The Good Ship Illustration

What tech do you use as an illustrator? Featuring Helen's 25 year-old Epson scanner that WILL NOT DIE

• The Good Ship Illustration • Season 10 • Episode 10

Share episode

 At The Good Ship Illustration, we love keeping it simple. You don’t need the fanciest gear or the latest tech to be an illustrator. Our Helen’s 25-year-old scanner has survived being dropped multiple times and it’s still goin' strong.

This week on the podcast, we’re sharing the tech setups we actually use to get our illustration work done.

  • Katie tells us about her iPad obsession, the magic of cloud storage, and why a second screen is a game-changer when she remembers to switch it on.
  • Helen sings the praises of her indestructible Epson scanner, her return to good old-fashioned paper workflows, and where she stashes all that paper.
  • Tania shares her decades of Photoshop muscle memory, her love-hate relationship with Wacom, and her dream tech collaboration.

Dear Apple, if you’re listening, please call us about the maxi pad™ (an extra-giant iPad for picture book illustrators) 😅

Listen to the episode for:
CMYK vs. RGB in Procreate, and whether publishers have a preference.
Our ongoing battle with storing work.
Why we’re convinced illustrators need a bigger iPad (yep, it's the maxi pad again).


Timestamps:

00:20 🎉 Find Your Creative Voice is open all year!
03:10 Katie’s tech setup: giant iPads, Procreate hacks, and Dropbox magic.
06:30 Helen’s trusty scanner and her glorious return to traditional workflows.
09:45 Tania’s Photoshop loyalty, Wacom woes, and dream tech.
13:00 CMYK vs. RGB in Procreate—how does it really work for publishers?
16:30 Why illustrators need an oversized iPad.
19:30 Our tips for archiving your creative work.

x Your Good Ship pals 🚢✨


Pssst… Exciting news! 🎉
Our course Find Your Creative Voice, Fly Your Freak Flag is now open for enrollment all year round! Join anytime and get instant access.
🌟 December & January Bonus: Everyone who hops aboard gets a shiny Good Ship sticker badge. Plus, three lucky new members will win 1:1 mentoring with the captains.

Climb aboard HERE.

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Tania:

This is the tech gist podcast, because Helen always says she gets the gist of things. Yeah. So do we all, and none of us know the actual models of any of the tech that we own. But people keep asking,

Helen:

I don't know the facts and figures about anything, but I get the gist of everything in the world, but just

Unknown:

the gist. You know what? That's all you need a high level overview.

Helen:

Yeah, as long as you never enter a pub quiz, you're fine, yeah? We were just saying before we're bad at quizzes, yeah. So we're going to talk about what tech setup we've all got at home. Yep. Do you want to go first? Katie,

Katie:

go on then? So all my work really is on our iPad, our iPad, so but when I started out, I had a second hand, ancient iPad, the smallest one, and then upgraded to like a big 12.9 incher. It's massive. I get it out and people go, is that a laptop? But it's just a massive iPad. It's really heavy, which is annoying, but it does the job. And loads of storage, loads. Well, actually, I did get decent storage, but I put everything on Dropbox because have I work from home, sometimes I work from the studio. Sometimes I travel a lot. Well, I used to travel a lot for work, so everything's in the cloud storage wise, so that, yeah, I've got a laptop at home. It's in so I got my iPad in 2020 and it's still going strong. It's 2024 so it's four so it's four years of being battered like I work. I use it a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, and it's totally fine. And I've got a laptop, I go through them quite quickly. I get like, two years out of a laptop in MacBook Pro.

Helen:

Are you drawing on your laptop, or are you doing your business stuff on your laptop? Business,

Katie:

everything which, writing your sub stacks, right? Stuff like that. Yeah. It's like, every single day I use my laptop, and then I've got a desktop at the studio, which I like. It's got a big screen.

Helen:

You have two screens in your studio side by side.

