I’m currently working out the maximum size canvases I can get away with in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Procreate on my iPad Air 2. I love drawing on my iPad, so I’m trying to get as much penciling done on there as possible before I switch over to working in MangaStudio on the desktop.
The default page template I’ve been given by my publisher is 6.25 x 9.25 @ 600 dpi, with a live art area of 5.25 x 8.25. For the most part I’m not working full bleed, but within that live art area, which equals 3150 x 4950 pixels. The largest size canvas I can create in Sketchbook is 2227 x 3500, which is pretty good. However, I can get a couple hundred pixels closer in Procreate: 2603 x 4090. I’m going to try switching over to Procreate a for a bit and see how
that goes.
The truth is that you can work on pencils at a slightly lower resolution, then size them up and they’ll mostly look all right, and have more than enough detail to allow you to do your inking. However, the Little Women graphic novel is going to be 100% digital, and I like having the resolution as high as I can reasonably get it for most of the production stages on this kind of project. You never know when those extra pixels will come in handy!
At the end of the day, what I’d really love is to be able to
do a full size, full resolution page of pencils entirely on my iPad and
then import into MangaStudio for final clean ups. I’m keeping a close watch on the iPad Pro announcements/specs, so here’s hoping!