So!  I just got creative suite six.  I don’t know how they did it, but photoshop feels about five thousand times faster then the cs5 version.  It takes like, no time at all to boot, and each stroke on the tablet feels so fast, it feels like it is anticipating what i am doing rather then lagging behind it.  I had no idea!   It’s actually kinda messing with me a bit, i didn’t realize it but i was used to the lag, almost as a way to make a line and watch how it gets drawn to see if i like the fluidity of the stroke.  I’m not complaining, i’m more flabbergasted.  Every time I software or hardware upgrade, it results in big changes; i’m excited to see what changes come from this.
Other things I’ve been learning with all this pro-grade software:
1)  Flash is a programming language coupled with vector art.  AKA:  If I wanna animate in it, i’m not gonna be able to figure it out on my own without reading a book… I just don’t have the time.  Photoshop doesn’t have syntax errors, and it has made it quite nice for drawing… but flash!  gah. anime studio pro was pretty easy to figure out for the most part… but flash?  forget about it, i’m gonna have to take a community college course or have someone knowledgable teach me.
2)  Premier is so much more powerful then iMovie, it’s laughable.  I knew it would be, I just didn’t realize how much more.  It requires me to re-think my work-flow.  I make a bunch of movies in my job as a youth pastor, most of them are stupid and don’t require anything more then iMovie, but there are some projects on the horizon that will benefit from having a more powerful editing program like Premier.  Yay!
3)  After-effects!  super excited, but bughhhh, time to pick up a book on learning how to do anything basic with it.
4)  InDesign!  YES!  I LOVE THIS.  I can’t even state it enough, i can hardly wait to print the next book.  I’m impressed by, so far, how intuitive it is for what i’m hoping to do with it.
5)  It’s so nice to have illustrator.  I don’t do a lot of logos or specific design stuff or anything like that, but it’s nice to have it.  I’m starting to figure it out a bit, and i think it’ll be useful to know how to use.

Anyways, that is my “creative suite update”.  I knew you were wondering about it.
Remember, if you wanna help support my creative endeavours, you can get a Charlie and the ghost book!  the first 400 strips!  The books are $20, and if you want one, you can either click on the “store” link and buy one through lulu, or you can talk to me in person.  The next book will not be $20, but it also won’t have 400 strips!  400 people!  that’s 5 cents a comic.
…If you think about it, it takes me about an hour and a half write em and to draw em… so the book represents 600 hours of my life, 25 consecutive 24 hour periods of non-stop drawing, or about a month straight of my life (if i’m allowed to sleep once in a while).  Crazy!  so if i don’t make $6,150 off of this book, from a sheer monetary standpoint, it would have been more worth while to work at mcdonalds.  Well, i think of it more as an investment, and as creative fulfillment, so i don’t think it’s fair to measure it like that…  But anyways, math is fun.