What are your thoughts on the move me towards digital tools in
cartooning, i.e. Wacom tablets etc.? Do you search tools yourself? If
so, do you have any recommendations for a starter tablet?Thanks for your help,
Ray Hernandez
Greetings Ray,
It took me almost a year to transition to digital when I finally “went for it.”
I started on a Wacom Intuos. I used that for years. Then I moved onto the Cintiq.
I tried a whole bunch of ‘non-wacom’ tablets over the years. Including Surface Pro and Wacom Stylus on the iPad. None of them came close to what Wacom delivered.
Sound like I am selling Wacom yet? They should be giving me money!
The plunge into the Cintiq is a pretty sizeable sum. But it does give you the ability to draw right onto the screen! A very natural transition from paper to digital.
But I’ll be honest, I wish I still had my Intuos. It took a while for my brain to understand that I was drawing on one surface and my art was appearing on another.
When I moved onto the Cintiq I felt like my hand was always in the way of what I was seeing. I never realized how stupid and big my hand was!
The other thing about the Cintiq is that unless you get the stand-alone models you will limited in your portability. You are chained to the location where you set that thing up.
I have the 13HD and it is somewhat “portable” but I have cables hanging everywhere. You got 3 cables. A standalone power, an HDMI cable and a USB cable. You don’t realize what a pain in the butt it is until your laptop is dying and you have to find 2 plugins to keep drawing.
Now the Intuos. It has 1 cable…a USB and it fits nicely over most keyboard laptops. So you can either put it in your lap or place it over your laptop keyboard and use the express keys and stylus to navigate just about on your laptop.
One last thing. Go larger if you have the budget. The “small” of any of these tablets is always going to be too small and is just going to cause frustrations. The reason is this: If you have a 15″ screen on your computer and you get a 6″ tablet then you really get this disconnect in your head. Let’s say you want to draw a circle on screen that is 1 inch in diameter. Well, on the tablet you are going to be drawing a circle as small as .5 inch or less according to how much smaller your tablet is than your screen.
I hope that at least gives you some insight. Perhaps too much insight! If you have a more specific question just let me know and I’ll shoot it out to you.
Also, it just occurred to me that this might be of interest to other artists. Mind if I use your question and it’s answer on my website at briandunaway.com and/or comicscoasttocoast.com?
Brian
