design and functionality paired with the mobilization of high resolution computing and amazingly powerful drawing apps really enabled the fully digital workflow that I have today. The first panels I published were 576x430 pixels, and were basically restricted by the resolution of my scanner, the size of my markers, and the power of my desktop. Today's comic was sketched, inked, and colored in 4k resolution on a little bit older iPad with a first generation Apple Pencil. It's awesome to think that today I can easily replicate the exact look I'm going for on one device about the size and depth of a children's book.