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About CartoonMike

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  • Birthday January 20

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    Walnut Creek, CA
  1. Thanks for the insight, marguerite! I tried opening Storyist and iTunes (once having Storyist be the first app started and then iTunes being the first app) and doing about 10 minutes of writing (thankfully I have lots of transcription from hand written pages to key in!) and then quitting Storyist, waiting about 3-5 minutes and starting Storyist up... Having iTunes open doesn't seem to be an issue for me using Storyist at the same time. However... in context of what I was doing, I was importing a lot of Scrivener-created files into Storyist and maybe that caused the error... something I can try out later today or tomorrow. Gotta meet me writing goal for the day.
  2. Will do. Thanks. But now that I mentioned it, I probably won't get the crash again.
  3. Pretty much describes it. I'd have a good session writing (>30 minutes, for example) and then I quit Storyist. Then the next time I start up Storyist, I get one of those "Quit Unexpectedly" dialog. Anybody else getting these? I've looked over the files I was working on and I haven't seemed to lose any data. The files are stored in the Storyist folder on my iCloud account. The files open OK on my Desktop and iPad just fine.
  4. Worth it for me. Works as good as it looks, imho. I use it to write comic scripts, so one pane has images that I've placed in a folder, the other pane is the script. Another project is a novel-in-progress and Storyist is handling the non-linear way I write just fine. So I would say if you got a half-off coupon, use it.
  5. Using Storyist v 3.0.4 (2970) which, I'm guessing is the most recent version. I'm working on a 50 page comic script with some modificatons in the basic screenwriting template. I also have 48 images in the images folder that I use for reference (basically layout/rough sketches with hand written dialog/captions that I transcribe to text). I have a spilt pane: the left side is showing the selected image, the right side is the script. Every so often I lose the cursor and control of Storyist (can't type or anything) and/or get the spinning beachball -- usually when I'm on a new line all ready to type in some dialog or caption. Then after a few seconds, I can resume typing. This seems to have begun when I added the images, which I need to have so I can reference them within the app, instead of switching back and forth between preview and Storyist. The abrupt auto-save is very disruptive to my flow and just plain annoying. Is this normal? I hope not. There's no way to turn this feature off in preferences. From what I described about the way I'm using Storyist, am I doing something wrong? the average size for the images are 3mb in TIFF format. These are the same images that I'll be importing into ComicLife along with the exported script from Storyist for lettering the comic. I want to avoid having multiple sets of graphics of the story, if at all possible. That is, if the images are kicking something in Storyist into auto-save mania. I'm saying auto-save, because in an open window on my second monitor, I see a file, with the same name as my script file with an additional extension/name that consists of numbers and letters. This file vanishes just when control of my cursor returns in Storyist. However, even with this issue, v3 is a lot easier to use than v2 or I'm just more used to Storyist; probably a bit of both. Thanks for any suggestions/ideas in this problem.
  6. This would be a great thing, and not only for novel chapters. I finally got a method/template created that will do comic scripts. If a new section (i.e. chapter, scene) could be automatically/intelligently numbered it would be a great help. Since I export my comic scripts either as a RTF or TXT file, the physical page has no meaning, only the described comic story "Page" matters. I'm about ¼ of a the way through scripting a 50 page graphic novella and if I had to insert or delete a comic page at this point, I would have to renumber way too many pages and that would be a nice way to spend an hour or so that i could be writing.
  7. Nice upgrade. Looks great on my iMac. Thanks!
  8. thanks for the reply, Steve! I thought is was something like being off-grid or being busy. Good for the confirmation about Scene Heading being special. I'll try out the Scene Heading option in the style editor and see what that does. I think I may have tried it and it didn't work. But I was trying so many different things that it all kinda melts together. The best practice for sharing a template is to just attach it to a posting, or send it to you direct (probably via the help address)? I know I've been adding new topics a lot, but I couldn't find any topics like the ones I was asking about. So when I do compile a list of comic template ideas and such, It'll be a new topic. Hope that'll be okay. I'm doing the final rewrites on my Manga Studio 5 book this week and next, so it'll be a few weeks until I can post and share the comic template stuff. Thanks.
  9. Hi Marguerite, thanks for confirming what I suspected, re: Scene heading. It is special and can't be duplicated or created "by scratch." However, I was able to rename it's entry in the outline organizer, so the menu command now says new Panel. So it's working fine. I have a good solid template for scripting comics. As soon as I have time to write up the "how to use this template" notes, I'll post it. Now that I'm past the learning curve a bit, I'm really liking Storyist. Glad I stuck with it. thanks for all your help, Marguerite! It really helped me along.
