Tablet Drawing

Tablet Drawing

Digital Cartooning. Drawing cartoons in Adobe Flash

Cartooning in Adobe Flash Part 1
Dan Gibson here. Some of you may know me as the cartoonist that draws Gibbleguts.com cartoons.

It's been many moons since I've drawn a cartoon using a pen and ink on paper. These days I draw my comics right on to my PC with a Wacom digital drawing tablet and Adobe Flash.  

It's no surprise that so many present day cartoonists have made the move to paperless cartooning, and with good reason. The following are just a few of the numerous advantages to drawing cartoons in Adobe Flash.

1: You'll save money
Once you make the initial investment of buying Adobe Flash and a Wacom tablet, you are pretty much into cost-free cartooning thereafter.  Sure you can spend a wad on the best hardware and software, but you really don't have to. You can actually get set up with a minimal cash outlay. I got started with a small 4x6 Wacom tablet that I bought at a local electronics store for under 100 dollars, and an older version of Flash on Ebay for approximately the same. Even though the initial cost was a couple hundred dollars, compared to the money I had spent on art supplies and equipment , drawing cartoons in Flash is a real bargain.

2: Control:
Drawing comics in Flash gives you total control of the composition of your artwork. Backdrops, characters and props can be grouped and drawn on separate layers. This gives you the ability to resize, move or edit elements of your comic independently of each other. If you make a mistake, you can easily correct it without affecting the other elements of the cartoon. I can still remember the distress of making a error, or the heartbreak of knocking over an ink bottle on a finished cartoon.

Here is another huge advantage… Because Flash is a vector based drawing environment, you can scale your cartoon artwork ‘up' without any loss of quality. This is really helpful if later, for example, you require a larger image to print on a T shirt.

3: Speed:
For me, the biggest advantage of drawing cartoons digitally in Flash, is the speed and efficiency factor. In the olden days of drawing on paper, the hassle of prep and clean up often deterred me from whim cartooning. With the time restraints of everyday life, it was often difficult to squeeze in a quick cartoon between school, work, chores ect. You had to disassemble your pens and rinse them, cut Bristol board, draw lines for lettering guides, trace rough sketches, ink your cartoons, erase pencil lines, white out screw ups…yada yada yada. With paperless cartooning, all that drudgery is removed.  Not only do you save time, but you'll also make more money. For example: I had an order for over a hundred panel cartoons, and had 4 weeks to complete the job. I was able to polish off the project within 17 days thanks to my trusty Wacom tablet and Flash. Ka-Ching!!

About the Author

Dan Gibson is the cartoonist and creator behind Gibbleguts.com.

See some of Dan's cartoons Here

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