Katie:

I forgot about that, yes, so I got a second monitor because apparently it's good for ADHD. However, I forget, I forget to turn it on, which is very ADHD, but it's great for putting post it notes on. It's a really expensive

Tania:

notebook. Hold on. Why is it good for ADHD? Is it because you want to know millions of things all at the same

Katie:

time? Yes, you can just, like, have extra information on display. Yes, and if I'm in an event, so when I was using it, and remembering to use it was handy. I'd have, like, all the like, all the information on the spare monitor, yeah, and then the actual event on the other monitor. And that meant I could keep an eye on everything and not be, like, clicking between tabs and stuff, or if I'm like, writing something and I want to reference information that's on the other screen,

Tania:

yeah. This is how, when we do our live calls, I have to have my laptop open and the big screen on so that I can look at two things at once. I don't understand how that young people today do everything on their phones or smaller opinions.

Katie:

It's so hard. I need the big screen. A lot of things that like that are big screen jobs.

Tania:

Yeah, absolutely, loads of things are big screen jobs I couldn't do without it. Yeah, hold on back to your live scribing. So do you do all your live scribing in procreate? Yes,

Katie:

yeah. So I'm in procreate on my iPad, and it's plugged into the computer, so the events happening on the computer, and then my iPad is like feeding into the computer. Because when I started out, I tried to do it, like logging into zoom on my iPad, and then being on procreate is not did not work, right again, because everything's too crowded, and you can't flip from screen to screen, like you need to zoom on the iPad, the nightmare sometimes, and then,

Tania:

so if you're drawing, you're live scribing, and you've got your big screen. Do you use a software to join the pair of them up?

Katie:

Yes, it's like a virtual webcam software. So I use one called Ecamm live. Yeah. And it like, basically turns instead of seeing your face, it shows your iPad screen. And you can do really cool things like screen share or this other one, like OBS and Camtasia and stuff. And I discovered them in my old life when I taught English online to Chinese children, because you'd have to, like, show words on the screen and, like, give them videos to look at and stuff. So, yeah,

Tania:

that's amazing. And then they your stuff is animated later on, after the event. What kind of software do you use for the animation? Or is it just procreate record? It's

Katie:

procreate, does it? But I like to edit it. There's a thing called Adobe rush, which is like Adobe Premiere Pro for Dummies, where you can, like, the tick, because I went into Premiere Pro the other day, oh, my God, it's too many buttons. But premier Rush is like, trim, chop, speed up, slow down. So it's really good if you want to do, like, easy peasy editing.

Tania:

Oh, that's interesting. Okay, Helen, what's

Unknown:

your tech setup? Well,

Helen:

I've. Got my big screen, my Big Mac, and I bought that, probably 2020, still going strong. It's good. I use that for so I make most of my artwork on paper and scan it in. I have a well, when we started The Good Ship, I had a 20 year old scanner, so I guess I've got a nearly 25 year old scanner now. Scan is famous. I've dropped the scanner on the floor, on the wooden floor, numerous times, still going strong. Amazing. They don't make them like they used to. Yeah, it's an Epson style Stylus Photo Scanner. If anybody wants to know a four tiny dropped it number of times. Still goes strong. I use it to scan all of my work. Get it in on affinity or Photoshop. If sometimes I just hand in the paper work in paper form in the post. But sometimes I like to scan it in and alter little bits on affinity or on Photoshop. So then I'll scan it in. So I'll scan it, fill with it a little bit, and then that goes off to print. So my 2425 year old scanner is still the scanner that some of my books are printed on. Now, isn't that mad? It's a workhorse, yeah. So when we have all those messages from people saying, please tell me what amazing, brilliant scanner you've got that must be the key to being a successful illustrator. Got an ancient scanner. What else forgot? I've got my iPad. It's the biggest you can get, size wise, because I made a couple of books using procreate. So I bought the biggest iPad I could get, which is still not big enough. I wish they would make an iPad like the size of a picture book, open a picture book out iPad that size, please, or a bit bigger, so you could draw 110% that would be so good. And I tried buying the big Wacom Cintiq Cintiq. I bought one of those. Thought, this will be it. It'll be like working on procreate on my iPad. No, it was nothing like it. I hated it, and I know a lot of people love them. I could not get to grips with it. I hated the feel of the pen. It was too light in my hand. It was really rattly. It felt like a disconnection somehow between where your pen touched the screen and where it drew it. I just didn't get to grips with it, like it's like, a visual distance that you don't get, like the art. There's something magic about the Apple pen and the weight of it in your hand and how it genuinely feels like you're drawing on a piece of paper. It didn't have that feeling. And I know loads of people love it, and maybe I didn't give it long enough, but I tried to illustrate a book on it, gave up halfway through, went back to procreate, but I'm back to paper again. I really got into procreate, and I do really love it. But for me, I think my drawings look really good on procreate with the light behind them, but then when I've seen them then printed on a piece of paper without that light behind there's something about it. It doesn't have enough depth. So I think for me, seeing it on a piece of paper, because it's going to be printed on a piece of paper, is really useful. I was going to

