Wacom Tablet vs. Wacom Cintiq

The Wacom Cintiq is assumed to be every digital artist's dream machine. If you have one and love it, great! If you're an artist wishing you had this device & longing for it - read on.

I used a 21" Wacom Cintiq for 2 years while working on Free Realms at Sony. It's a great device, but it has enough issues that I prefer a Wacom Intuos4 Large Tablet ($450) over the Wacom Cintiq($2000+.)

• One issue I never got over is - there's a 1/4 inch gap between the pen and the screen, so your pen isn't near the pixel you're drawing! It's like you have a 1/4 inch sheet of glass/plastic between you and your drawing (because you do.) There's a "calibration" feature, which helps, but you'll find as you get near the corners of the screen there's this gap that didn't exist in the center. This annoyed me from the first day to the last I used it.
  
• Another deal-breaker is the glass-like drawing surface of the Cintiq. The texture of paper gives your hand control over your pen/pencil tip - new Wacom Intuos4 tablets coat the drawing surface with a texture to simulate this. Nice! But it rubs off. (See my blog post for how to address this.) On the Cintiq - there's no way to fix it. You're stuck drawing on glass forever, which is fatiguing on the hand due to relying on a tightened grip for control rather than the tooth of your drawing surface.
  
• But you're not drawing on glass. You're drawing on plastic and it scratches! The scratches are subtle, but it mars the surface enough that the glare is somewhat irregular. It's not an issue if you're in a dim room, but surrounding office lights will help you notice the gradual degradation of your $2000 screen.
  
  
• Your hand blocks the art & UI! I never realized how annoying this was until I switched from Wacom Tablet to the Cintiq. Suddenly my hand was over the areas I needed to draw. Also, the corners of the Cintiq were harder to draw on than the corners of my tablet due to the drawing angle.

Which brings me to:

• Cintiq drawing fatigue!  If you're used to painting on canvas for 8+ hours I suppose this isn't a big deal, but for me - holding my arm upward as a Cintiq requires never felt natural even after two years.  It was doable but fatiguing.  Other artists at Sony invested in these robot-looking ergonomic elbow supports.  I never needed this with my tablet - I go for 10+ hours with no fatigue on my Intuos4.

And finally - for the money-conscious:

• A Cintiq costs ~$2000 for the 21 inch and ~$2500 for the 24 inch. The Wacom Intuos4 Large is only $450. The smaller Cintiq isn't really usable for drawing IMHO. If your company is buying it or you're highly paid, cool. But most artists I know working outside the game industry aren't rolling in money, and a Cintiq is $1500-$2000 more than a large Intuos4 - and lasts half as long at best.

Don't get me wrong - I liked the Cintiq. If it was what I had, I guess I'd use it.  The things I listed above would still annoy me. (Especially the glass-like drawing surface.)  I turned it down at my current place of employment in favor of the Intuos4 Large.

Bottom line - I do pretty well with my "nice game industry salary" and I still wouldn't buy one.  It's one of those things where you really want it and long for it, but once you get it it's like --- "Oh, this is cool but it's not quite what I expected."

It's a good device, but don't go beating yourself up if you don't have one. A tablet is just as good and better in some ways, even.

And if you do buy a Cintiq - lower your expectations before you get it and you'll probably be happier than I was.  I expected too much. I was expecting a surface that really felt like drawing directly on a screen, but that weird 1/4 inch gap was more awkward than a tablet particularly since it changes according to where you are on the screen or where your head is.

Self-healing cutting mat makes your Wacom Tablet feel better than paper!

The drawing surface of a new Wacom Intuos4 is coated with a textured surface that unfortunately rubs off quickly with use. Worst of all, it rubs off where you draw the most - so you get a glasslike smooth surface in the center and a resistive, paperlike surface as you draw further out. Inconsistent!

Texture is important because the slight resistance gives you control over your pen - like drawing on paper.

Here's a solution that makes your Wacom feel better than paper and even better than when it was new: Put a self-healing rubber cutting mat on top of your Wacom and draw through it!

The resulting surface feels great to draw on. It's smooth enough that it feels better than paper - yet you get the same level of control as if you were drawing with a pencil on paper!

Wacom Intuos4 Large

10x16 Green Self-Healing Cutting Mat

The self-healing cutting mat sits (upside down) atop my Wacom tablet for a better drawing surface.

Try it for a day and you'll never go back. It feels so good it's the reason choose a Wacom tablet over a Cintiq (which feels like drawing on glass.)

These cutting mats are $15-$20 and they last forever. I have an Intuos4 Large and the 10x16 self-healing mat fits perfectly (although it does obscure the buttons which I don't use. You could trim it if necessary.) Use the BACK side for drawing - you can feel the painted lines with your pen.

How To Fix Jagged Lines in Photoshop & Sketchbook Pro in Windows 7

Many who use drawing tablets like Wacom / Intuos / Cintiq in Microsoft Windows (especially Windows 7) are having problems with "jagged lines" when drawing or sketching on their tablets. It can happen in Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, Corel Painter, etc.  Sometimes it happens in one software but not the other...

Symptom:
When you draw a line slowly you get a jagged, stairstepped edge.  These look like little stairstep glitches in your line, rather than the smooth continuous like you expect.

Problem:
The probem is Windows 7's native Tablet PC support.  To get full professional results out of your tablet you need to completely remove this from Windows.  (Disabling in services.msc isn't enough!)