  10. First off I've read and watched the associated screen cast for Creating a Template having more than one level. It was clear and easy to follow. I was able to set things up (more or less) for in my new document that I hope to be a template for comic scripting. The end result of this template is to export a plain text file, that's been formatted so I can import it into ComicLife to letter my comics. My workflow is that I first do layouts and brief descriptions/dialog on either copy paper or in Manga Studio. Then I go to a writing app (which I hope will be Storyist) to do the actual scripting. Then I export the script as a plain text file, import the text file into ComicLife and drag and drop the captions, dialog balloons, etc and the story gets exported. In Manga Studio I import the lettered pages and refine my sketches. At this stage, sometimes I'll expand or add panels, which makes it important to be able to treat panels as discrete objects. It's a bit of back and forth until I get the flow of the story going well. At each draft stage (which ends when I start finishing the pencils of the drawing), I'll need to revise the script, export it and then import it into ComicLife for lettering. Such is the life of a cartoonist. Anyway... What I'm trying to do is to set up levels for Issues, Pages and panels that would comprise a complete story arc/graphic novel series. The script demands are light, only Page Descriptions, Panel descriptions, Character and Dialog are needed. My idea for the outline for the levels are: Arc/Novel name Issue Number Page Number Page description (optional) Panel Number panel description dialog Using a document created from the Stage Play template, I was able to create the Headings for Issue Number and Page Number (Headings 1 and 2 respectively). However for the Panels I had to use the Scene Heading style as I would like the note cards to be titled with the text "Panel X" (where X is the number of the panel on the page). The Scene Heading style, when applied to text, creates a new section/note card and the Text I type in the Text view (I'm using a split window, left shows the storyboard view and the right shows the Text view). This is very handy, as it makes the index cards in the Storyboard view nice, as I can put on the cards brief descriptions of the panel's contents and view them as I write the script in the right hand Text view. I tried to make a copy of the Scene Heading style, but it doesn't work like the original at all. The copy doesn't make a new index card, it behaves like a default text style. Also changing the name of the Scene Heading style makes it lose its ability to create new index cards/sections. It's important that I have panels as individual sections/index cards as it fits my comic creation workflow. There are times that I need to expand or move around things and having panels as discrete index cards that can be re-arranged is just what I need. SInce I want this document/soon-to-be-template to have just the styles it needs, I'm deleting the styles that a comic book script just doesn't need: Character Direction, Stage direction, etc. However, the darned Scene Heading style has to stay, as it can't be duplicated nor deleted without losing its properties (creating a new index card in storyboard view with a title that's created when it's typed in the Text View). I've figured out that I can rename the element name in the "My Script" preferences that the Scene Heading is referred to from Scene Heading to "Panel" so that's fine. My Question is: Am I correct in thinking that the Scene Heading style is a special one that can't be duplicated or re-named? If so, I'll have to deal with it. If not, please show me how it can be renamed/duplicated or how I can create a style that does what it does. A related question: I've tried to add text after the Issue and Page styles (they're outline levels Heading 1 and 2, remember), but the Page description (outline level of default text style) and Issue description (also outline level of default text style) create a new "unnamed " index card. Is that the nature of styles that use Heading Outline Levels? These objects/index cards can't contain additional text beyond its title like the Scene Headings do? Keep in mind I've lived a sheltered life -- I've not used MS word and only dabbled in Pages (basically as a reader for Word files). I'm only using OpenOffice because my book publisher required that I use it or Word. Prior to that, my text editors have been BBEdit, Scrivener and StoryMill. Therefore, I have absolutely no idea how things work in Word. Hope I was clear. I'm still a newbie and learning the lingo. Thanks so much for any replies.
  11. I'm getting a better handle on the flexibility of Storyist, thanks to this thread: HOWTO: Create a template having more than one Level I'm not using the Screenplay template any more, the Stageplay template is much better (and easier) to work with. Mostly because I can't get any heading levels in the screenplay. After a few attempts I now have something that is very workable. There's Issues, Pages and Panels. So this is something that can be used for comic book story arcs/series of graphic novels/mini or maxi series. I'm getting close to getting a file that'll be an ideal template. I think the wacky file became that way because I may have deleted things that shouldn't have been trashed. Unfortunately, the file has been deleted. A lot of the odd behavior has ceased when I now have all the storyist open docs on my main monitor and no longer have them spread across the second monitor. It's all part of that darned learning curve. Since I haven't been able to replicate this issue with new docs created from the Screenplay template and because I'm no longer using the screenplay template, this thread has served its purpose. Thanks for all the help Marguerite, I really do appreciate it!
  12. Thanks for the info, Steve. I'll do the disclosure button method. I'm using OS X 10.7.
  13. I've been trying to get the hang of Storyist and I've encountered more issues than a 70's newsstand. One of them is the Inspector Palette. I can be working on a script and want to edit the Character style. If I right click for the contexural menu, I can choose the edit style and no problem. However, if I go to the inspector palette, do the same for the character style (when the cursor is in a paragraph with the character style), the edit style dialog pops up — and the style that is in the name box is something like ACT or SCENE. And in the edit style dialog, the up/down controls to the right of where values are entered for first line indent, etc, don't work unless there's a value other than zero entered. If I would set the left margin to .25, all but the first line has the margin. So the first line indent has to match up with the left margin? I'm wondering if anybody else is experiencing issues like these. If not, maybe a reinstall of Storyist could help? thanks.
  14. Hey Marguerite! Thanks for the reply. The whole scenes/scenes sheets thing is pretty cleared up. My issue was that the document I was working on was really whacked out. No matter what I would do any new script I added (following your instructions) the new script would overwrite/replace the existing script. In a brand-new file, adding scripts via your instructions, works just as expected. Right now, the Sceenplay template has given me so much weird and erratic behavior, I'm leaving it alone. I've made new documents from the Screenplay template and have gotten totally different results in creating a new scene. This occurred after a restart of both the computer and Storyist.Sometimes new scenes are made, other times just new note sheets are made — in a new document that I haven't made any changes to. I also realized that if my mouse is over the projects pane, command-return gives a different result (popping up a new scene in collage view) than the same command when the mouse is over the storyboard/cork board (new scene in the storyboard). Stepping away from the micro and looking at the macro, my impression of Storyist is that it's a very persnickety app that wants things done in a particular order and in a certain way — but there's absolutely no warnings/hints whatnot about what you're doing is going to break things down the road. I feel as if I'm going to have to totally change the way I plot, outline and write stories just to conform to Storyist. I don't know if it's me or the app. I really do appreciate your help and the information you impart. Right now it's the main reason I'm sticking around.
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