Katie:

say maybe procreate. But like working digitally, works well for digital display. Yes,

Helen:

I love it for making images for my website and on Instagram, because they've got the light behind them. They're used in that format. Whereas my illustrations, I felt like it was the answer. I was really enjoying it. Other than the iPad being too small, I thought, This is great. I really love

Tania:

this. But then you got illustrators boob. I got so

Helen:

my, my left arm, my boob, I got my, my terrible Illustrator's boob condition. Went to the hospital, had my boob, felt up a few times, and then realized I was just holding my iPad. And I should have had a, you know, a little pull up table or a cushion on my for my elbow, yeah. So, you know, I've just gone back to paper. I just love it. But I, you know, I've got my iPad. I love it. I use it every day. I write my sub stack on it. I use it for sending out emails, and I use it all the time. It's about five years old. It's been dropped numerous times. It's got a crack across the screen. I love it. Still. We should make a bigger one. Other than that, love it. The

Tania:

other boring question is, what on procreate? Are you working on RGB or CMYK? And do the printers like it is there as an easy output and color correct? I'm

Helen:

working on in CMYK on it, but apparently CMYK on procreate is not as good as CMYK on other software. Now I'm really not techie, and I don't understand it. One forums I've been reading about this saying the CMYK setup isn't real, or it's not as I don't know. It's a while since I read up on it, I came out confused. Thought, yeah, I'm just going to press CMYK and use it anyway. The publisher had absolutely no problem with what I handed in. It printed accurate to the screen. No problem with it at all. So in my experience, it's been fine, but I have heard other illustrators say they've handed stuff in from procreate, and the publishers have had to really. Mess around with the color to make it work. I

Tania:

wonder if it's, you know, whether it's down to the art department, whether they used to procreate files and color correction, or whether, if it was a walker book, maybe they're so on it that they they can do it all themselves. Walker

Helen:

books sent me. They send everybody a list of what files they'll take, what software you can use and procreate wasn't on that list of software. So then I spoke to them and said, Do you mind if I use procreate? And they said, Oh yeah, it's not on there, but we have done a few books using procreate Jarvis. Jarvis does, and so does Georgie Burke it. She does. Oh, amazing, beautiful procreate artwork. And that's Walker. So yeah, it's totally do. I think you should always discuss it with your publisher and say, I'm going to use procreate. Are you happy with that? What settings do you want me to have? Well,

Tania:

given that it seems to be really it's the illustrator software of choice now, so everyone must be used to it. The other one that confused me, there was affinity, because if you output a far from affinity, you could have a JPEG or something like that. But was there any problems in getting choosing the right file from affinity?

Helen:

I don't ever give the publisher layered files, so because they have Photoshop and they don't have affinity, I suppose if you were handing in layered files, they would want because sometimes publishers do ask for that, but I just never give that because I don't want them to fill with my layers. If the layers need fiddling with, I want to do the fiddling Absolutely. So I don't ever hand in layered files anywhere. So it's not a problem, because I just save it as a TIFF and send it.

Tania:

That's what I was going to ask you. Send them a tiff Yeah? Tiffs, yeah, yeah. Should I do mine? Yeah. Go for it always been on Photoshop, but I use the vector tool, which is a bit counter intuitive to be on Photoshop with all those raster effects, and just using the pen tool is my friend. I love

Unknown:

the pen really. Yeah, well, so you're like using doing vector stuff in Photoshop, but

Tania:

it's not even real vector stuff. Using the pen creates that kind of sharp outline, but it's a bit of that. It's like drawing with a ruler. I knew someone once, he said, Did I remember an illustrator he once knew who only drew with a ruler, and he used to draw eggs.

