I bought my wife and I an iPad Air each recently, and I thought "How good would this thing be for cartooning?" Well, after a few false starts, here is my current cartooning kit (minus the iPad)...
At the top is a Wacom Creative Stylus - this monster of a package is well made, pressure sensitive, and feels lovely in the hand - but it's crap. The stylus feels lovely, but it's far too thick to see what you're doing, and that's really frustrating. I got so annoyed, I started looking for another stylus - and found the GoSmart 300 Stylus (the little rocket ship thing bottom left!). This has a tip that looks like a wire hoop...
This allows you to see what's under the tip - great for detail work, and the stylus is solid aluminium! It may not be pressure sensitive, but so far, I'm not finding that a problem.
The final trial was which software to use on the iPad. I was given lots of recommendations, and it's a good thing that most of these apps are cheap, because you can soon waste money - however, I did find an app that let me work the way I wanted to work - ladies and gentlemen, I give you Pen & Ink
Pen & Ink is essentialy a Moleskin journal & full art set in one neat package. It has full layer support, variable size pages and runs really quickly, but I really love it's inking engine. When I ink using a pen, I tend to ink the same way I sketch - small short lines, that make up one whole line. Pen and ink feels like I'm really using my pen again - and I love it. In fact, I did this picture the other day...
This is a quick piccie of Sir Samuel Vimes, from the Terry Pratchett "Discworld" series, but using Sam Neill (of Jurassic Park fame) as the base. All done in Pen and Ink, with the GoSmart stylus. Neat eh?
In summary, I really love this setup. it's quick, easy and gives great results. It might not work for everyone, but at the moment, it's working for me...
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