What I used to create Caterpillars CANNOT FLY!

There are loads of options if you decide to do any kind of illustrating, or book creation.  However, I stumbled upon my tools all thanks to my daughter.  She bought herself a Samsung S7 with birthday and Christmas money when she was 11 and installed all manner of games and apps (as kids at that age do).  At this time I was in the process of designing the characters from Caterpillars CANNOT FLY! and I was very impressed with one of the drawing apps that she used, Ibis Paint X.  Whats more, this tool was free!  So I started ‘borrowing’ my daughters tablet and using Ibis, and the more I did the more I knew it was perfect for what I needed.  After a few weeks though, I realised that if I was to get this book illustrated, printed and published in 2021 I would need my own tablet.

In the past I have had experience with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop etc, but couldn’t justify the cost for these apps, and as I figured out later (when it was suggested by the printer to redo my illustrations in CMYK – yes, redo all my illustrations), Adobe products are not compatible with Samsung Tab S7.  I begun to wonder if I should have purchased an Apple Ipad.

As Adobe pretty much have CMYK to themselves (it is possible to add a CMYK extension to GIMP) I was pretty gutted at this point, thinking that I had created all these illustrations in a format that would be shown different when printed on white paper.  Anyway, a long story short, after chatting to multiple printers, and getting examples printed off I was actually still happy with the colours from one printer in particular but I did make a few tweaks here and there.

Anyway, back to the tools… My Samsung Tab S7 has loads of space with the options to expand the storage with micro SD, and not forgetting is rapid speed, never ending battery life and portability.  Its worth mentioning that even though I am running Ibis Illustrations at almost maximum resolution and page size (to ensure quality when printed) for each page, and I have never experienced any issues since using the free program with regards to speed, lag, or anything.  I really do urge anyone who is interested in drawing or illustrating to check out this app, it really is exceptional value for money.  You can also gain access to all brushes by simply watching an advert each day, or pay £2.49 per month to have full access with no adverts.

And that’s it… these tools combined gave me exactly what I needed, and without these I think I would still be designing the book.

*if you are wondering what the white pages with ‘Spacer for Ibis’ scrawled over it (in the image) is, when turned landscape Ibis show’s 5 thumbnails and when creating a book I like to see 4 thumbnails per line as often I would have 2 pages as one illustration, and yes, that is my neatest handwriting  😛