Part of my hiatus from cartooning was because of my upgrade to Leopard. I had been using Manga Studio EX for all of my comics: ZooDotCom, Lil Monstas, and other — as yet unreleased — stuff. But it doesn’t work on Leopard. And it looks like they won’t be releasing a fix for it, either. So I was lost. Adrift on a sea of unfamiliarity.

I had really gotten used to Manga Studio, and now no other drawing package seemed adequate. I refuse to ink in a raster format, just on sheer principle. Before MS, I used Flash. But I hate the way the brushes work in Flash. Plus, the latest version just seems sluggish to me. So I was left with few choices.

Or so I thought. I had given Illustrator a try in the past, but it didn’t have the right feel. Manga Studio let you treat your inking like rasters, but it stored them as vectors. Oddly enough, Scott Kurtz’s cry for help, and subsequent reply from AmBoy00, really made me re-think Illustrator.

Turns out, it’s all that I need. When I tried it last, I only used the default settings for the brush stuff, and it was dreadful. Once I changed that and tweaked some other settings, I really like the feel of it. In fact, I even use Illustrator (LivePaint) for coloring now. Since episode 31, it’s all I’ve been using.

So I’m back on track now. I have several strips in the queue (shows how much I’ve been enjoying it) and shouldn’t miss an update again. In fact, I’m considering moving to a biweekly schedule. As in, two strips per week. Funny biweekly can mean that or once every two weeks, huh? Ah, good ol’ English.