Comic Artist - Volume 3 2016

Paris Christou

COUNTRY: Cyprus

Paris is a 2D

animator,

illustrator and

teacher at

ToonBox

Studio. He’s also a full-

time YouTuber who’s

best known for his

popular cartoon pin-up

character Cherry. Paris

is also the Founder of

ToonBoxStudio.com.

http://www.toonboxstudio.com

Core skills

workflow to work

Speed up y

faster and smarter.

Get to grips with SketchBook Pro’s Lagoon user interface and enhance your workflow

in this excellent drawing program, says our seasoned expert, Paris Christou

1

The Lagoon’s tools
The Lagoon UI is an arc-shaped
palette that features six core elements.
From left to right they are: Interface
Controls, Tools/Views, Brushes, Colors,
Edit and Files. Each element on the
Lagoon has a series of shortcut options
that you can access. For example, you can
select your favourite brushes, the Lasso
and other editable tools, rulers, layers,
save your work and more.

2

Selecting tools
and actions
Click and hold over any of these tools
and you’ll be presented with more
options. To select any of these, just drag
your mouse or stylus pen towards one of
them and release when the one you want
is highlighted. Once you’ve memorised
the Lagoon’s features, accessing any
desired option will be instinctive, which
will enhance your painting workf low.

3

Get the sketchbook feel

Depending on what type of artist you are, you can choose

to hide everything on the screen apart from the Lagoon. This gives

you a decent space for either sketching, painting or creating any style

of artwork. Just hover over the Interface Controls element and select

Title Bar Off. Then press Tab on your keyboard to hide everything.

SketchBook’s Pro’s Lagoon is a user

interface (UI) that offers a series of

common shortcuts for speedy access.

By default, it’s located on the bottom left

of the application screen. Having these

common shortcuts in one compact area

helps you to streamline your painting

process. Better still, you can even modify

the Lagoon to fit your exact needs. So,

let’s see how this can be achieved and

how to get the best from the software...

A

utodesk’s SketchBook Pro for
Windows and Mac is known for
giving artists easy access to its
many tools when working on
any type of artwork.
The essential philosophy behind the
software is to help artists feel they have an
application that acts just like a real-world
paper sketchbook, which you’d use while
out and about. The program is quick,
simple and very effective.

STREAMLINE YOUR

SKETCH PROCESS

CUSTOMISE THE

LAGOON INTERFACE

A. The Preference window

To customise Lagoon, go to SketchBook Pro

> Preferences or Edit > Preferences on the

main toolbar. In the pop-up window, select

the Lagoon tab. The top half features all six

options of the Lagoon.

v

C. Replace a tool or action

Select a sub-option, then scroll through

the list to replace it with the tool or action

you prefer. Artists never use every tool an

app offers. I replace any tools or actions

I don’t need, to speed up my workflow.

A

B

C

B. Select tools and actions

Select any of the icons and you’ll see the

sub-options in the bottom half. To the right

of them you’ll see a section called Default

Sketchbook Tools, which lists all the tools

and actions available in SketchBook Pro.

SKETCHBOOK PRO