MetaChat - should i buy this?

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25 April 2007

should i buy this? ...mostly to draw on in place of a Wacom so what I draw appears directly on the screen, avoiding the annoying disconnect of drawing on a tablet and having the art appear on the monitor? also so i can fall asleep in bed drawing and surfing the 'Net?
how are you today? ;-)

post by: shane at: 08:39 | 16 comments

i bet i could get one cheaper if i hold out...

posted by shane 25 April | 08:39

I don't know of anybody who's done drawing on a tablet PC. I know that Wacoms can interpret varying levels of stylus pressure -- do you need/want that kind of precision, or are you just dooding?

posted by PaxDigita 25 April | 08:46

well, a friend of mine has one that's pressure-sensitive. this one probably isn't, but i'm okay with drawing with a standard line-width or changing lines to vectors.

i'll pass on this today, but keep investigating these. there's plenty on eBay.

posted by shane 25 April | 08:55

I don't know of anybody who's done drawing on a tablet PC.

i keep wondering why!

watch the DVD extras on something like A Scanner Darkly (totally rotosciped!) and you'll see all the pros drawing on a Wacom on their desk whilst staring up at the screen. weird.

posted by shane 25 April | 08:58

(oops, rotosciped = rotoscoped, of course.)

posted by shane 25 April | 08:59

I've played with a number of tablet PC's for work and frankly, I'm not impressed. It could be my working style, but I don't care for them. The one remaining tablet PC in our office is now serving as an expensive digital picture frame.

posted by plinth 25 April | 09:00

I don't know of anybody who's done drawing on a tablet PC.

i keep wondering why!

I've played with a number of tablet PC's for work and frankly, I'm not impressed.

I guess that must be why. Tablet-screens must be primitive compared to a Wacom. I just can't understand why they haven't developed one that isn't.

I'd better borrow one of my friend's tablets, load up Corel and play to see if/how bad it sucks.

posted by shane 25 April | 09:08

I'm guessing here, but the intersection of people who want to do Wacom-type graphics work and the people who want to use a tablet computer is probably small enough that hardware OEMs have looked whether to develop a Wacom-quality touch-sensitive screen and decided they can't hit a price point where they'll sell enough to satisfy the stockholders.

posted by PaxDigita 25 April | 09:19

That's probably it, PaxDigita. But there're just so many graphics people, artists, and dabblers these days that end up buying a Wacom that I keep thinking by now folks would have demanded one on which you can see the image appear as you draw it. It's so much easier to draw when you see the line appear as it would when you put pencil to paper.

posted by shane 25 April | 10:27

Ever used one? One problem is that your hand covers up what you're doing. Animation drawing stands rotate to solve this problem. One of those things, assuming it has reasonable resolution, inset into a desk flush to the surface, on a rotatable bearing would be cool.

posted by StickyCarpet 25 April | 11:04

Sounds cool, StickyCarpet! Not sure if it's in my budget.

posted by shane 25 April | 11:58

StickyCarpet, sounds like you know your stuff. Do you do animation or art? It sounds like what I expected, too, that what I want is available but probably pricey.

posted by shane 25 April | 11:59

That's probably it, PaxDigita. But there're just so many graphics people, artists, and dabblers these days that end up buying a Wacom that I keep thinking by now folks would have demanded one on which you can see the image appear as you draw it.

It's called a Cintiq and is AWESOME.

posted by darkripper 25 April | 17:02

Ghaaaah, darkripper. The beauty. The price.

I think I've seen that on the Wacom website before. I probably repressed the candy-store-window experience of helpless salivation.

posted by shane 26 April | 06:59

One thing to check if you want to use actual drawing skills
is tilt insensitivity. Make a pin prick in a piece of paper,
place it on the tablet, put the pen in the hole and tilt it
in various directions. The cursor shouldn't move if the tip
stays put, but few tablets do this right.

posted by StickyCarpet 26 April | 08:46

Very cool. Thanks, StickyCarpet.

posted by shane 26 April | 09:01

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