Sometimes, it’s nice to shake up routine. For the past 14 years, I have been manually uploading my comics to my FTP server. This procedure involved three steps:

1. Open my FTP application (Transmit)
2. Navigate to the proper folder on my computer
3. Drag the file into the appropriate folder on the server. (I keep all my comics within the same folder on my server.)

As is the case with my comics, every time I make a revision (and in some cases I’ve revised a strip 20 times over the course of a day), I’d have to repeat the above steps each and every time.

So…

…given all the whiz-bang computing power we have at our disposal in 2012, shouldn’t there be a better way?

Thankfully there is, and it’s called automation. To automate the steps above, I used two applications: Hazel and Automator.

Hazel ($24.99) is an incredibly powerful program that automates filing, organizing and cleaning files and folders that live on your computer. Automator is an app bundled with Mac OS X that bills itself as a “personal automation assistant” using drag-and-drop workflows.

To preface this discussion: there are many ways to skin this cat. This is what worked for me.

First, I’ve created a rule within Hazel called “Latest Toons”. This rule will examine the date of the file and checks to see if it was created within the current week. If that condition is true, two actions will be performed.

1. Hazel will set a color label on the file (marking it green).
2. Hazel will launch an Automator workflow to upload the file to the appropriate folder on my server

I use Panic’s Transmit ($24.99) for all my FTP tasks. Transmit comes with an Upload action that is accessible from within Automator.

In Automator, I selected the Upload action and moved it into the workflow area. Next, I configured the Upload action to use one of my Transmit “Favorites” (a bookmark of sorts that contains all my FTP login info, including the correct path to open on the server). After configuring the action, I saved the workflow for Hazel to access.

Now, whenever a new comic file is saved in my pcw_toons folder, Hazel automatically uploads the file into the appropriate folder on my server. Translation: I’ll never have to manually upload a comic to my FTP server EVER again!

To sum it up: Automation is a powerful method of saving time on repetitive tasks. It lets your computer handle the mundane, routine activities while freeing you up to focus on the real tasks at hand. And with tools like Hazel and Automator on the Mac, it’s never been easier!

-Krishna
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One big advantage of owning a display like the HP ZR24w is that it supports both landscape and portrait modes. While I’ve been using my display almost exclusively in landscape mode since I first purchased it, curiosity about the idea of “going vertical” got the best of me, so I went ahead and flipped the display over to portrait mode.

Portrait mode is fantastic for making comic pages. Instead of only seeing a portion of the full image, I can see the entire comic page in one go. To fully use the display for illustration in this mode, I had to adjust my Wacom tablet driver settings to match the orientation of my new display. No biggie. Once the settings were adjusted, my tablet worked like a charm!

Having used this setup all weekend, I’m starting to prefer portrait mode over landscape. I’m curious to know if other digital artists work with portrait mode, and what they think of using a display in this fashion. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

-Krishna

Update: One week in, I’m positively sold on the portrait display. I’ve never been more productive.Similar Posts:

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I love desktop wallpapers, but the problem I have with most backgrounds is that they make it more difficult to see folders and files that I have on my desktop. Take the image below:

It’s a great image – full of contrast and color – but the crisp detail of the photograph has a nasty side-effect: it makes the text underneath the hard drive icons more difficult to read.

What’s my work around?

Simply take the image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) and add a Gaussian blur to it.

You’ll still have all the wonderful color and contrast that makes the image so appealing, but now it’ll be much easier to discern the icons from the background. Give it a try. You might actually like it.

-Krishna

If you’ve ever been in the process of moving your files and realized midstream that you need to open a folder on your hard drive, you’ll come to appreciate the power and simplicity of DragonDrop.

DragonDrop is an elegant and useful Mac app that lets you set down what you are dragging without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down. It works great with files, folders, text snippets, etc. and has already improved my productivity ten-fold. It sells for $4.99 at the Mac App Store, and is easily worth its asking price.

How does it work?

Drag a file or set of files and shake your mouse cursor back and forth. A transparent DragonDrop window appears. Stuff your contents in the window and retrieve them when you’re ready to move them into their proper location. That’s it!

If you’re not a “mover and shaker”, you can use DragonDrop’s Menu Bar icon instead. DragonDrop’s prefs (shown below) are simple and self-explanatory.

In the snapshot below, I’ve selected three files and shaken my mouse cursor. The DragonDrop window (or portal, as I like to think of it) appears.

Drop your files into the portal until you are ready to retrieve your files.

