It was me and this is my Excuse

It was me.  I admit it.  I was the problem. But it’s all done now, and we have our first product. **Cue celebratory champagne cork pop.** Which means Ashleigh can get her part done.  And Nickolas actually has something to report during our weekly meetings. ​

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Mmm, Is it really procrastination? I mean, Really?

When Ashleigh came to me—so very long ago—to help her realize her dream of Twilight Tabletop Games (at that time it was called Pixie Games), I found myself in the role of Chief Operations Officer, you know, jack-of-all-trades (you can read about it here).  In reality, each of the three of us owners is a jack-of-all-trades.  Each “trade” requires different time allotments.  This is predictable in some cases like the financial reports.  Financial reports are formulaic and therefore a reasonable time expectation can be developed.  Artistic endeavors, however, are more often subject to the whims of the Muse and confidence.  This is where my shortfall manifests.  ​

2d to digital

I have been an intermittent 2D artist since I received my first how-to-draw book at age 9.  This intermittent commitment over the last 40 years lends itself to a lack of confidence that I can do what I have demonstrated I am capable of.  However, as Ashleigh can, and I think would, readily attest too, once the idea strikes, the art flows fast and furious.  The icons and cypher dial are a prime example.  I put it off forever, just not sure I could do justice to her ideas, her story.  Then it hit me, why not make the combination points icons like the legend icons I’d created for her maps so long ago?  I ran it by Ashleigh, and she agreed.  I then whipped 2/3 of the concepts out within an hour and finished the remaining concepts within a week.  It just took a little longer to complete each of the icons because of the highlights and shadows on the line work is tedious–so takes a while.  It was decided after Nickolas did a play test that a visual of the actual cypher dial would be desirable.  That idea hit me immediately and was completed within about 6 hours.  The wolf statue though, by comparison, started a year before I finally just buckled down to finished it.  When I did, it came together within about a week.  Confidence matters a lot, easily as much as the Muse-ical inspiration. ​

Graphic Design isn’t digital art per se

To be fair, a lot of the lack of confidence was due to the new medium I found myself working in: digital art.  40 years ago, all I had was paper, pencils, markers, crayons, etc.  In other words, manipulatives, and I was well versed in these.  But when I went to college a few years ago to get my Associate of Arts in Graphic Design, I went digital.  Graphic Design isn’t digital art per se, though it certainly can include it, so my education only touched on the digital art side.  I’ve been teaching myself since then how to use the tools I have at my disposal. I settled on Sketchbook Pro for the majority of my artwork, instead of using my Adobe subscription. Adobe Photoshop is a fully fleshed out program for digital art as well as photo manipulation.  But it is such a bloated program, only my desktop (with my Wacom tablet) could handle it with any ease.  The thing is I like to use my Surface Book which could not handle Photoshop (I bought it in 2018).  I could have used Adobe Fresco but there are features that Fresco doesn’t have that one would expect from a company like Adobe–symmetrical drawing for example.  And, compared to Sketchbook Pro, it is more taxing on my Surface.  And then there’s this: Fresco isn’t available on my mobile phone. ​

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So, Sketchbook pro?

So what does all of this say about the simpler Sletchbook Pro?  The product was sold to a  new company a little while back so development has been stymied.  That being said, Sketchbook is less taxing on my various digital tools; it is available on ALL of my tools (for perspective, I created all of the cypher icons on my phone using Sketchbook Pro); I can create brushes; and I can save in TIFF, PSD, PNG, Bitmap, or jpg. 

​All of these things can be done in each of the other programs I mentioned as well as popular programs that I haven’t, but Sketchbook Pro lets me do ALL of it. ​

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Now that doesn’t mean I don’t use Adobe at all.  For example, I drew the initial idea of the rabbit icon with Sketchbook pro mobile app on my phone in my car while waiting for a friend to finish their appointment; imported it into Adobe Capture (mobile phone app), made the adjustments to clean up the initial sketch and exported it; brought it back into Adobe Capture to create the outline for the shape; uploaded both to my Adobe Creative Cloud; downloaded the pngs to my Surface Book when I got home to use Sketchbook Pro (while I was watching TV); worked on the icon; saved as a TIFF in my Adobe Synced files as well as a png when done for Ashleigh to use in the Adobe Indesign product and for me to also use in the cypher dial. ​

What does all of this say about me? ​

I can’t sit behind my computer for 15 hours straight anymore, but my brain and hands won't sit still. So, where there’s a will, there’s a way.  Where there’s confidence, there’s productivity.  Where there’s Muse, there’s speed. ​