This cartoon from my sketchbook was sort of an experiment in mobile cartooning. I was kind of stuck somewhere boring all day yesterday and while browsing through Facebook on my phone I saw that it was a friend's birthday. People were posting "happy birthday" to his Facebook wall. Since I'm a cartoonist and he's a cartoonist I decided that simple text wouldn't cut it, so I decided to try something new.
I had my sketchbook with me and my iPhone. I wanted to try and see if I could publish a cartoon to the web using just my phone and this is how it turned out. I think it looks pretty good, but obviously it includes the pen and you can see the edge of my sketchbook. Maybe I should have removed those elements and made it a straight out cartoon.
Here's the steps I took to do this:
- First, I drew the cartoon in my sketchbook. I used a pencil to sketch it out and a fountain pen to ink it. Pretty straight forward there.
- I took a photo of the open page of my sketchbook using my phone and an app called Camera+. The app has a useful software stabilizer in it that allows for me to take a steady shot up close for a macro focus. Perfect for capturing line work in focus.
- I then used the app Photogene to edit the image. I reduced the color (sketchbook pages are vaguely yellow), increased the exposure and the contrast to make the line work 'pop'. I also cropped it a little. Just a general cleanup of the image. I actually like this app better then Mobile Photoshop for this.
- Then I used Balloon Stickies to add the text and word balloon to the cartoon. It's got some great features in terms of balloon shape and angling the tail. I wish it had a better selection of fonts, though, and I hate the drop shadow that I don't seem to be able to remove. I've tried a few word balloon apps and so far this is the best one.
- Once all that was ready I used the Facebook app to post it to my friends wall. I also used the Flickr app to add it to my personal sketchbook gallery for my own use here.