DragonDrop is one of those little apps that quickly makes itself indispensable. I can’t imagine using any Mac without it. DragonDrop has eliminated the need for me to use a dual-paned window (a la Forklift or PathFinder) to move files because I can invoke it at a whim.

I’ve tested DragonDrop version 1.1.5 for about a day now and I’ve already given it a hefty workout. I haven’t run into any snags or bugs in my usage, but I’ll update this review if I run into any problems.

Conclusion

If you move files on a regular basis (and who doesn’t, really?), DragonDrop is easily the best $5 you’ll spend and earns a mighty 5 Bob Weiners. Highly Recommended.

-Krishna
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DIG DUG, one of the celebrated 80′s coin-op arcade classics, is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a webcomics collaboration project. Below is a snippet of the official press blurb, which contains the list of cartoonists who have been asked to contribute to the project:

Dig Dug is one of those iconic games that means a lot to retro gamers, especially those of us who grew up constantly trying to inflate many a Fygar, so we wanted to do something very special for the webcomic,” said Rob Pereyda, Producer & Editor-in-Chief of ShiftyLook for NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. “And I think we just might have the comics team-up of the summer and a must read for video games and webcomics fans alike.”
Each creative team will craft self-contained Dig Dug stories, with a different angle brought each time. A partial list of talent is as follows (additional talent to be announced):

• Raynato Castro (Buttersafe)
• Jeff “Chamba” Cruz (ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)
• Javier Charro (Soul & Sword)
• Brian Clevinger (Atomic Robo)
• Mike Costa (Smoke and Mirrors)
• Alex Culang (Buttersafe)
• Omar Dogan (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
• Joey Esposito (Footprints)
• Greg Fisher (Vivian)
• Dax “D-Gee” Gordine (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
• Dean Haspiel (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
• Marko Head (Vivian)
• Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade)
• JJ Kirby (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
• Mike Krahulik (Penny Arcade)
• Erik Ko (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
• Scott Kurtz (PVP)
• Nick Langley (Rocket Llama)
• David Maliki (Wondermark)
• Ben McCool (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
• Matt Melvin (Cyanide & Happiness)
• R. K. Milholland (Something Positive)
• Matt Moylan (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
• Hoang Nguyen (Carbon Grey)
• Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)
• Robert “Robaato” Porter (Title to be announced Summer 2012)



• Krishna Sadasivam (PC Weenies)
• Elliott Serrano (Geek to Me)
• Edmund Shern (ShiftyLook’s Scar)
• Kris Staub (chainsawsuit)
• J. Torres (Power Lunch)
• Zach Weiner (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
• J. N. Wiedle (Helvetica)
• Marv Wolfman (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
• Jim Zub (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo, ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)

It was an honor to be invited to participate, and I hope you guys will check back on their site to see my contribution. You can visit NAMCO BANDAI’s ShiftyLook website for more info, and make sure to listen to their inaugural podcast while you’re at it.

-Krishna

As a follow-up to my earlier post on using Photoshop to create word balloons, I want to highlight a few font resources you should be aware of if you’re a cartoonist.

• Blambot: the grand-daddy of comic font sites on the web, run by cartoonist / letterer Nate Piekos. (You can read Nate’s weekly webcomic, Atland, on the Blambot site.) Blambot has numerous fonts (dialogue, design, sound effect, alien, etc.) to choose from that are free to use if you’re an independent creator. In addition, Nate offers some really nice, affordable fonts that you can purchase.
• Comicraft: A wide variety of professional comic book fonts can be found here, but unfortunately there are no free fonts to be had. Still, the quality of fonts here are excellent. You’ll find many custom lettering fonts from the masters of comic book art, including Dave Gibbons, Joe Kubert, and Tim Sale, among others, available for sale. Tip: Don’t miss Comicraft’s New Year sale, where each font can be purchased for $20.13 (each year, it goes up a penny!).
• DaFont: If your tastes lean towards finding type beyond that of the comic realm, investigate DaFont. A really unique feature that DaFont offers is the ability to preview what your custom text will look like before you download them. It’s a huge time-saver, to be sure.
• Chank: Dubbed as cool fonts for smart designers, you’ll find a fresh collection of free fonts to add to your collection. Each font is custom-made in Minnesota.

Of course, if you have something specific in mind, you can also make your own custom fonts, too. And if you’re looking for web fonts to spruce up your site, check out Google fonts.

Which font resources do you use for your comics and/or designs? Share your favorite font hangouts in the comments below!

