AMA: Making the transition to digital

Q.: I remember hearing horror stories when, in 1996, Marvel told their colorists "Either learn to color digitally, or get out."

What were your own experiences transitioning from ink and paper to drawing on a computer like?   Did you put it off as long as possible, or did you enthusiastically embrace the new technology?

A.: I remember the first time I saw a Wacom Cintiq. My friend Scott Kurtz had bought a Cintiq 12WX to use on the road, and he brought it to a comic convention. Back then, he, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub and I would routinely share hotel rooms, and he brought it to the show so he could get some work done.

You can see my first experience with a Cintiq in the clip above. That's a young Kris Straub crouching next to me.

It would be fair to say that I didn't like it very much. I preferred my bristol board and pigma micron pens. But I was open to the idea of working digitally.

Years later, Scott gifted that very same tablet to me in 2012 when I quit my day job to become a full-time cartoonist. I was thrilled, but I was also... intimidated. It sat on a corner of my desk for an entire year, untouched.

Then, in May 2014, I received a package of bristol board that was substandard. (I used 14x17-inch 2-Ply plate bristol, and that stuff was expensive.) The entire package was unusable. I had read that paper producers were experiencing difficulties holding the same quality standards that artists had become used to. So, I had three choices:

• Suck it up and try to use this mushy bristol board
• Spend more money and buy a second shipment — and hope that that package would be better
• Start working digital

I chose the third option, and set about teaching myself digital art.

My typical method of doing this sort of this is the "diving into the deep end" way. On Friday, I finished using the last of my board and I started working digitally the following Monday, learning on the fly. That weekend was a misery, as I worked out all sorts of bugs and workflow problems, but by the end of the week, I was pretty confident.

Here's the last time I created a comic with ink on paper. (It's also the last time I hand-lettered the strip.) It was May 16, 2014.

The next comic, posted on May 19, 2014, would by my first all-digital effort.