So, checking in on the progress, actually making great progress (so great in fact that I ended up redoing my To Do board to see if I can finish this thing this week)
Start of the week:
Monday – Wiped out. Maybe one page of inks.
Tuesday – DT Inks 7-8
Wednesday Inks DT 9-10
I’m actually in the middle of inking page 13. I’ll not get that done til tomorrow (and really today is a pretty low effort day, I’ve done one page of inks).
But I have managed to sort some work related stuff out. Firstly I’ve been gifted a brand new inkjet printer. (Well I say brand new)
My Brother DCP 6690CW A3 scanner/inkjet printer has been on its last legs for some time (actually it’s stopped printing black, I’m sure it’s a fixable issue, but honestly it owes me nothing at this point so I’ve been mulling over a new printer. I think that printer is over 20 years old and it never once had the official brother ink carts in it.
My mate Jim has handed over his old Brother MFCJ6510DW – a similiarly specced A3 inkjet printer/scanner combo. Differences being it’s slightly newer (so actually airprint works on it which means I can probably print/scan from my phone on it) and it’s only got a single tray for paper (my old had two) BUT that makes it a little smaller, and I only need it for A3 anyway, so any space I can give back to my tiny studio the happier I am.
I’ve been doing some Interstitial Journalling, the practice of journalling between tasks – so you know, anytime you have a break you note the time, whats happened and what you’re about to do.
No idea what that will add to my day, but there’s already some fascinating data about how much work i’m doing popping up (like my average time on a page for inks is in the region of 3-4 hours, but that probably takes me 5 hours to do so I need to close that gap a bit)
I’ve also been experimenting with using clip studio on the apple neo (I still love the little laptop – it’s what I’m typing this one right now, the keyboard is great!)
Largely figuring out the best way to use it as a portable studio, here’s my notes on it from bluesky:
Experiment one: linking the ipad as a second screen to use on the Macbook Neo to draw on. First, regularly inking on this thing doesn’t push my processor beyond 27% (and that’s with clip studio mostly probably taking up 5% of that) i’m sure it’ll go bananas when I move a 3d model in it.
I did manage to push it to 56% cpu when I did a conversion of a 3d object in to a 2d lineart – but that doesn’t feel much slower than my m4 (it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that clip studio doesn’t in any way use the extra processing power of the m4)
My ram is sitting comfortable at 79% usage. I’ll open a big page to see what it does…
I really am not happy with the ipad pro’s pen in clip studio, I can’t seem to get a good level with it. Which means I’ll probably stick to using the huion graphic tablet plugged in rather than the ipad. The ipad is as fast and responsive as a second screen mind you, whatever magic apple is doing –
I remember when the ipad first turned up with apps that would let you use it as a graphic tablet and they were all a bit laggy, but not any more.
Well, opened up a multi layer a3 600dpi full colour image and the ram is now sitting at 82% usage so that’s pretty good. Though I had an M1 with 8Gb ram before and never found it a problem with memory, so wasn’t expecting the Apple Neo with 8Gb to be a problem.
battery is running a bit lower than I was expecting, but I suppose I’ve actually got the ipad plugged in (so the ipad is probably charging itself via the mac neo and that’s running the battery down a bit) I’ve unplugged it and you really don’t need to plug it in (I mean the fact it just works
is a sort of amazing testament to all apple eco systems… even when if it doesn’t work it’s insanely frustrating)
I will say art that I’ve coloured for Terran Omega, fairly leaps off the screen on the ipad, where it looks nice on every other screen the ipad – possibly the colour, possibly the resolution – just looks incredible.
Experiment 2: the huion on the macbook neo. I have left the apple ipad pro connected to the neo (via the air) so weirdly now have a three screen set up, I look like nasa)
this is pretty much identical to my desktop experience (so much so that I’m a bit tempted to just put my desktop stuff away and use this all the time) it’s limited by connectivity, but most of the printers now work over network
it will work off the battery for a very limited time though, I mean I can’t say for certain, but I charged the neo two days ago and it was around 40% today but using it with a huion plugged in (and drawing power) it says I’ve another hour use, so I’d want this to be plugged in while working.
And that’s it for tonight!
As ever, a new page of terran omega over on my patreon, but you can go right back to the start and read it all for free at www.pauljholden.com/patreon/?via=mysite
