Episode 214 Scott Adams: Drawing Dilbert While Testing Camera Setup
Date: 2018-09-09 | Duration: 44:13
Topics
Drawing Dilbert While Testing Camera Setup
I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
See all of my Periscope videos here…
https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL
Find my WhenHub Interface app here…
https://interface.whenhub.com
## Transcript
## [Camera and Lighting Setup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=23s)
This works now. In theory, you should be seeing—oh, there I am. Yeah, you should be seeing my drawing surface, and then if I change the camera, you should be seeing me. Let's try that.
With any luck, now you're seeing me. I've figured out how to change the lighting exposure since the last time I failed to do this. With any luck, the sound will be perfect every time. Let's check out my mixer. My mixer says I should be taking sound from the right place. Sorry if you're trying to hang with this, but I thought I would just show you what it looks like when I'm drawing.
## [The Drawing Process](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=84s)
What you see is the bare bones of a comic that I already started, and what I'm doing is doing the finished artwork on top of the first draft. If I make any mistakes, it's easy to correct here. That would be the back of the boss's head. I like to make the drawing as big as possible when I'm working on it because that hides the errors when you shrink it down; it's also easier on my hand.
## [Weekend Routine and the Drawing Glove](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=150s)
If you ever wondered how I spend my weekend mornings, you're looking at it. This is pretty much every Saturday and Sunday morning for about 30 years, except I was using paper for most of that time.
Here's Dilbert. For those of you just joining me, I am drawing over the artwork that I did in rough. No pinkie twitch—that's correct. I'm wearing this glove-like item that's really just something I learned from somebody else. It keeps my hand from getting my hand oils on stuff.
## [Going Digital with Wacom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=217s)
When did you first go electronic? I think it was 2004-ish. The device is a Wacom Cintiq. When I'm done, I'm going to remove the layer that has the rough draft, so all you'll see in the end is the finished art. You could probably tell that the difference between the rough art and the finished art is very low. It is a Slim Studio. How old is the computer monitor? This model is probably a year old, two years maybe.
## [Studio Tech and the WhenHub Interface App](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=278s)
I've got different cameras set up. If I drag this in, you should switch to this camera, and if I want to switch you back to look at my drawing board—back to there. I think I've got the sound, the lighting, and the buttons—the multi-cameras worked out.
I'm going to start doing some interviews with folks over Skype and over my own company's app called Interface. It's called Interface by WhenHub, and it lets any expert charge for their time with a video call. What I'm doing right now would have been impossible without human help. That's why the Interface app by WhenHub—my startup—is going to change the world. There are so many things that you just can't do without 15 minutes of getting somebody's help, and that's about all it took.
## [Elon Musk and the No Agenda Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=345s)
Bob Ross on steroids. Interview Elon Musk? I'd love to. A number of you apparently are listening to my John Dvorak interview. He interviewed me, came to the house a few days ago, and I guess that's out on his No Agenda podcast right now. He asked me all the good questions.
## [Advice for Aspiring Cartoonists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=408s)
What's it like to be a cartoonist? It's a lot like this. There are little motion indications. If you're trying to become a cartoonist, my advice for you is to practice drawing hands. If you can draw a hand, you can draw anything. Hands are really hard to draw. If you can't draw a hand, you probably can't be much of a cartoonist.
## [Drawing Mechanics and Symmetry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=470s)
Do I ever recycle panels? I don't. I've never recycled a full panel, but obviously, the characters are often drawn in the same poses because there aren't that many things that these characters can do. They sit at tables, they drink coffee, they walk around. They don't do much; they're mostly talking.
What are the hardest things to draw? The hardest things to draw are anything that is supposed to be even, like a nose or glasses. Getting any kind of symmetry is always tough. A lot of people draw three fingers instead of four, but they're lazy. I'm a full four-fingered cartoonist.
## [Dilbert's Evolution and the White House "Mole"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=535s)
No horses, no tie for Dilbert. I got rid of Dilbert’s tie. A lot of people haven't noticed, but he hasn't had a tie for years; they're all casual. Part of the trick of drawing is to pick the right time of day because my hand is jumpy if I've had too much coffee or if I'm distracted. But if I've exercised and I'm kind of sleepy, my hand works perfectly. Will Calvin ever come back? I doubt it.
Somebody says the Pointy-Haired Boss is Trump. I feel bad for that anonymous mole inside the White House who was complaining about his boss. What we knew was Trump because it means that I failed the generation. It has to be somebody younger who's not a Dilbert reader, because anybody who's been reading Dilbert would recognize that the complaints they made about their boss are the complaints that every underling makes about their boss.
