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Possibly Big News For Digital Artists…

Started by Jim_Campbell, 08 November, 2017, 08:08:58 AM

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Jim_Campbell

CelSys have announced Clip Studio EX (formerly MangaStudio) for the iPad Pro. It's on a subscription model, which is slightly disappointing but, I suspect, just A Thing We're Going To Have To Get Used To. Free for the first six months, $8.99/mth thereafter.

The iPad Pro/Apple Pencil combo has been the best-in-class digital drawing experience since day one, but has lacked a proper pro-level art application before. If I was Wacom, I'd be shitting my pants right about now.

Requires iOS 11, and should be in the App Store now if you're running it.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Jim_Campbell

Just updated to iOS11 and installed this.

I'm very busy today so have only had time for the most cursory play around, but it very much appears to be the Real Deal. Very few interface concessions to iOS — it more or less looks like the desktop app. Zoom and rotate by touch are great, though.

There's pretty much zero latency on the pens and brushes I've tried. It's very impressive.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

IndigoPrime

Out of curiosity, have you also tried the new Procreate, and Affinity Photo? Those aren't necessarily suitable for the kind of work you do, but they along with Clip Studio EX seem to point at where the iPad could head.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 08 November, 2017, 12:09:15 PM
Out of curiosity, have you also tried the new Procreate, and Affinity Photo? Those aren't necessarily suitable for the kind of work you do, but they along with Clip Studio EX seem to point at where the iPad could head.

I have 'em both, and they're both great. The problem with Procreate, for digital artists particularly, is the roundabout workflow needed to get files into a desktop workflow (export to .PSD, save to iCloud/Dropbox, import/open in desktop app). Having an iOS-native pro-grade app should change that...
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

mightybren

I love Manga Studio, the rulers and the behaviour of the brushes make it an amazing tool for drawing in general, let alone comics!

£9 a month is pretty steep though. I'm not against subscriptions, (I'm getting used to the idea), but £9 a month is significant considering the price of procreate.
As a photographer, Adobe Lightroom Mobile have done something similar, a desktop tool on the iPad Pro for £9 a month, or alternatively you can pay an annual fee of around £90. I'm much more comfortable paying an annual fee, slightly cheaper and I know I don't have to worry about the bank balance on a monthly basis. I'm speaking as someone who is transitioning from a regular income to being self-sufficient travelling the world for a year however, so I probably don't speak for everyone.

I'll be keeping an eye on this however, out of all the drawing tools I've tried I'd say Manga Studio is the most feature rich. It produces some very nice lines, although I think Procreate is fast catching up with it's Brush Smoothing technology.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is how relevant or needed a desktop workflow is these days... other than having a larger screen, how much longer will we actually need a supporting desktop workflow? I think my IPad is getting very close to replacing my laptop completely.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: mightybren on 15 November, 2017, 10:57:28 AM
£9 a month is pretty steep though. I'm not against subscriptions, (I'm getting used to the idea), but £9 a month is significant considering the price of procreate.

£7/mth. I'm not a huge fan of subscription software, but Doug (Manga Studio for Dummies) Hills pointed out that there are certain expectations on price in the App Store, and sticking a £200 software package in there would be a pretty hard sell.

The basic question is whether you'll get £7 of value out of it per month — the first six months are free (although you have to agree to the sub, and then cancel it if you decide don't want to pay) so you have plenty of time to decide whether it's worth it.

Also worth mentioning Ray Frenden's review if anyone is wavering. Keep in mind that Frenden was no fan of the iPad Pro prior to this...
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

pauljholden

I keep worrying it's too cheap and won't get the love and attention it needs. (For a working pro, £7pm is a no brainer - price of a macdonalds. Can understand the reluctance if you only occasionally use it, but then you could turn on the sub for the month you want it and turn it off again when you're done).

I think if you're a digital artist at all, an ipad pro and this could replace a bunch of other devices (It's made me question whether I need a laptop at all - throw a keyboard on my ipad pro and Pages [apple's word processor] and clip studio and it's about 90% of what I use my laptop for)

And assuming it gets better and better my relationship to my cintiq is going to flounder.

It really, desperately, needs a way to sync with dropbox - so you can round robin between desktop and laptop. (It also needs to better at background saving documents) and I would like a way to scan directly in to it from my current scanner.

Very oddly this is the first version of clip studio that exports to PDF.

I recommend it!

-pj

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: pauljholden on 15 November, 2017, 11:52:54 AM
I think if you're a digital artist at all, an ipad pro and this could replace a bunch of other devices (It's made me question whether I need a laptop at all - throw a keyboard on my ipad pro and Pages [apple's word processor] and clip studio and it's about 90% of what I use my laptop for)

Yeah. The current iteration of the Macbook Pro is useless to me, but the iPad Pro has me considering going back to a dedicated desktop system for the first time in at least a decade when the time comes to replace my current MBP.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

pauljholden

My adventures in cancelling adobe creative cloud has me questioning this, BUT I think because it's an apple subscription, you can turn it on and off as you use it - so you're not locked in to a year once you sub. (Certainly this is how other apple subs work)

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: pauljholden on 15 November, 2017, 12:44:32 PM
My adventures in cancelling adobe creative cloud has me questioning this

It's not just you. Adobe's entire cancellation process seems designed to be as inconvenient as possible, whilst gouging the punter for the maximum amount of money: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1407421
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

mightybren

I wouldn't use Adobe's tools for any artwork or design work, but for photography there's no real competitor to Lightroom right now. Affinity Photo has some great tools, but it isn't as good and the asset management tools are missing, which are essential for someone who can take more than 1000 photos in a week. There are a few alternatives available for desktops / laptops, but the quality just isn't there.
If I had an alternative that produced the same quality and had the same feature set I would jump ship in an instant. I've seen how Adobe manages these things for a whole bunch of stuff outside of the creative sphere as part of my day job, in addition to the shenanigans some of my colleagues have gone through with CreativeCloud. In general they use a lot of dark UX patterns and will stop supporting software at more or less a moments notice.

I guess a subscription for Manga Studio is to an artist what a subscription to Adobe Lightroom is to a photographer :)

I'm thinking of attempting living with purely an iPad Pro for everything for a year, including work, while travelling. The latest MBP actually looks alright to me, but given an iPad can do pretty much everything I need it to (not quite the same as want it to, but getting there) I don't think it's worth the expense.

NeilFord

Definitely making my MacBook Pro and cintiq look like an expensive mess of cables. Thinking I could ditch the MacBook Pro, cintiq and iPad - just get a iPad Pro and keep my main work pc.

mightybren

I just saw an email from Affinity that their vector illustration software Affinity Designer will be coming to the iPad next year :)

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: mightybren on 19 December, 2017, 08:36:26 AM
I just saw an email from Affinity that their vector illustration software Affinity Designer will be coming to the iPad next year :)

I'm genuinely excited by this. Designer is the only viable alternative to Illustrator that I've found for lettering, so i'm very much looking forward to seein how this turns out. They showed a short video of it running on an iPad at least a year ago — the wait has been killing me!
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Bolt-01

okay, so a quick look at Affinity designer tells me that it's a one-off payment and includes future Updates. for £38.99- which is a bloody good price.

I may well be getting to a point where I need to actually move to a newer machine (still running windows 7 as it works with my older Adobe products) so the knowledge that If I do upgrade I may not lose the ability to make comics anymore is good...

I don't work in the creative industry or actually make money out of comics so there is no way I can afford to pay Adobe for the subs to the programs I would want...