Apps Giving the Bear a hug I've been paying and using Bear for years now. I much prefer the interface design to the default Apple Notes app (plus my pal Vic does all the illustration work for Bear which is class). Though I have been using it, I don't think I'
Comics Daily(ish) comics As I mentioned on my recent quote post, I recently started drawing small, single page comic strips every day or as close to daily as I can (so far I've only missed two days) so I thought I'd just write down some thoughts on it, if
Process Side quests I feel like I've been gaining some traction with my projects recently. Last week, I finished colouring 4 comic pages which is a current personal best, a rate I plan to maintain for the next few weeks until the last 11 pages are coloured. Alongside that, I'
Process One sheet of paper... I've been struggling with motivation to get my comic finished. It's been a month since I last wrote about my comic progress, partly because there hasn't been all that much to report. I enlisted some help in getting some of the flat colours done
Comics Don't get ahead of yourself... Progress on my comic has been slow. General day-to-day life takes it out of me a lot and generally by the time I get a chance to do some work, around 8 or 9pm each night, I'm knackered and just ready to shut off and rest. Couple that
Art O brother fan art process Last week, I got a hankering to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? and after I'd watched it, I got a hankering to draw some of the characters. As I did most of the work digitally, it was fairly easy for me to export the various steps as
Design Systems Typography in Design Systems (rebound) About a week ago, I read Dan Mall's article, Typography in Design Systems [http://danmall.me/articles/typography-in-design-systems/], and I've been meaning to write a quick rebound post to expand on the section about the system in code with something I've been doing in
Comics 3 pages inked! My schedule doesn’t usually allow me time to smash out page after page of comics but having a week off work afforded me time to do just that. A comic I started weeks ago and decided to redraw the other day, is finally taking shape. 3 down, 2 to
Comics It’s ok to start over I’ve finally started work on a comic I’ve had bouncing around my head for years. The characters and story are starting to slot into place but there’s still a lot to do. The comic will be a fairly long story but broken down into smaller stories, which
Learnuary Learnuary resources I've not really had a chance to contribute any visual stuff to the Etherington Brothers #learnuary campaign yet but wanted to get something quick out there for people to start mulling over so I thought a short list of useful resources I find help me when drawing and
Comics My process I’m nearing the end of a project for Bottleneck Gallery [https://bottleneckgallery.com/collections/sketch-booth/products/sam-hardacre-sketch-commission] to produce 50 illustrations for their customers. I’ve been posting photos and time-lapse videos to Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/skinnydrawnboy/] and Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/skinnydrawnboy/] along the way
Comics Wrestling with character Most people who know me will probably be sick of hearing me say that I’m working on a comic. Hell, I’m sick of telling people and not just getting on with it. I have a protagonist, some characters he meets along the way and an antagonist and his
Sketch app Open .ai in Sketch Today I was sent an Illustrator (.ai) file from a client which I needed to use to output a .svg file. The only problem is I don't have Illustrator so I had to go searching for a solution. A quick google didn't offer much. Some solutions
Process Creative spotting When I draw, it's often in isolation. I don't have any friends nearby with whom I can just hang out with to shoot the shit about drawing cartoons and comics. I get really inspired by people I follow on Twitter and Instagram. Seeing the work they&
Grid Systems Create a cross-page grid in Sketch Yup, another post about grids! This time it's less of a mind dump and more of a quick tip I've picked up this afternoon. Earlier this week, Tim [https://twitter.com/timharbour] linked to a Sketch plugin called Symbols [https://github.com/tisho/sketch-plugins/tree/master/
Process Slaying pedantry and trolls Since December 2008, at least once a year, I listen to Stephen Fry's podcast on language [http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/12/22/series-2-episode-3-language/]. The subject in itself is fascinating but the delivery has all the rhythm, pace and in some sense even a melody making it a
User Experience Thinking beyond the web A couple of things has shaped the way I approach projects recently. Discussing design with Tim [https://twitter.com/timharbour] over beers has shed light on a better design process. And seeing Aral Balkan [https://twitter.com/aral] speak at Wuthering Bytes [http://wutheringbytes.com/] last month has started to
Process Staying relevant Last night saw a group of creative types congregate in Huddersfield for another HuddsDigitals [http://huddsdigitals.com/] meetup. As a change to the usual format (casual meet in a bar over drinks), we saw ourselves involved in a more structured panel/group discussion talking about keeping up-to-date in a fast
Process Just do it > Having the ability to just have an idea and go "right, we'll just try and make this thing because we think that's a problem that needs to be solved". And I highly recommend being naive, because it will get you so far... >
Self-improvement Life after RSS... Back in 2007, I bought my first MacBook. I remember spending an hour or so that morning setting up the apps I needed, dropping some music into iTunes and adding email accounts to Mail. I discovered that here in the Mail app was where RSS feeds were dropped. I immediately
Apps Writing on the move Recently I've seen a couple of new [http://scriptogr.am/] services [http://calepin.co/] popping up on Twitter which use a combination of markdown text files and Dropbox to create a blog. Since they we both free to sign up and I have a Dropbox account that I
Photography Compose, then recompose So for my first real article on this blog, I wanted to write about something that only really registered with me on a conscious level the other day and that is the idea of moving around a scene while shooting for better composition. This is a simple idea that most
Process Evernote for writing When I first built this site, I started a blog which was terribly built, not in a CMS and a nightmare to maintain. Back in those days, I didn't think about keeping copies of things so that site is now lost in the depths of time but the
Photography Coffee and bokeh This weekend Luisa and I made the journey down from Yorkshire to Kent visiting her family. On the way down the M1 we stopped off to get some much needed coffee. Before we hit the road again, I took a shot of my cup of coffee sitting on the car
Web Development IE6, sorry it's just not working out With IE8 on the verge of release in the next month or two, I'm probably not the only developer in the world who can't help but think this may actually be the beginning of something good. There'll (hopefully) be a lot less headaches and
