Things I wish I'd known before switching to working digitally, a short thread:

The undo button is not your friend. Only use it when things go really wrong or you might get caught in the loop of throwing down a line, undoing it, throwing it down again, and again and again. It will never be perfect, so move on.

The zoom function isn't your friend, either. It's way too easy to end up zoomed all the way in and obsessing over details that no one will ever notice. Pick a comfortable magnification to work in and stick to it unless you absolutely have to go in closer to do something.

Don't try to recreate your analog art style in digital. You can spend months fiddling with brushes and it will never look exactly the same. That's okay. Instead, I recommend embracing a new look for your art that you can only do with the new digital tools.

Speaking of digital tools, there are a lot of them, and it's really easy to get lost in all of the possibilities. Pick a few brushes that you like and stick to them.

And with a few exceptions, most default brushes are okay but not great. Find some custom brushes that create lines you like and spend the money on them. It's not usually a lot of money. I swear by @FRENDEN's brushes in Clip Studio and @kyletwebster's Photoshop brushes.

(If you have Adobe Creative Cloud, Kyle's brushes are included, but you have to download and load them yourself. They're worth every click it takes to import them.)

And finally, accept that most art programs are incredibly complicated and have all sorts of functions that you will never fully understand. And that's okay. We're artists, not computer technicians.

If you get stuck, if you don't know how to do something, there is always a tutorial for how to do it online. And Twitter is a great resource. You run into a problem, just ask. There's always another digital artist who has run into the same problem.

/End of thread

Actually, while I have your attention, I'll share the single most important productivity thing I've learned as a working comic book artist...

Never ever EVER finish a page and then stop for the day. Always start the next page. Trust me on this. It's so much easier to get your momentum going the next time you sit down at the desk if you already have the next page started.

/No really, it's the end of the thread now