What's In My Bag - Illustrator and Artist Edition

Today I'm going to be showing you all the tools that I use to be a professional illustrator, animator, and designer. Let's call this What's in My Bag Creator Edition. I don't know about you, but my iPad gets extremely dirty, especially when my kids steal it to draw on it or play games. So I'm always cleaning it off with this Screen Shine material, and I actually have no idea what they put in this. It looks like this Squirt soda that I used to drink when I was a kid. I don't think it is soda, but maybe the magic is in this cloth, because when I clean this iPad off, it's like I get an inch of oil and residue just completely gone. Super smooth and ready to draw. So what are we drawing with? I'm using— I think this is the first generation Apple Pencil. You charge it by taking off the end cap here which is not the best way to charge it. And then I wrap it in this Ghost Paper company. I believe they sent me this pen case and I'll link to everything in the description here. I'm just rattling these things off the top of my head, so I hope I have the correct brand. If I don't, the, the correct links will be below. Now let's talk about my iPad. I have not updated my iPad in years, and for somebody that makes videos about drawing on the iPad, animation, art, and illustration, I should be ashamed of myself. But really what it comes down to is the drawing experience nice and smooth and consistent for me. As long as it is, I'm really in no rush to upgrade my iPad and the apps that I use to draw on this. My go-to Procreate, Pages, I write all my stories in, and then I'm always listening to music on Spotify. I have dabbled in Fresco, that's Adobe Fresco, a little bit for some character designs. This is going to give you vector drawings and vector characters that you can scale to any size. To keep my iPad as protected as possible, I throw on this— what is it, folio case? Folds out and you can type on it. Actually, I don't even know if the Bluetooth is connected. I rarely type on it. I'm mostly just using it to cover the iPad and to prop it up so I can draw on it or look at it like this. I actually do remember writing my graphic novel on this a couple of years ago, so the keys did work at one point. I was getting sick of always losing my pen, so I went on Amazon and bought this really cheap pen case that you can just stick to the COVID of your iPad case, and I just slide my pen in there. I use this thing every single day so I don't lose my pen, uh, because I'm pretty forgetful. So this was a great pickup. I think it was under $10. I'll link to it in the comments as well. Are you even a creator if you don't have a good pair of noise-canceling headphones? I don't know, but I cannot live without these. These are my Bose headphones, and I really just don't have the memory or brain capacity to store the model and make of every single device I have in my head. So all I know is these are one of the newer pairs. I traded in my older pair because the earphones totally disintegrated in that. There was like a silver pair. Again, I don't store the memory in or the make and model in my brain, so I'll link to that below. And let's move on to the Sketchboard Pro. This has become an extension of my desk. I use it every single day. I can't believe I drew on an iPad without having this. It's so simple. It just props up your iPad and gives you an angle so you're not cranking your neck when you're drawing all day. I love the handle on it. Love the legs. Make sure that you get the correct one for the iPad model you have. I accidentally bought the wrong one, had to send it back. But there's a link in my description that will save you 10%, something like that. Well worth it. Highly recommend it. It just makes drawing and everything so much easier. It makes you feel like you're at a drawing— like a drawing desk. You know, it makes you feel like a professional drawer. So I love this thing. Highly recommend. This is my desk setup. Whenever I see those like perfect iSetups or desk setups on Instagram and YouTube, I don't know how people do that because my desk gets so messy. Everything breaks. My kids are dropping toys and notes and drawings all over my desk. They're running by, they're breaking things. This is the Wacom Intuos tablet. This has got to be, ooh, I don't know, 6 to 8 years old. This is basically the mouse that I use to control my MacBook Pro that I connect to it. And this is a Macally keyboard that plugs in. This is a little timer I use to control my ADHD. So I just do projects for a certain amount of time and then give myself a break. I can't survive without notes and sticky notes and everything. I just have systems to try to keep myself focused and on track because distractions are all over the place. Now let's jump behind the monitor. I have some of these fancy LED lights that TikTok or Instagram told me to buy and my camera that sits on top of my monitor. I can't— I don't really even remember the brand, but I cover it up with a sticky note because I feel like it's watching me. This is super cool, an overhead rig that I hook a Sony onto and then I can do overhead tutorials and overhead drawings. I have my Yeti mug. I have a bunch of these, my distraction devices sit on my desk. Here I am drawing on the Wacom Intuos. As I said, this thing has been beaten and battered, but it survived for so long that I just don't feel like I need to replace it. You can pinch it. Sort of like a touchscreen without the screen. This is the standing desk that I rarely stand at. My kids love to play with these buttons. And as I'm watching this and recording this, I realize I need to stand more at my desk. I actually have two settings at this, one that's set perfectly for where I sit. And then I think I hit number two and it stands up all the way. Now next to these coffee stains, this is a blue light that is probably completely unnecessary and TikTok or Instagram made me buy it a while ago. Now my desk is chipping because it's 5 years old now. Works fine, so I'm not gonna replace it right now. And underneath is sort of a rat's nest of cables, so let's not look at this for too long. Don't really want to look— yeah, let's not look at this for too long. I can't find a bin that contains all these things, so I'm probably gonna just get rid of the PC and then just put my MacBook Pro right here and lose a lot of these cables. This is an LG widescreen, really happy with it. Purchased it a couple of years