Who are you and what do you do?
Hi and thanks for asking me for a submission to Draw Me a Robot! I’m Rob Stenzinger and I make comics from time to time at ArtGeekZoo.com, and make podcasts at LeanIntoArt.com.
Recently I coded, illustrated, and wrote a choose your own adventure style book about making video games. It’s called Video Game Construction Kit: Underwater Tomato Ninja Edition. I also provide User Experience design, facilitate workshops, and do User Interface engineering for a rapid prototyping team as my primary gig.
What’s your hardware setup?
I use a combination of analog tools, iOS, Android, and OS X devices day to day. My main workstation is a MacBook Air. When It’s docked, I use a Cintiq 12wx mounted to an Ergotron desk arm. When it’s not docked I use a Huion H610PRO tablet for pen input. My mobile art workstation is a Samsung galaxy note 10.1 though I often do you use analog tools to capture sketches and linework. I then either snapshot or scan as a sketch layer or turn it into vector ink lines using either CocoaPotrace on OS X or Vector Pro on iOS.
What’s your workspace look like?
My home office is a dedicated small room in my basement where I’m surrounded by artwork, desks, books, toys, juggling balls, and guitars.
What tools do you use to make your cartoons?
I try to be ready to do illustration work just about anywhere. I mostly prefer the setup and tools at my main workstation yet do find it useful and productive on the move. To accomplish that I used a Modbook for about 3 years - which I loved. Later I sold the Modbook to move to the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 which is less powerful but far more portable. I use mostly Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, though experiment with manga studio and mobile tools such as Sketchbook Pro mobile, LayerPaint HD.
My typical comic process: draft dialog, sketch thumbnails, revise the dialog, rough pencil sketch, (optional refined pencil sketch), refined line work/pen stage, color, word balloons, then sound effects. This robot is made fully with rectangle drawing tools on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 in the app Papyrus, printed, then colored with Copic markers.