-Krishna

Two weeks ago, shortly after I wrote my blog post entitled “Mac Spring Cleaning: Rethinking How I Organize My Data”, I ordered myself a shiny new 120GB Other World Computing Mercury Electra 6G solid state drive for my Mac Pro.

I’m no stranger to solid state drives; I’ve been using them with both my Macs for almost two years now. SSDs have given a new lease on life for both my machines, which are over 4 years old (ancient by computing standards).

Three factors influenced my latest SSD purchase.

• My 40GB OWC SSD was no longer cutting it for all my apps / OS.
• The prices on larger SSDs have come down within the past 3 months. (I paid $150 for my 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G.)
• I wanted to perform a complete rebuild of my Mac Pro as a performance tune-up.

Rebuilding an OS and apps is like moving into a new house: it takes time to move your stuff (installing apps) and it takes a little longer to settle in (adjusting all your apps settings the way you like). It’s tedious, but in the end, you have a clean, organized place you really like coming home to.

Carrying the moving analogy, not everything made it into the new “house”. First and foremost, Corel Painter X didn’t make the cut. While Painter is a good program for what it does, I can do everything I need to do illustration-wise with Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.

Setting up most of my apps was pretty easy. Ironically, the apps that weren’t as easy to reconfigure were iTunes and iPhoto. I manage all of my media and photo data on a separate internal drive; it took some Googling on my part to properly configure both apps to find their content.

Side note: iTunes is in desperate need of a make-over. My suggestion would be for Apple to split up iTunes into separate apps to manage music, movies, etc.

With the new 120GB drive, performance screams. Part of it is because of the extra head-room on the SSD. Sketchbook Pro, Photoshop, etc. all make use of the extra fast scratch disk space on the drive.

Furthermore, reinstalling Photoshop cleared up some wonky behavior (such as the delay encountered when typing text using the Text tool) and allowed me to modify, remove and optimize a few of my workflow actions / scripts. Sketchbook Pro runs like butter now: super fast with no lagging whatsoever.

In the end, while rebuilding the OS and apps was a bit tedious, the expended effort was totally worth it.

-Krishna
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Lo and behold, there is a new Uncubed comic to read. Also posted this month, a new installment of “The Other World” for site sponsor Other World Computing.

-Krishna

Help!

I’m looking for an easy method to make a reverse-ordered RSS feed from the existing PC Weenies RSS feed. I’m using Mailchimp for the PC Weenies Toon Mailer, but unfortunately, it always displays my RSS feed from most recent post to least recent post. Which can be kind of a bummer when you’re following the storyline.

The only workaround I have is to publish the mailing list on a daily basis. Unfortunately, MailChimp does not offer a M-W-F option for their RSS mailing list option.

I have tried Yahoo’s Pipes approach, but it seems to error out every time I supply the original RSS feed. I’m looking to my fellow geeks for a solution. Help?

-Krishna

Making word balloons is part and parcel of being a cartoonist. Just like digital coloring, there are many techniques out there for making word balloons. Here’s how I make mine, using Adobe Photoshop.

1. Start off with some text. Organize your text into the shape of an oval. Keep in mind the line-spacing (leading). For a typical word balloon in my comic strips, my text is sized to 7px and the leading is one pixel less (6px).

2. Next, use the Ellipse tool. The Ellipse tool is a much better choice than the Elliptical Marquee tool because you can modify the shape and size of the ellipse very easily, without having to worry about pixellation.

2. Create an ellipse. Move the ellipse layer underneath the text. Adjust the scale and size as needed to fit the text.

3. Use the Direct Selection Tool to adjust the roundness of the ellipse.

When you click on the ellipse you’ve created using the Direct Selection Tool, you’ll see anchor points, which you can click to pull and adjust the shape of the balloon, like so:

Or you could keep the ellipse as is, depending upon your preference.

4. On a layer underneath the ellipse layer, draw the outline of the tail using the Lasso tool as shown below. The tail should always point to the character’s mouth.

5. Flood white into the tail (Option-Delete). Flatten the tail layer with the ellipse layer using Command-E.

6. Apply a layer stroke on the word balloon layer. Adjust the thickness of the stroke to suit to taste. Set the “Position” of the stroke to inside to retain the sharpness of the word balloon’s tail.

7. Behold! The final result!

As I said, there are many different ways to approach word balloons. The steps I’ve outlined above comprise the methodology I use. Share your thoughts and techniques in the comments below.

-Krishna
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