Artist’s Comments
Yesterday, I was at the local Panera Bread restaurant and their Wi-Fi went out. I had planned on watching a movie while eating lunch. So I decided to just pop open Clip Studio and quickly do a color guide for the Ghost Rider piece. I ended up doing more rendering than I should. But it was a fun project to do during lunch.
I didn’t realize that I was coloring over a 600 DPI lineart. Normally, I would res-down (lower the resolution) the art to 300 DPI, so it becomes more tolerable for the hardware’s RAM power. At least, this is what we used to do back when we used to digitally color comic book pages and covers on a PC with no more than 16 GB or 32 GB of RAM capacity and availability. (Those were the old days of comic coloring!)
Since I intended to just do a color guide, I didn’t think much of the resolution. A color guide is a quick marker-style sketch of an artwork. Its purpose is to serve as a reference point for the digital colorist to follow, and for the editor to get an idea of what the final colored art would look like. Color guides were used frequently back when I was still doing commercial art. We used Letraset or Chartpak brand markers to produce quick color guides or graphic design layouts.
When I completed the colors of this Ghost Rider piece, I discovered that I was coloring over a high-resolution 600 DPI file! Surprisingly, the iPad Pro 12.9 handled the coloring process extremely well—even with a 600 DPI file with multiple layers! It should have crippled a tablet’s hardware, as such a high-resolution file size would impact the hardware’s RAM capacity and capabilities. I was even listening to an MP3 music file while coloring on the iPad Pro!
We’ve definitely come far in tablet technology. This kind of thing would not have been possible 5 years ago. My iPad Pro has been a real workhorse for me. I created many artworks on it over the past two years.
This is my second iPad Pro. My first was in 2020 and that iPad Pro only had a maximum of 8 GB of RAM. This second tablet has 16 GB max RAM. Of course, not all of that RAM can be allocated to Clip Studio, ProCreate, or any creative app. The device still has to run the operating system, system internal processes, etc. In Clip Studio, I am able to allocate a maximum of 8 GB RAM. Still, for 8 GB Max, I was able to digitally color this Ghost Rider piece at 600 DPI high resolution—with multiple layers!