Thanks Pam! This is the video, in case anyone else is interested. Procreate has a super cool feature where it automatically makes a process video of your art as you draw, which you can export to iMovie to edit and post to the web, all from the iPad. Having used the Pencil/iPad for about a month now, I’m still loving it to death. As the video shows, I can do a print-ready comic from start to finish in Procreate (with the exception of importing the text guide layer from Graphic).

I’ve read reviews that say that it’s only good for sketching and that it’s not great for finished professional art. My guess is that this is probably because the reviewers are more comfortable using their familiar desktop drawing programs and they get frustrated when it doesn’t work the same way, and not because of actual limitations of Procreate. I have yet to come across anything that I need to do as an illustrator/comic artist that I can do on desktop and is impossible to do in Procreate. Some things are harder to do, and some things are easier to do, but as far as bitmap drawing goes, it can pretty much handle it all.

I think new digital artists coming in without ever having used a tablet will find it a better experience and more like natural drawing, whereas people who have a lot of experience with a tablet and PS or MS (like me) would need to spend some adjustment time learning the ins and outs of this new tool to really like it.

That’s my 2¢.

I was lucky, (and vigilant) enough to snag one when they came into stock at my local Apple store a couple weeks ago. I’ve been using Wacoms and other digital drawing tools for 15 years, and I also have had a SP3 for the last year and I tested the SP4 out in the store for about an hour.
I feel very confident saying that the Apple Pencil is the best digital drawing experience I’ve ever had. There is significantly less lag than the competition, and there isn’t the annoying parallax Cintiqs have. You will be tricked into thinking that you are actually putting a physical pencil to paper, it’s that good.

Astropad is a nice tool, and performs very much like a Cintiq, but honestly, I would avoid using it as your main drawing tool because it reintroduces lag, and tethers you to your home computer. Sure it makes the iPad Pro pretty much just like a Cintiq, but the iPad Pro already works better than a Cintiq. I think people are jazzed about Astropad because they it lets them work with their familiar favories like Manga Studio or Photoshop, but I think it is much better to just adjust your workflow for Procreate.

Speaking of Procreate, the Pencil is nothing without powerful software to back it up, so THANK GOD for Procreate! It is WAY more fully featured than you would think (read through the handbook, and check out the tutorials on their site forums to unlock all the features), and it is easily the best drawing app on iOS. It can do 95% of what I do in Manga Studio, and working with its touch-first interface is a sublime joy. Pinch zooming, and 2 finger panning glides buttery smoothly, and all the tools you need are easliy accessible via touch and gesture commands without needing an assortment of menu panels cluttering up your workspace. They’ve separated touch controls from pen input so there’s never an unintended line or command too. I’m quicker with Procreate than I am with keyboard commands in Manga Studio, all in a super portable form factor. I’m not going back.

As great as it is, there are some compromises I’m going to list here, so you are going in with eyes wide open. The biggest features you’ll miss are:

1. No text/vector tools in Procreate. I hand-letter, so it isn’t as big a problem for me. If you digitally letter, you can use a program called Graphic by Autodesk to do text/vector shapes and import them into Procreate. Both Procreate and Graphics support copying to the clipboard, so you can copy/paste between apps pretty easily. You can also use a program called AnyFont to install custom system fonts. It works, but it’s not the most elegant solution.
2. No brush smoothing. Photoshop people won’t miss it, but Manga Studio people are probably going to miss the vector-like ink lines they can get with the smoothing setting on all their brushes. You can still get smooth lines in Procreate, but it will require a steady hand, quick strokes, and drawing from your elbow. Expect similar results to how you ink on actual paper (but with erasing).
3. You’re going to have to learn a new way to do some things like masks and magic wand selections. Procreate doesn’t directly support those features, but you can fake it. (check the forum tutorials)
4. MS5 people will lose some special rulers, although Procreate does have perspective guides and an innovative quickline tool for straight lines.
5. You’re gonna have to draw your own panel borders and word balloons, though you can import them as vectors from Graphic.
6. You’re going to have to copy/paste to a program like Pixelmator to resize and save out for web.

