Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Paul Reinwand, and I freelance in the murky space between comics and games. In comics I do layouts, mostly--think page flow, and script translation to page--for artists, to help them meet deadlines. Occasionally I'll draw single issues for other creative teams, or a game studio. I prefer to draw, color, and pen my own comic work. In games I do costume and asset design. Clothing, collectible items, tangibles that help fuel story, that kind of thing. Mostly I just enjoy helping peers reach their creative goals.
What hardware do you use?
Desktop PC, with a couple monitors, a Cintiq Pro 24, and a BenQ. I usually have a bunch of reference, Photoshop, and a modeling program up at the same time, so it's tough to be more mobile. I build out a heavy work/gaming PC every five years or so, trying to future proof as much as possible. i7-7820X 8-core, 64GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 Quad Channel Memory, GTX 1080 Ti, and then 250GB M.2 SSD, and 2TB SSHD Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hybrid Drive.
And what software?
I work almost entirely in Photoshop. Whatever the annoying subscription version is, that's what I've had for the last few months. I was using CS5 before that, for ten years or so. There are so many great drawing programs these days, but a lot of my workflow is tied into post production, and all of the muscle memory I've built over the years for keybinds and such. Oh, and a subset of that I spose would be brushes for PS, which aren't generally available for other programs. I use Stumpy Pencil a lot, and recently have fallen in love with the brushes and textures from True Grit. Maybe some day I'll have the energy to figure out a more economical process. When I think it will save time I model environments in SketchUp, Maya, or Magicavoxel.
Unless it's personal work, a large part of my job is communicating a design, or intent, so any tool that helps me do that is welcome.
What would be your dream setup?
Just a bigger office space, honestly. Something with room for a drafting table, and a well lit work station for packing and framing. My current office doesn't allow much more than my computer desk, and a bookshelf, and I often find myself needing to rearrange monitors on the fly if I want to do thumbnailing or layouts on paper. More space to explore other mediums for personal work, as I quite enjoy working wholly digital for client work. Small dreams.