Pushing Buttons
A new Change Log comic about being annoyed, plus more behind the scenes of my process.
I love dogs… but why do they do this? My dog will always decide to be the most annoying when I’m trying to do something that requires concentration. Also, whenever we sit down to read or watch TV, he decides there’s a spot on his leg or chest (how does he lick his chest?) that just needs to be licked… and licked. Sometimes he acts like a cat. Don’t tell him I said that.
Process… Procreate vs Adobe Fresco
For the past couple years I’ve been drawing all of my comics and professional work on an iPad using Procreate. It’s been great and I’m a huge fan. But I’ve been looking for a better way to create vector artwork for client work and that’s one area that Procreate is lacking. I tried Adobe Illustrator on the iPad… and bleh. Don’t get me wrong, the real Illustrator is great and I use it all the time, but I’ve always found it weird that an application called “Illustrator” has never been a drawing tool (at least what we would normally consider drawing). Which led me to the realization that Adobe Fresco has the ability to create vector artwork 🤯.
Quick note… if you’re wondering what kind of nerd-speak I’m talking about when I say “vector”, at it’s most basic level, there are two types of digital artwork: Raster and Vector. Raster artwork is made up of tiny squares of color (pixels). Vector artwork is made up of points, lines, and fills. The main difference is that when you scale up (or zoom in on) raster art, the pixels are noticeable and don’t look good. When you scale up vector art, the points and lines scale and remain smooth.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way… back to Adobe Fresco. I played with it when it first came out and it did some pretty cool things. But there was something about drawing in it that I didn’t like. It seemed like they spent most of the early effort on the digital painting tools. And it’s always been really cool how the paint seems to mix like actual, for real life paint, but that’s not really my thing so I went with Procreate for the drawing experience. Well, I’m not sure what they did, but drawing in Fresco has improved a ton and after spending time tweaking (and tweaking, and tweaking) and getting used to the brushes, I’m now a huge fan.
Digging in a bit deeper, there are also a lot of features in Fresco that I didn’t know I needed but now make my process so much better. Things like the paint bucket tool (come on Procreate, I know you’re trying to be clever but just give us a freaking paint bucket tool!), adjustment layers, paint inside, etc. You can also create a perspective grid from an image file (haven’t tried it yet but seems pretty cool). And, look, I still love Procreate. It’s amazing what they’ve done with a small team. But Fresco feels like the next level up and what I’ve been looking for.
Big thanks to Chris Piascik and his really fun YouTube channel for helping me realize how cool Fresco has become. Go check him out if you’re into that sort of thing.
Here’s one more drawing of a gnome who’s ready for winter to end…
Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my artwork/sketches/ramblings, follow me on X and Instagram. And if you really want to support me, I have a store!
I also started an illustration studio, so if you or anyone you know is in need of custom illustration, check out Sketch Foundry!
Have a great week!
-Brad