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A picture of Tammy Coron

Tammy Coron

Creative professional

in designer, developer, game, podcaster, writer

Who are you, and what do you do?

Hi, my name is Tammy Coron, and I'm an independent creative professional.

As a creative professional, I get to do a lot of neat things: design, development, write, edit, animate, illustrate, speak at conferences, and host a podcast (past and present).

You can find out more about me at tammycoron.com and justwritecode.net.

What hardware do you use?

My "daily driver" is a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) with a 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 processor and 16 GB of memory, hooked up to a ViewSonic VX2457-mhd 24" monitor. I also use an iPhone XS Max and an older 12" iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil.

Most of the time, I work at my very small writing desk in the corner of the living room. Occasionally, though, I'll move to one of the other small offices situated around the house; however, I prefer to work close to my family - despite the noise.

And what software?

My software list is long, so let me break it out by function:

Animation: I mostly use Moho Pro or Spriter since they work best for the type of animation work I do. I also play around with Cartoon Animator, but mostly because my mom uses it, so when we create things together, we use that instead.

If you're interested in learning Moho, you can watch my short tutorial series on YouTube: Introduction to Moho.

Design & Illustration: My favorite software in this category is Clip Studio Paint because the drawing engine feels more like traditional pen and paper than anything else I've used before. For my design work, I use Affinity Designer and Photoshop. On the iPad, I stick with Procreate or Clip Studio. In the end, it really depends on what I'm doing and where I'm working.

Development: Since I'm a game developer - mostly within the Apple ecosystem -I tend to stick with either Xcode or Unity. If the project calls for 2D, I use Xcode. If a project calls for 3D or cross-platform support, I use Unity.

My favorite frameworks are SpriteKit and GameplayKit. If you're interested in learning more, check out my new book on Apple game development, published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf: Apple Game Frameworks and Technologies: Build 2D Games with SpriteKit & Swift

Writing & Editing: When it comes to word-smithing, my software of choice is TextMate. It's simple, elegant, and functional. What more could you want, right?

Audio & Video Editing: For the audio work, I use Adobe Audition. For the video work, I use Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. Again, it depends on what I'm trying to accomplish.

Other Software: I'll run through these quickly... Discord and Slack for communications, Dropbox for cloud space, Grammarly for spellchecking, Versions and Tower for version control, DuckDuckGo for web searches, Spotify for music, and Trello and Wave to manage my business. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but this list covers the software I use every day.

What would be your dream setup?

I'm not sure that I have a "dream setup." I like what I have now, and I like being able to move around the house. Sure, my devices are a little older than I'd like them to be, but that's OK. They still work! (At least for now.)