As for the SP4, I tried it in the store, and while the PixelSense tech gets rid of the parallax and gives you more accuracy, the lag is slightly worse than on a Cintiq, IMO, and nowhere near as good as the Apple Pencil. It can run desktop apps, but their UIs are meant for a keyboard and mouse, so it doesn’t work very well when you are travelling holding it like a sketchbook. You certainly can’t work very quickly on it without a keyboard. If you are looking for a 1:1 portable version of what you have on your desk, it’s the best option, but working with it always feels like a compromise and never the preferred environment.

So that’s my opinion. Apple and Procreate have blown the competition out of the water on their first try, and they are just getting started. I know Procreate has some of the features I mentioned planned in their development roadmap, and I can’t wait to see where iOS devs take the iPad Pro in the next year.

Feel free to ask me any specific follow up questions.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Clay Yount.

Looks like there’s a fix for the Manga Studio EX 5 lag on El Capitan. Make sure you have the latest version (5.0.6), then select Preferences > Tablet. Change the “Tablet Settings” dropdown to 6, and that fixes the brush lag problem. I definitely breathed a sigh of relief on this one. It goes to show you that updating the OS on a production machine on release day is always a gamble.

I just don’t think a single panel visual gag comic is going to generate a lot of discussion, and empty comment sections on every page makes your comic look unappealing. It’s probably better to try and get engagement on social media. Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest will probably serve you the best because they focus on sharing quick-to-digest content.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Clay Yount.

Hey Cameron, I’m a web UI/UX developer by day, so hopefully I can give you some useful advice.

1. Hiding the content with a page loader is probably the biggest sin. You make the user wait until all your images are loaded before they can interact with them. Same thing for the news page. My gut reaction when I saw this was to leave your site immediately. What happens as you add more comics? Make people wait longer?
2. People have to hover on each comic to read the title. Why do this? If it’s important information, just show it. Also on touch devices, there is no hover, so they won’t ever even see that content.
3. The zoom-in animation on the title text is disorienting and makes it harder to read.
4. You have a plus sign on hover that makes people think they are adding or sharing it to something when they are just going to the comic page. It serves no purpose but to confuse people.
5. The “X” in the bottom left corner just turns into a plus sign. Wat?
6. In mobile size, the menu inexplicably gets smaller and harder to interact with. You want the opposite.
7. You only show your site logo when the menu is open. People visiting your site will have nothing to anchor them or tell them they are at the right place.
8. You have a bunch of sorting options for the store, but none for your comics or blog. Unless you plan on selling hundreds of items, no one will be interested in sorting them. People will want to better sort your comics though, especially since it’s such an unconventional design

I don’t want you to think I’m just bashing your design for kicks, but it looks like you designed around what looks neat to you rather than what works best for your readers. I would suggest a complete UI redesign starting with wireframes so you can go over useability, or stick to something more conventional. Sometimes what is popular is what works, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get people’s attention.

Adobe Photoshop Touch also lets you resize images and save them out as a jpg or png.

It really depends on the features you are looking for. If you are looking for the drop-dead easiest setup, I’d recommend going with the simple webcomic theme for Tumblr. You won’t have much control, but getting a comic with archives up and running is as easy as setting up a tumblr blog. Also, it exists in the tumblr social network, which is a nice bonus.

I know you said you didn’t relish using it, but WordPress with ComicPress probably has the most documentation and help available, especially on this site. It will also give you the most flexibility to accomplish exactly what you want because you host and control everything. The downside is that WordPress in general is pretty complex, so it can take a lot of effort on your part to get it to where you want it. You’ll probably encounter some maddening issues with plugins that will take days to resolve, and you’ll probably spend some time managing your own server/keeping up with updates. If you are familiar with using WordPress, you know what I mean.

I really like Squarespace, so I made a Squarespace webcomic template, which I think is pretty nice, and a good tradeoff between control and complexity. It had a ton of built in widgets and features like eCommerce. But My template is also basically in beta, so it’s not as tested as the other solutions. You’ll be living on the edge, so to speak, so it would help to know the basics of HTML/CSS if you want to make your own changes. Also, other than Squarespace’s own (meager) documentation, the documentation I have on my page is all there is right now. But you could always email me, and I’d be happy to help you get up and running.

The best option, of course, is to just pay someone to build it your site for you, which they would probably do in WordPress. But that can cost quite a lot, especially for a webcomic artist just starting out.