Happy December! For notes on John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory, check here.
You'll notice some changes in 1PT.Rule starting today and lasting through... whenever? The first is the lack of full color. I honestly wanted to drop the comic all the way to black and white, but I lacked the steel nerves to do so. The reasons for this are twofold: color is hard and I've been largely unhappy with it so far; and this allows me more time to focus on the "inks."
The inks have been done digitally in Photoshop (CS2, if you're counting), using a 6.5" x 4.5" Wacom Intous tablet. Largely, working on this tablet a few days a week is one of the best things going on in my life, but I've been unhappy with some of the lines I get working in Photoshop. The first few strips were drawn with a round brush and look horrible, and starting on the second week this was changed to a more calligraphic brush shape which I thought was serving me well, but ultimately has still left me unhappy with the final results. So today's comic employs that same brush as two different weights, 10 px for fine lines and 20 px for darker strokes (I work at 300 dpi), and we'll see how it goes. I don't want to have a brush set of like twenty different brushes because I think that would lead to some pretty inconsistent art, but this line variation is getting me closer to where I want to be. As a reminder, I also do real illustration work, so you can see why my lack of quality here has been a constant thorn in my side.
If you're drawing vector, why aren't you doing it in Illustrator? Have you also messed with pressure-sensitive line-weight variation?
My roommate draws in Photoshop with fixed-width brushes, but he also draws with low opacity so it has this layered, sketchy quality. Also, no vector.
No, I'm all in Photoshop for this strip. The promo art (banners) was done in illustrator, even with the pressure-sensitive brushes I'm still a lot worse in there than I am in PS. When I use Illustrator it's one point at a time (but that's okay because I'm fast).
And sometimes I'll show you the under-drawings or "pencil roughs" that I do first — those are a lot like your roommate's I'm sure. But for the final that's not the look I'm after.
--nv--
Ah man! You're clicking pen-points? Gross!
Give the Brush tool in Illustrator a try. It gives you way more freedom to just draw, even if you've already done it on paper and drop it to a bottom-locked layer to trace (which I'm assuming you're doing here, for the most part). 'Cause if you're just clicking points, I don't really see a point in having the drawing tablet. And you can always go back with the Direct Selection tool to nudge a point over if you have to.
I drew/traced these for a thank-you card while interning over the summer. All Illustrator; all brush tool, with pressure-variation.
Albeit, these aren't AWESOME by any means.
http://www.geoffthibeau.com/yeah/geoff.png
http://www.geoffthibeau.com/yeah/carol.png
http://www.geoffthibeau.com/yeah/jeremy.png
http://www.geoffthibeau.com/yeah/perryn.png
http://www.geoffthibeau.com/yeah/ryan.png