Solution:

1. Go to Control Panel and click on Pen and Touch settings. Disable both the Press and hold action and the Start Tablet PC Input Panel. Basically disable everything.
2. In the same window under the Flicks tab, uncheck the Use flicks to perform common actions quickly and easily. (Disable everything you can.)  Press OK to save and close.
3. Next go to the Programs and Features option in the Control Panel. Select the Turn Windows feature on or off option on the left of the window. A new window will open with all the Windows features.  Scroll down to Tablet PC Components and uncheck the option. Apply the changes. Windows will do some configuration and then ask you to restart for the changes to take effect. Restart. (Windows prompted me to restart twice, actually.)
4. Click the Start Button(Windows icon) and enter "services.msc". (Or use WindowsKey+R and type "services.msc.") The "Services" tool will pop up.  Scroll down to Tablet PC Input Service. It should be disabled! If not, right click on it and select STOP.  Oncedisabled, right click on it again & select Properties.  Under General > Startup Type - make sure it says DISABLED.  Click APPLY and reboot windows.

Tablet PC support (which interferes with Wacom's intuos/cintiq driver) will now be removed from your computer!  This will also get rid of that annoying animated circle / radar animation that happens every time you click something using your tablet.

Results? You should now get a smooth, continuous line in your drawing software! No more "jagged edges."  The problem was bad for me in Sketchbook Pro, but my line work in Photoshop improved, too, after doing these steps.

Thanks to Kris Robinson for this post at Oinkfu.com 

OccupyLA October 15, 2011

The mainstream news is misreporting the OccupyWallSt movement. Specifically, they downplay the turnout at OccupyLA, OccupySD, OccupyDenver, and other locations all over the world.  I shot this photo today at OccupyLA:

HUGE turnout at OccupyLA, October 15,2011
(Click to enlarge. This is a panorama created with Photosynth, hence the seams/glitches)

It's not a protest, it's a movement.

Join us.

http://occupywallst.org/

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

It's happening in your city, too.

Work in progress: Jax Rides A Hummingbird

I haven't disappeared... I ran into problems coloring that last piece so I put it on hold.  Lesson learned: If you aren't enjoying something and you don't HAVE to finish it - just move on.

Work In Progress: Jax Rides A Hummingbird

My dad used to get so concerned if I left a project unfinished... But if you're encumbered by something and it's bringing you down in life - it's not worth it. Start something new and finish THAT!

Besides, when it comes to art - if you have FUN it will show in your work!

A larger work in progress.

This work-in-progress is a pencil drawing on two taped-together sheets of typing paper, the largest drawing I've done since art school. (I prefer 8.5x11.)

Next I'll scan it into my computer and color it in Photoshop by hand with my Wacom tablet.  There's so much going on in this piece - I'm a little nervous about how to color it without taking too many hours.  Also, will the detail get lost at screen resolution which is how most people will see it?

If it turns out nice I may use it to begin a Society6.com store.  Society6 makes really high quality prints much more affordably than I could on my own, so I can actually sell nicer prints for less money than if I made them myself and sold them through Etsy.com.

How I Paint + Ghostriders FINAL!

Here's the final illustration for Ghostriders!

How I "Paint":
Once I finish the final pencil drawing (see previous post), I scan it with a CanoScan LiDE 100 at 300 dpi for coloring in Photoshop.  After scanning, I drew the environment in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet with a custom pencil style photoshop brush.  The added ground, clouds, flowers & trees made it feel like more of a world. Time to color!

With my final-final line drawing finished, I used the free Flaming Pear "Ghost" plugin to quickly separate the line work from the background onto its own layer.  This lets me paint the colors underneath the lines.  Once the colors were finished on a layer underneath, I set the line drawing layer to "preserve transparency."  Then I recolored the lines throughout the piece so they are darker versions of the colors they surround rather than being black.

The last pass was touchup - just looking around the piece and painting in some bits or details and cleanup where needed.  Once the whole piece was in order, I pasted a grunge paper texture I created over the top as a multiply layer.  (I adjusted this paper effect to be pretty subtle - adding just enough noise to add some analog imperfection to help reduce the cold digital feel of an otherwise flatcolored work.)  Finally, I wrapped it up with a simple color/contrast adjustment to make it just right.

By keeping my process simple I'm able to work fairly quickly while ending up with works that are decently similar enough in style to all look like they came from the same artist.

How I Draw + New Ghost Drawing!!

My art process is to sit down and start drawing on typing paper with no intentions or goals.  (Something always comes out.)  I use typing paper & pencils because it's low stress - I have limitless amounts of both.  Also, it's small, which is how I like to work.

I specialized in pencil drawing because in high school I figured even if I end up homeless I can always find scraps of paper to draw on with free lottery pencils. 

Here's a progress shot from tonight's Drawing Time.

In art school one of the rules is DRAW BIG.  They're probably right.  But by their rules I would also need to study a lot more life drawing, use perspective lines, and generally over-complicate the art until it's not fun to make anymore. I like to draw small.  I like to draw strange unsellable things.  On cheap paper with cheap pencils.

They also say, "Draw what you SEE, not what you THINK you see." I draw what I think I see. Exclusively.

How I Draw:
I use Ticonderoga #2 pencils and a 0.5mm Pentel P205 mechanical pencil loaded with "B" lead.  (And a kneaded eraser since I make constant mistakes.)  After the rough sketch is done, I draw finished line work over the sketch.

Executing the final line work is my favorite part. It's relaxing - the hard part is over.  I just start working out the dark lines over the piece moving around to whichever part stresses me out the least at that moment.  Until it's done!  Then I go to sleep and save coloring for ... tomorrow. =)