Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

That thar elephant looks mightily like a pig to me...

Other than that, impressive work from Digital Bob, proving - yet again - that it's the craftsman, not the tools.

Here is what Bob said about his working process in an interview that we did with him a couple of years ago:

"...What’s even crazier is that I’ve somehow figured out how to keep Photoshop 3.) running in classic mode on a G5. In the “old days” of 1995, I made the determination to start working digitally. I was very successful with my “cartoonish” style. I talked with an art director friend and asked him if there was some program that would allow me to scan my line art and then color it digitally. He said “well, you can do that in Photoshop”. I think is was my initial naiveté regarding digital world that in many ways helped me develop a style that sort of happened organically and naturally. Today I “draw” I pull, click and fill shapes and forms in Photoshop not by dragging around a pencil, but a mouse. Sometimes it’s a little like trying to draw with a bar of soap, but it feels absolutely normal to me. People are kinda stunned I work this way and suggest that I work in Illustrator or use a Wacom tablet. That’ll happen sometime, but for the time being I’m just too busy to switch to something new. The great thing about Photoshop is that it is stunningly flexible. I just finished a New Yorker cover and while I originally thought I’d create this character with ellipses and circular forms, I found it just didn’t have the visual nuance I thought the piece required. I would up cutting out the character from a piece of black construction paper, scanned it, and then added color and details. It all feels like play to me — anything BUT work — and I am still constantly astounded that people pay me to do this stuff."

You can find the rest of the interview here:
http://drawn.ca/2006/10/09/an-interview-with-bob-staake/

This way of working is totally alien to me. Working on just one layer, would he not end up with weird edges when he uses the paintcan and has anti-aliasing on or pixelated edges if he has it off?

Kim, Bob recently mentioned this on Twitter:

"Let me clear up today's rumor: I do NOT work in OS 7. I use OSX and run classic (9.0) in the background. Photoshop 3.0? Yes, STILL use that."

"Digital Bob" is at the full extent of his powers...

Geez. While I'm not always a fan of his stuff, Staake's working method never fails to blow my mind. Working like that all on one layer would terrify me. (And I do seem to recall he only uses one layer... Photoshop 4 or something incredible like that.)