Unknown:

He sounds great that Sean

Tania:

Prentice, the poet, told me about that Illustrator. And then I laughed, and I thought, well, that's what you do. You draw with a ruler and a bit of a bit of brush stroke, but I'm thinking about what you said, Helen, about using the Wacom pen. I just I feel sometimes I draw with brushes on Photoshop, but I don't feel it's real. And there's still that big jump between what you could do with a digital brush on a screen and what you could do with a piece of paper and a brushes. So there's such a gulf between them in authenticity and accidents. So I don't use the brushes that much. I used to a lot more. But anyway, so I work in Photoshop, occasionally illustrator, but it makes me cry all the way through it, because I can't bear illustrator. And they use a Wacom stylus and an Intuos pad. And we were talking about this earlier. It's just like an old friend that you don't really like very much anymore, but you still can't do without them. I'm not the biggest fan of Wacom because the interface is a bit glitchy, and I look longingly at the Apple Pencil, which just looks like the Rolls Royce of styluses and what procreate can do. But I don't know. I've got a mental block. I just can't use procreate because I'm so 25 years trained in Photoshop. It's all muscle memory. So I'm stuck there forever now, and I've got a big screen. And I was really upset when they retired the iMac with the 27 inch cinema screen. And I found that you couldn't just buy a Mac Studio and harness it up to your old 27 inch screen. You had to buy one of their 2000 pound screens to go with a MAC studio. So I don't have one of those, unsurprisingly, but I've got a big old screen, which I can't I think it's a Hewlett Packard. I can't quite remember, which is weird to have any other tech company in my studio other than Adobe or Apple, and I use my laptop. I bought a MacBook Pro so that I can travel, because that's what I really want to do for the next three years, is do residencies and travel. Take the Wacom stylus, work on the MacBook Pro because it works. It's strong enough to power up the Photoshop, which, of course, the other one wasn't. It kept like squealing in agony every time I ran Adobe on it and I bought an iPad, but I barely use it, and I'm so embarrassed. It's not a big one. It was a little trial one. And so I share that with my daughter, because she loves it. So I still can't get to procreate one of these days, I need to spend time with it and not try and do it on a job, because that would be too difficult. Don't use us, don't use a scanner. Much. Wish I could animate, but can't, but that's a future plan. So yeah, that's how I work.

Katie:

I feel like because I used to use a Wacom. I think it was a Wacom, bamboo fun. It was good, and I was in love with it. Had it for years. I went backpacking with it. It was totally bash up. It always. Worked. And I remember the jump from that to draw on the iPad was a really steep learning curve, because the bamboo the wacoms have got such a nice like, the bit of friction, like a bit of resistance against the pencil and then, or the stylus, whatever you call it. But then when you go to the iPad, it's like ice skating those paper like the paper,

Helen:

like screen. I don't think I'd manage without it, because your pencil slips around without it. A lot of people use those resistant nibs as well, which I've never tried. I've never changed the nib on my because I like the paper light screen. It's the same

Katie:

as I've got my paper like, I don't need a pen tip, yeah, but I would be too much

Tania:

friction, wouldn't it? Yeah, there was a the slidey thing was really disconcerting. You definitely

Helen:

need some sort of cover paper, like, is quite expensive, but you can buy some cheap copies that are pretty

Katie:

good. Also the stress of putting it on your iPad, because it's got a good, perfect index. Can do this like, I've got bubbles in mine, yeah, you have

