Comics and Evernote

[egypturnash 19]

I'm an artist who does comics. My present project, "Decrypting Rita", is a very digital-native comic; it's designed mostly for the iPad screen, and I'm using Evernote as much as I use physical sketchbooks to keep track of things.

I have a notebook for the comic, of course. Within this notebook I keep a few things: I've got a few notes with model sheets in them, there's a couple of text notes, and there's a note full of images for each comic.

When I'm working on the comic, sometimes I'll use reference in other windows and hammer the Exposé key to check it out. But other times I just pull out my iPad and use that for referring to a character model or to a previous page.

A lot of my process happens in Illustrator. Most of the dialogue gets written as I'm laying out the panels, and refined over the course of the page. I'm a sole creator so I really don't feel a need to write all of this stuff out ahead of time. But Evernote's one of the ways I capture my random thoughts about what's happening on a longer range. I've got notes with fragments of dialogue for upcoming pages, I've got a note full of random thoughts like "Rita should totally do the jet grind* thing at some point".

Not everything lives there. I haven't found a drawing app I really like on the iPad so I'm more prone to do visual notes by just pulling out a sketchbook and drawing, and I'm not married enough to Evernote yet that I reflexively photograph those. (Though now that I think about it...)

I've also been playing with a proposal for a story set in the land of Oz; that's pretty much entirely text, and has ended up living entirely in Evernote so far. When I get seriously moving on it I'm sure I'll adopt the same workflow I have for 'Rita'.

I also keep a copy of the comic in iPhoto, as that makes for a much better reading experience (having a 'presentation' mode to Evernote, where you could flip through a bunch of images dumped into a note with fullscreen presentation, would be PRETTY SWEET). But when I'm on the go with my Android phone and want to refer to the previous pages, I turn to Evernote.

Anyone else out there doing comics and using Evernote? I'd love to see if you've got any ideas I haven't had yet.

* see the "Jet Set/Jet Grind Radio" games

[gbarry 2,658]

Your visual style is awesome. The first few pages (all I've gotten through at this point) are very reminiscent of Mirror's Edge. Not sure that's an influencer, but certainly feels like it. Not a bad thing either, I loved Mirror's Edge.

[egypturnash 19]

Thanks!

I briefly played the demo for ME but really couldn't get into it - I'm just not a first-person gamer. If it's influenced by any particular video game, it's probably Sega's "Jet Set/Grind Radio" games more than anything else. But mostly it's just me applying my slick limited-color style and animator's attitude to action.

[gbarry 2,658]

I see Jet Set. Very cool. I'll be following.

As for Mirrors Edge, I was more thinking the cutscenes--which are stylistically entirely different from the actual game.