If you think it's easy to trace your own drawing, it's not. It takes a lot of practice.
## [Maintaining Comic Ownership](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=668s)
How did I maintain ownership? It's just contractual. You just have to have lawyers when you first get syndicated. When you make your first deal, usually you're splitting the licensing 50/50. The first thing you do when you get syndicated—meaning you get your big contract to be a cartoonist—before you sign the contract, you get a lawyer. So any questions about "How do you keep your rights? How do you copyright? How do you trademark?" The answer is all the same: get a lawyer.
## [Bob Ross and Republican Daughters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=734s)
How can you convince your daughter to vote Republican? Good luck with that. I'm like Bob Ross, but less weird. How did Bob Ross become so famous after death? There was just something about that guy that was downright weird in a good way. I spent a lot of hours watching Bob Ross draw. He was a Marine drill sergeant. Bob Ross smoked dope? Well, there's a shock. What are the odds an artist who did marijuana?
## [Digital Art as Programming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=802s)
If you were watching me draw the original art instead of just tracing the lines, you would see a lot more. It would look more like programming than art because you'd be continually changing the settings, the line weight, changing which tool you have, copying and pasting, that sort of thing. The art of drawing is a lot closer to programming than it used to be. It used to be that drawing was nothing but drawing, but now you've got to hit your settings, your line weight, your layers, all kinds of options. It's halfway between computing and art.
## [The Illusion of Perspective](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=863s)
One of the tough things about drawing is drawing things that look wrong but are right, like this hand that's curled into this hand. If you were trying to figure out how to draw that, you never would have wanted to be happy with that because it just doesn't look like a hand. But when you see it in context, it is. It takes a long time to learn how to draw something that looks wrong, but the viewer will see as right.
## [The Final Tracing Phase](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=948s)
There's about a 10-second delay between what I'm doing and what you're seeing. It seems like I'm just tracing. This last step is essentially just tracing because I've already done the drawing. You can see the bigger comic here. The drawing is already done, but I do it in a layer and it's just sloppy, and then I go over it a little bit cleaner. You can see, for example, that there are some stray lines and some errors that I don't keep when I do the final. Depending on the size of the characters, I change the line weight. Smaller characters get daintier lines.
## [Refining the Rough Draft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1011s)
This is actually the best part of my job, oddly enough. Can't the computer do the tracing? It can't, because it's not an exact trace. What you're seeing is some rough art that's pretty clean, so it looks to you like all I'm doing is tracing, but it's more typical that the rough art would not be exact. The first time it looks the way it's supposed to look is when I do the final over top of it and just use it as a guideline. You are seeing artwork that's unusually close to the finished, so that's a little misleading. I'm probably only improving it by 10% by doing the final art.
## [Digital Layers and Templates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1073s)
The rough art was also digital. Let me show you how that works. When I first do it using two layers, you see the rough art juxtaposed to the original art. You can see that there is some difference between the rough art and the original. For the way it was drawn, I took a template of his head and plopped it in there, gave him a different expression, and drew his body. You can see that these are just sketch lines.
Then I take this layer and I lower its "temperature," if you will, until it's something like that. Then when I draw over it on another layer, it looks like tracing. You had Dogbert on your organic chem notebook? I'm glad that helped. I'm sure you got an A.
## [Wacom vs. iPad Pro for Professional Art](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1198s)
A Macintosh is the computer, but the screen is from a company called Wacom. That gives you this screen that you can draw on. This monitor you're looking at is an iPad Pro, and it also comes with its own stylus. I could do art on the iPad, but it doesn't have the features, the size, or the multiple windows and all the things that you need to be efficient. While you could use the iPad to draw, it's more of a toy, whereas the Wacom is a professional tool. There's an enormous difference.
## [WhenHub: Token Economics and Use Cases](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1278s)
You should check out WhenHub. You're going to hear a lot more about my startup, WhenHub, that allows you to find an expert or be an expert. If you want to be an expert, it's as easy as putting in the keywords and saying whether you want to be paid in our internal When tokens, which can be exchanged for cash, or in dollars. The advantage of dollars is that it's instant and there's no fluctuation, but there's a 20% cut taken out for the bank and for us. Whereas with the tokens, the only cost would be if you exchanged them, which is less than 1% friction.
If you want to find an expert, you just put in your keyword and swipe through. You would be connected to a video call and paying, for example, the equivalent of $20 per hour. But you might only want 15 minutes of assistance, so you'd only pay a quarter of the hourly rate. Imagine all the uses for that—people who need a counselor or people who have PTSD and just want to talk to somebody else who does.