Helen:

to set up a whole day aside, do some meditation before you start. I was gonna say my iPad. Also I bought, I bought one with two terabytes. I'm sounding like I know what I'm talking about. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I had, before I bought this iPad, I had one with a much lower memory or storage. See, I don't know the difference between memory or storage, but whatever, it had less capability. And so when I was working on procreate, I could make six layers. That was it. It couldn't handle me doing any more than six layers. So when I bought this iPad, I bought one where I can make, I think I can do 60 layers. I never do 60 layers, but I think it gives you that capability, which is brilliant. So I wouldn't buy a buy one with low what would it be? I don't know. Either terabytes is that mean you need to get the maximum terabytes? I don't know. I don't know, but I got one with all the powers, and I can do up to 60 layers, which is brilliant. There's

Katie:

nothing worse than when you're trying to work on something and it's like memory full, yeah, because my laptop started doing that, I feel like the MacBook Pros fills up quick. Even though everything on Dropbox, and I tried to be diligent about deleting my downloads folder and stuff, it still fills up.

Helen:

You know, yeah, they do. Do you use Dropbox a lot as well? Tanya, we're 42

Unknown:

in good shape.

Tania:

Yeah, they force me to, but I don't understand it. I think it's like voodoo. I use it intuitively. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, a bit like the way I used to do long division and multiplication at primary school. I get to the right answer, but I do it the wrong way. It's actually most of my life is like that. But, yeah, I'm scared of Dropbox. I just have to use the Finder, but I'm getting better at it. And I don't use creative I have accidentally used Creative Cloud, but I'm not sure I understand it, but I do have a tech Santa wish list. This is the thing that would make my life so much better, is that I can use the iPad as the way, instead of the Wacom stylus with the Apple Pencil, and it goes to my screen. And the the closest I've seen to that is that you put Photoshop on your iPad, but you don't have the clear space to draw, because it loads all the menus. Yeah, menu, you get a tiny space. Yes, a really space to draw. Why can't the menus be on the big screen? And you draw? Looking at your iPad, you can see what you you're doing, but it's replicated as well on the big

Helen:

I did when I was using procreate, because some of the images were bigger. I did a book full of vignettes, but some of them were double page spreads. And a double page spread is smaller than my iPad, so then I was reflecting my iPad image onto my screen. So I was still drawing on my iPad and looking at my iPad, but I could keep looking at on the screen, but I still don't think it. It didn't fix that for me. And when, when I saw the book out in print, I felt like those bigger spreads didn't have enough detail because I'd drawn them on a small screen, even with it reflected on the big screen. So yeah, I'm back to paper again. I like I use Dropbox as well, but because I work on paper, I've just got a house full. I don't know how many books I've done, more than 50 books, and for every book, I've got a folder of actual artwork. Our house is a fire hazard. It's absolute nightmare, and every year, two more massive folders get added to the cupboard under the stairs. And I don't know what to do about it. You buy a storage

Tania:

place, like a physical storage, like a real life drop box in a frank Flanagan could do with it, but

Helen:

I feel resistant to that, because everybody has storage units, don't they, and you put stuff in your storage stuff in your storage unit, and then you never know what's in there, and it stays there forever. I don't know I could do something. And then being quite ruthless about the early books, throwing out all that, because I always keep a few rough drawings and things, because it's nice to remember where the idea started. And if anybody actually comes and says to you, you stole my idea. You can prove here's where it started. Look there's the first and when

Tania:

we set up the Helen Museum in Berwick, we'll want all of those things for the archives as well. So don't throw them away. But you have to be careful. Don't you mean people have lost their archives in fires, in storage or in studios. That's I

Katie:

was thinking. You put it in store. And just they put all your eggs in a one, yeah,

Helen:

I'm giving it somebody else to look after. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. We just went into the real world. Maybe I'll have a wine fire on purpose. But

Tania:

if anyone knows how that how we can make this magical connection work. If Adobe or Apple would like to speak to me about making this three way connection, I would be the perfect person. Please

Helen:

make a massive iPad, as big as the biggest Mac, a massive like, like, a big Telly, massive telly. You could call it, I want a massive one.

Katie:

Call it the maxi pad. It'll be brilliant,

Helen:

right? Get on it. Tanya, ring your contacts. Yeah,

Tania:

okay, we'll get it made. Okay. On that note, that's the end of the tech Gist, yeah, yeah, bye,

Helen:

bye. Rubbish at saying goodbye, aren't we? Yeah,