Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020?

Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by ambivalents on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @05:17PM (#25511983)

1) My dog. Does this count as hardware? :) It is not an overstatement to say he's changed my life.

2) iPad + Apple Pencil. I can access the ever-elusive flow state by drawing/sketching/coloring with the drawing program ProCreate.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by xavierlint on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @06:51PM (#25512852)

I'm happy to hear that your dog changed your life, I hope he changed it for the better, but I'm sad to hear you purchased him.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by EADGBE on Tuesday December 22, 2020 @11:57PM (#25514533)

It’s not uncommon to pay an adoption fee for animals, either. I’ve “paid” a few hundred dollars for my equally-lovable adopted pets over the years, too.

It’s a great trade-off; because it pays people’s salaries, keeps animals out of kill-shelters, and benefits tertiary programs who may train or otherwise aide these unwanted animals.

A price I’m happy to pay.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by poletopole on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @10:38AM (#25518653)

I’ve been looking for a good drawing app for ipad. Is ProCreate easy to learn?

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by ambivalents on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @11:05AM (#25518994)

I believe so, however I already have a little experience with some of the concepts they use (layers particularly, although that's not too hard to grasp). Then again I'm probably only using 10% of its true capacity.

What I did was search for a few simple Procreate youtube tutorials and mimic them. I found these ones good--even if the end product isn't something you are aiming for, you get the basics down in creating them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqRhbjUQ7Qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQpezkDuCQ&t=876s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZI-qM7PdDM

I've tried Adobe Sketch and a couple other smaller names, and Procreate is the best to me so far. It has a HUGE community behind it, so similar to a popular programming library like React, you'll be able to find a ton of online resources to help you.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by poletopole on Thursday December 24, 2020 @11:32AM (#25528913)

Awesome, thanks!

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by canofbars on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @02:23AM (#25515325)

Also got the ipad (air 4). Wanted to get in to drawing and after ages evaluating all the offerings I concluded that an ipad + pencil is actually better value than the stuff wacom provides even if you completely ignore all the other stuff you can use the ipad for.

Loved the thing so far. I just hope they come out with a 16" ipad eventually.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your best purchases in 2020? by ambivalents on Wednesday December 23, 2020 @11:00AM (#25518938)

100%! I got the air4 too and am really happy with it. Procreate alone (which is just $9.99, I was honestly prepared to pay a lot more and thought it'd be akin to Photoshop level pricing) makes it worth it.

I've also downloaded all my kindle books and my spotify library, so between drawing, reading, and music/podcasts, it has everything I need to keep me entertained.

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