## [Sling Studio and Peer-to-Peer Help](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1401s)
Imagine people who are trying to become cartoonists and want to know what equipment to use, or people who want to set up a Sling Studio, which is what you're watching right now. I've got multiple cameras going. Learning how to set up this setup was literally impossible without talking to another human who had done it and who knew how to do this sort of thing. Luckily, I did.
## [Multi-Camera Testing and Stylus Sound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1462s)
Let's say you wanted to split screen and see me drawing at the same time. You see me from the other angle. The disadvantage is that I think the comments will cover me up. Let's check how that looks in Periscope. Is the sound of the stylus fake noise? It is not. I'm surprised you could hear it. I look really jaundiced. You could actually hear the stylus? That's funny.
## [Technical Glitches and Comic Dates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1584s)
It's frozen on my own device. How about that? It's working again; I had to reboot my own device. Let's finish up this drawing. Let's put a date on it. This one will run in newspapers and online on 10/21/18. One of the weird skills you learn as a cartoonist is writing in the wrong direction. Now I'm just looking for any lines I might have missed.
## [The "Team Player" Comic Strip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1709s)
Take a look at this cartoon. "I need someone to run some test scripts on the new software." "I could do that. My project is on hold until the new hardware arrives." "Great. I'll need you to run the same tests on every version until the final release." Dilbert says, "I was only volunteering to do it once. It isn't my job to do all the testing." "Too late. You're the test script guy now. You're adding an entirely new job to my existing job. Don't you want to be a team player?" Of course, I make fun of team players a lot.
## [The Colorization Process](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1775s)
Now you probably wonder: how do I add the color to this? What I'm going to do now is save this with a different file name: "Dilbert Volunteers." I save one in black and white, and the next one is going to be the actual one I colorize. I've got some standard colors that I have in a separate file.
I'm going to colorize this thing. It's currently grayscale; I'm going to temporarily change it to bitmap—that flattens it—and then change it back to grayscale, and then back to CMYK. Then I use this little bucket to colorize. Now I can just touch the zones that I want to be a certain color. You're watching a process that used to take a long time, and now I literally just tap the areas that are going to be the same color.
## [Diversity and Flawed Characters in Dilbert](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=1897s)
Why don't I have more people of color in my cartoon? They all seem to be these pale Caucasians. The answer is because all of my characters are flawed. It's a dicey proposition for me to do somebody who's a different ethnicity and build any fun flaws into the character. If I do that, I look like the guy who thinks, "Hey, are you saying all Albanians are dumb or lazy?" The answer is no, I'm just saying this character is, but you can't get away with that in the world we live in. Nobody can take a joke, or at least one-third of the world can't.
## [Coloring Efficiency and Backgrounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=2021s)
I tend to do these in whatever order I feel like, which is not very organized but requires less thinking. I can use my thinking for things I care about. The reason I do all the same colors at once is so I don't have to be changing colors and going crazy.
I'll pick the gradient tool, and it fills in the floor with a little bit of interesting texture. I'll take a boring wall color and stick it in there. I'll make the hallway look like there's a light source coming from it.
## [Why I Don't Copy-Paste Backgrounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=2312s)
In case you're wondering, I do draw this building every time. Even though I don't have to because I could just cut and paste it, I like the fact that it looks slightly different every time. It's part of the magic. I'm selecting all these background spaces and putting in the gradient. I forgot a few colors, so I'll go back and make sure I got Dilbert's tongue inside of his mouth.
## [Layers, Editing, and Submission](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=2451s)
Now, where are all the words? They're coming back. Here's the black and white version and the colorized version. It was easier to take the text out when I was colorizing it because then I could flatten the layers and the text did not get flattened. The reason we don't want the text to be flattened is that there's editing. If my editor sees a misspelled word, it's easier if they can edit the text on their side. I make sure the text is a separate layer so my editor has access to it.
That is a finished Dilbert comic. Probably the total time for writing that and for creating it was two and a half hours. It's ready for submission. All I do is drag it to a file on my desktop and it ends up in New York at my syndication company. They do the rest, giving it to the world.
## [Closing Remarks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6c62W1DofA&t=2574s)
I realized that this was not like my normal Periscopes, but I thought some people would like to see what it looks like to be a cartoonist. I lost the comments for some reason. I think I'll sign off Periscope and then get back in and see if the comments are there. No comments—that's probably a bug. I'll figure that out later, but in the meantime, have a good Sunday.