ago. I think this is the 32-inch. And then I bought this little stand on Amazon to prop it up so I can put stuff underneath so my desk doesn't get too cluttered. But it has this logo on it, so I cover it up with a white sticker, which is probably even more distracting. And then a little shelf where I can put my phone, so anytime a notification pops up, I'm distracted for another hour. I actually don't know how to say the brand name of this computer. I purchased it, it's like sort of like a a custom build with some ASUS parts inside of it. I bought this because my MacBook can't handle After Effects, and I've never met a MacBook Pro that can handle After Effects very smoothly. But then I ran into the problem of I needed one keyboard to click between my MacBook and this PC. So I bought this little switcher. So you can see anytime I click it, the keyboard automatically works on the PC, and then I jump over and it works on the MacBook. I have a couple of hard drives that I have lying around, about around 6TB hard drives. These are backups for all of my archive projects. I put these on there so they don't fill up space on Google Drive or Dropbox or my computer, and I really don't have to worry about the space. These rarely fill up, and the price on these keeps getting lower and lower, so every year I buy one and just store my old files and try to declutter a little bit. This is Josh Allen, a teeny mate that my son leaves on my desk, but he's my good luck charm for successful creative projects. Now let's take a look at this drawing arm a little bit more. This thing's strong. It can hold Sony A7III pretty easily, and I can even have it connected to this all week long without undoing it. So anytime I want to do a drawing tutorial, I just slide this over top of my desk and I'm good to go. This is that timer I was talking about. TikTok definitely made me buy this. It makes me think that if I have a timer on my desk, I'm actually going to get things done. I don't use this all the time. That would be extremely annoying. I think my brain wants to roam freely and, you know, anytime I buy one of these timers, it really doesn't do me any justice., but it's there. I'll use it once a week and it, you know, it serves its purpose. This is the Wacom Intuos. I don't know many people that still use this as a mouse, but back in the day this was really popular to do when I was working at design agencies and stuff like that. The pen, I've gone through 25 of these easily, dropping them, losing them. Buttons go bad. I click that button so much, it's like a mouse button that I got to get new ones all the time. This is from VEIKK. They actually sent me a drawing tablet I made a video about on TikTok before. I don't use their tablet much, but this drawing thing is good in the summers if your hand gets like sticky. You just wear this little glove. I don't like the way it looks. It makes me feel a little bit like a pop star, and I'd rather just, uh, not have it, but got to use it sometimes. This is that $10 mouse from Amazon. Super cheap and simple, but it gets the job done. It's got a little Bluetooth in it, connects to whatever computer you want. I actually connect to my Mac and my PC with this thing. I sort of have a splitter under my desk where the, the Bluetooth thing connects to. That's my setup, my desk setup. Not too fancy. It's I wish this looked like one of those really fancy Instagram perfect desks with like a wooden top and glowing background. And you can see here that I've been sold on those videos many times because I just buy these things whenever I see them and I probably don't need them and it just clutters up and I end up selling everything in 2 years anyways. So simple is better. I don't think you need many tools or any tools at all to run a creative business or be creative. Just my $0.02 on it. I'm obviously not practicing what I preach here because look at the amount of cables just dominating my life. My chair, uh, I actually don't know the brand name to this. It's kind of hard to pronounce too. It's got a little headrest that I rarely use, but it gets the job done. I think it was under $200, not too fancy. I'll upgrade one day, but I'm fine with this for now. Just some decorations, some old school football gear. You got to have some, uh, remind yourself of the glory days. A foot warmer, uh, my kids' footballs and stuff, they're just thrown all over the place. And my kids' drawings. Actually, my daughter creates some really cool icons. I'm always scanning them in. Now let's talk about my MacBook Pro. I recently just got the M1 MacBook. So this one is an old school 2018. Sounds like a jet engine. I definitely needed to upgrade and I'm glad I did. I actually did today. All of my files are downloading right now. So I'm not even gonna go into detail on this. I'll probably make it more detailed about my M1 computer in the future. This one has served its purpose. It's gotten me 5 years of life. 2018, I can't do the math, 4 years of life, so I love it. This remote I bought for my Sony A7s. This is amazing. So this is just a remote control and you can, you know how a remote control works, so I won't go into it. And this is a more simplified tripod that I bought because my other one was way too heavy. This one is just light, it's just like a handle, folds up. It can hold an A7. It does slide down slightly if you put an A7 with a microphone on it. So just know that if you're gonna get this. It's worth the price., and it's great for traveling. It's great to jump around in rooms. Just know that it's going to slide down a little bit if you put a really heavy camera. This desk I bought for like $100 on Amazon. Just, I don't like to work in the same room all the time. I like to jump all over my house or, you know, go to different spots to work. So this little desk is great to set up, fold up, and just move around. And then this backpack, I purchased this because all other backpacks are just way too heavy, way too bulky, had way too many pockets. This is just like a simple pouch. I just throw my iPad and my laptop in there, and then I can just hit the road and not have to worry about too much. And I like the fact that it's small. It makes me travel with fewer things. So it's a really cool bag. I'll put the brand name down below. As you can see, I don't like to store brand names or makes and models in my head. I just don't have room for that because I'd rather spend that brain power just creating stuff. But thanks for watching.