Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Markus, better known under my screen name junkboy. I'm an illustrator and graphic designer living in Stockholm, Sweden. If you were to summarize my career so far, it would be as art director for Mojang, making pixel graphic demakes and drawing mayors piledriving sharks. In reverse chronological order.

What hardware do you use?

You will no doubt be shocked to hear that I have three setups of Apple computers and Wacom tablets. At the office I use a 27" iMac i7, with a bunch of RAM and an Intuos 4 XL hooked up to it. At home I have an older 21.5" iMac i3 with an even older tablet, the Intuos 3 A4. I used to have a 2 screen setup back in the PC days, but seriously, who was I kidding? I'm a guy who draws shit in Photoshop, I don't monitor rocket trajectories.

My portable workstation - and by portable I mean I sometimes bring it with me on a trip but end up only using my cellphone anyway - is the 15" MacBook Pro Retina and an Intuos 5 M tablet. I swear I wasn't always like this, I used to be a hardcore PC user for many years, but that damn iPhone became some sort of gateway drug for me.

I had a Wacom Cintiq 24 HD for a while, but after a year of only using it as a glorified paperweight, I sold it and bought a Scared Stiff pinball game instead. I love Apple's Magic Mouse, file browsing has become a borderline religious experience ever since I discovered it. I wear a Pebble smartwatch that scares the crap out of me whenever someone calls or texts. I have a bunch of external 500 GB drives that I store all my Hall & Oates mp3s on. Just in case there's a raid or something.

And what software?

Most of the Creative Suite 6 really, thanks to Adobe's rather affordable subscription service. I use Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6 for the majority of my work, but I will occasionally do stuff in Flash, After Effects and InDesign. I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do with Bridge.

Most of my work is 2D, but every now and then I'll dabble in 3D using Wings 3D, Blender and Sculptris. I have Parallels Desktop set up on my computers, so I can run Win7 simultaneously with OSX and incorporate some of the Windows-only stuff into my workflow, such as GraphicsGale, a fantastic little pixel art animation program.

What would be your dream setup?

A room, at the top of a tower, overlooking a monolithic city made of stone and blood. In the center of the room there is a pedestal upon which a 27" Retina iMac is placed. That's right, the good lords of Apple gave that baby a Retina screen. But this divine gift comes with a price. Someone must constantly maintain and nurture the computer by mindlessly browsing Reddit, otherwise it will self-destruct and cast doom upon the city-dwellers below. Thus, I humbly accept my fate.