Clip Studio Paint, the iPad Pro, Art Studio House Arrest, and You
Celsys recently released a feature complete, no concessions made, portable version of its desktop illustration software, Clip Studio Paint, for iOS and the iPad Pro.
I’ve used some form of Celsys’ art software since about 2004 back when it was called Comic Studio in Japan. It’s successor, Clip Studio, has been my go-to application for illustration since I beta tested the English localization for Smith Micro.
Suffice to say, the release of my preferred art tool on the iPad Pro intrigued me. An hour after hearing the news I rushed out and purchased a new 12.9” iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. My hype was high. My expectations, however, were low.
When last I’d checked in with the iPad Pro, it was a nascent device with little apps more than Procreate to justify its expense. I was in a long term relationship with my Cintiq Companion, the precursor to the MobileStudio Pro, and a Surface Pro, and the slate of apps available on the iPad Pro seemed more suitable for sketching and ideation than finished works.
Some folks swore by Procreate, but the floaty, distant feel of making marks and the shallow, odd brush engine left me wanting. Was the Pencil’s feel a result of the hardware’s low fidelity or was it representative of the early, rough handful of art apps? I couldn’t tell you. I returned the Pro. Clip Studio on the Cintiq Companion offered me desktop-grade art software with no compromises. Sort of.
The compromises asked by the Companion were those of true portability. Much like it’s current kin, the MobileStudio Pro, it felt like a device that wanted to be plugged in to a power source, set on a desk, and worked at in a tethered, stationary way.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my Companion. Well, loved my Companion. I used it for three or four years — daily — from launch until now. But, as dependable and capable as it was, it was never as portable as I’d hoped.
The other devices I live with are even more studio and desk bound. My main workstation boasts a Cintiq 27QHD. The 27QHD is roughly the size of a late eighties Buick with the price tag to match. No normal monitor arm dare try to hoist its heft, so it sits on an imposing metal limb that looks like an assembly line robot in an automotive plant.
The reason I bring this up, and there’s a reason I promise, is that digital artists haven’t had many tools where portability and capability overlap near-perfectly in a Venn diagram.
Is the iPad Pro, when paired with desktop grade art software, that unicorn? How much overlap exists in its Venn diagram? Will I ever be able to leave this damn studio?
Okay, okay. How well does it work?
I was down on the iPad Pro when I tested it years ago, but Clip on the Pro has changed my outlook on the Pencil's competence and the iPad Pro's viability single-handedly.
Imagine that Photoshop, Painter, and Sai were chopped apart and sewn into a Frankenstein-ian monster. That’s Clip.
Would that monster prove too beastly for the iPad’s hardware? I inked and painted at 11” x 17” and 600 dpi with brush sizes in the three and four hundred pixel range while the iPad Pro served up a video stream at the same time. For hours and hours. On a single battery charge.
The Pro had no fucks to give. Less than no fucks. Negative fucks. The monster could not be stopped. It’s choking a villager right now.
But every Rose has its thorn, right? Poison wouldn’t lie to me. Here are the thorns. Put on your gardening gloves.
First, the easy one. Dropbox and Google Drive integration and a less tedious way to import tools, materials, and templates, are the biggest items on my Clip Studio wishlist. Opening files and moving tools via the Share Sheet menu in Drive or Dropbox is slow and requires more steps than I’d like.
Now, the toughie. Clip requires a $8.99 per month subscription fee. At the time of writing, they’re offering a six month trial.
I want to pretend the iOS version of Clip hasn’t fast become essential to my workflow in less than two days. But it has. Being untethered from my studio adds more than nine dollars of value to my life. I don’t want to give that freedom of movement up.
I'm not a fan of subscription based software, but I spend more combined on a Twitch sub and Discord Nitro per month. I’ll cope even if I’m not crazy about it.
Everything’s a service now. You may not realize it, but you’ve been paying me $24.99 a month for my opinions for five years. Check your credit card statements.
Soon art apps will have loot boxes containing random filters and brush tools that can only be purchased with in-app currency.
I’m straying. You can take the gloves off now. The only negatives left to explain are things I got wrong when I tested an iPad Pro at its launch.
I’d maligned the Pencil in the past, but it wasn’t its fault it felt floaty and odd. What I thought were hardware limitations were apparently just the narrow ambitions of the art apps at the time. Those apps simply weren’t as good at complimenting the Pro as Clip is.
Clip has best in class stroke and pressure interpretation. If something feels off to you, adjust the global pressure curve in Clip Studio to get the most out of your Pencil. Doing so will help you experience the fullness of the Pencil’s pressure range and give the Pencil its proper due.
The Pen Pressure Setting is tucked under Clip’s logo menu (to the left of the File menu). Select it. Make a few strokes. The app will tailor its input curve to your hand’s heaviness and way of mark making.
Me? I set the curve to a straight, flat line. This allows the Pencil a full range of pressure un-massaged by the application. I adjust my brushes on an individual basis instead (with each having their own pressure curve tailored for a specific feel).
After telling the app to set a pressure curve that’s suited to you, you’re in the best position to feel the Pencil for what it is — a stylus with linear, predictable, and reliable output.
Where my Pencil touched the tablet my mark was made. There was no cursor offset to speak of. There was no stylus tip parallax that plagues Wacom’s Cintiq line. There was no laggy, laboring cursor trudging along behind my stylus to remind me those marks weren’t really coming from the end of the Pencil.
I hadn't had this much fun drawing digitally — hell, in any capacity — in ages. I started to forget that I was using a digital device. I found myself treating the iPad Pro the way I do paper. I instinctively reached down to wipe away eraser leavings that weren’t there. I got lost in making art. I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Pencil.
So it works really well. What about that Venn diagram?
The iPad Pro paired with Clip Studio is a joy. I've written art hardware reviews for loads of digital tools. I have two Surfaces, a Companion, a heap of off-brand tablets and tablet monitors, and a few Intuos Pros and Cintiqs. If you forced me to keep only one, I might choose the iPad Pro and Pencil. It feels that good.
In the digital artist’s art-hardware-holy-grail-Venn-diagram of portability and capability mentioned earlier, the iPad Pro represents a near-perfect overlap.
My studio is empty as I write this. For over fifteen years, constrained in place by the tools required to do my work, I’ve occupied its spaces and brought the world to me through illustration. Now I’m bringing my illustration into the world instead.
