The Power of the Cintiq!

The Cintiq screen "mirrors" my Mac's screen.

A few months ago at a party, an art school friend of mine and I were talking about drawing tablets. He wanted to get rid of his old Cintiq because he didn't use it anymore and couldn't get much for it online. "Donate it to ME!!" I excitedly said, and it happened! This Wacom Cintiq 12WX, while being many years old (first of its kind made in 2001), is BETTER than my much newer Wacom Intuos Pro, which I got about a year-and-a-half ago.

(...drawing bikes is still hard, though, no matter what medium you're using.)

With any Cintiq, you can draw directly on the screen. This is MUCH more intuitive than the Intuos or Bamboo, where you draw on a separate surface and there's some guess work of hand-to-tablet/eye-to-screen coordination, resulting in having to redo many lines. I can draw curves SO much better with the Cintiq! With the Intuos, I'd have to redo curves up to 5 times before an optimal result, but now with the Cintiq I rarely have to redo lines twice.

It did take 4 hours to set up before being fully functional though. The Cintiq 12WX, being an older model, has many cords and extra stuff I didn't understand at first glance. But I just had to carve out a few hours to study the whole manual and then this diagram made sense. I discovered that I also had to download an updated "driver" from the Wacom site. But hey, for this device being free, I'll take it!

So far it's working great! The only problem is the screen color being different than my Mac screen. I've tried tweaking the calibration and fiddling with different amounts of brightness and RGB, but it's still off. I may have to switch back to the Intuos for color stuff until I figure out the perfect harmony for the Cintiq. Any suggestions are welcome!

Patty Pillow Comic Published!

Announcing the publishing of a comic book I worked on with the RLS Foundation: The Adventures of Patty Pillow! It's a 10 page comic/workbook for kids with RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome) to help them cope with symptoms. Basically, RLS causes a person to have pain/discomfort in their legs at night, but walking around eases the pain. This causes lack of sleep, which causes a decreased quality of life.

Quoting an article the RLS Foundation published in their quarterly Nightwalkers journal, "this booklet follows one boy's RLS journey, teaching him the value of a support network at school, with friends, and at home. With RLS superhero[ine] Patty Pillow by his side, the child explores how to track and treat symptoms, and learns that RLS is just one of the things that makes him who he is."

The story follows Patty and the kids through various playground activities, interspersed with tips on treatments of symptoms (in the yellow and pink boxes) and interactive spaces for kids to draw what their symptoms feel like.

It's so awesome to hold a book that I drew and colored all by myself! It's ALL digital too, drawn from my wacom tablet. I worked very closely with people from the RLS Foundation who wrote the script. We had many discussions and they were very open to my story suggestions, so it was a great collaborative effort with lots of freedom! I think the hardest part was the layouts - there's a ton of content the foundation wanted to get across, and I did my best with breaking up the text. But I think the comic's strongest point is the characters and how they care about each other :) Patty Pillow ROCKS and the RLS Foundation has been incorporating more of her into their awareness campaign! For more info, go to www.rls.org

Haven't had much of a problem with bugs in my current apartment until now. I have a feeling someone else in our building sprayed and so the roaches scattered and escaped to the safety of my clean apartment. But these ones are small compared to the giant ones I had to deal with in other buildings. In other news, I'm getting close to 500 Daily Misfortunes!

Wacom Worries

This week, my Wacom Intuos Pro tablet stopped working. For the past month or so, I noticed when I connected it to my computer, its lights flickered a bit and it had trouble with connectivity (it wouldn't recognize my pen on screen). If I jiggled the USB port on the tablet side (pictured above), it usually was able to connect. But the problem grew more and more until Tuesday when I was working on art at Carmine Street Comics, it died completely.

I knew the problem was with the wobbly port on the tablet side (not my computer's USB port), and figured I may be able to do a work-around fix-it of connecting wirelessly. The Intuos Pro Wacom has this feature. However, upon watching a video on how to set up the wireless option, I learned you have to charge the battery with the cord VIA THE USB PORT. It wasn't completely wireless! I had to get the port fixed even if I wanted to go wireless. Luckily it was still under warranty! I'd gotten it last year around Christmas time.

Immediately, I looked up the Wacom warranty info online, called Best Buy, and after awhile on the phone they located my receipt in their database. They said to come in to the store and they could replace the tablet. I had to go to 2 Best Buys and stand in multiple Customer Service lines multiple times, but luckily they were able to trade in my old Wacom with cord for a new one.

But I asked them how to avoid this same problem happening in the future? I had that tablet for only 10 months before it konked out on me, and it cost about $300. I also have seen that this port failure is a common problem from reviews online. The Best Buy rep said something about contacting the Wacom company directly. I think a better option would be for me to set up the wireless option so I use the cord less, thus prolonging the port life. I use the tablet a lot, but not excessively, and for this problem to happen so soon concerns me. Maybe the cord moved around more because I'm left-handed?

I was able to set up the wireless option and the tablet has worked like a charm today. Above shows the wireless connection - you still have to have this tiny square plugged in to the USB port on your computer in order for the tablet to connect without a cord. This thing is so tiny that I'm worried it'll get lost somewhere. I'm always plugging and unplugging various devices into my USB ports - printer, scanner, external hard drive, thumb drive, etc. It's only a matter of time before this tiny thing gets lost.... I wish it had some loop on it like a key ring or something. I'm sure others have lost it too. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Maybe I can get another one online if I need to? But the main thing now is thank God my Wacom works again and THANK GOD this problem did NOT happen in the middle of an intense coloring project, one of which I'm expecting soon.

More Adventures with Intuos

More experimentation with illustrations solely on the Wacom Intuos tablet! This is the Leopard Gecko. They're so pretty!

Artist UPGRADE!

I'm so super excited about some fancy devices that will help me in comic creation efficiency! For a Christmas present to myself, I got a brand new Intuos Pro by Wacom, and my comic artist friend Warner gave me his old A3 scanner because he got an upgraded scanner/printer. With these tools combined, I can conquer the world! ART BATTLING COMMENCE!

For awhile I'd been wanting a bigger scanner to scan whole comic pages but gave up because they were too pricey. Thus, with the free 8.5x11 scanner I found on my apartment doorstep (I'm too much of a cheapskate for my own good), I scanned large images in pieces and stitched them together in Photoshop. What a time waster! A few times I was able to access larger scanners for rush projects but that was lots of running around. But now I can easily scan 11x17 sized paper in the blink of an eye! Pictured above is the A3 Scanner, which uses Twain Driver. Works for both Mac and PC. Simple and easy to use because it does one thing and does it very well - scans big stuff!

I've also wanted to get a better Wacom tablet for awhile. Seeing ads for the Surface Pro 3 (where you draw directly on the screen) made me want to get one of those at first, but upon trying it out in Best Buy, it was much smaller than I expected. How can you create legit art on such a tiny screen? I've seen people do it, but it's not for me. The Best Buy techie recommended the Intuos family of tablets, and I'm pretty happy with it so far! Previously I used a Wacom Bamboo for digital coloring, but it's the most basic one (only $25). It worked well for solid coloring but I couldn't draw smooth lines for creating artwork SOLELY on the computer. Also, the pressure sensitivity sucks. And the pen nib always wore down too flat, which made my "brush" too blunt. Anyway I've been playing around with the Intuos Pro and it's pretty awesome so far! My goal is to create more comics solely digitally, which will be much faster!

It's serendipitous that I acquired these devices at the same time. As shown above, I've scanned an AER HEAD page and am playing around with digital inking. AER HEAD is drawn by hand on bristol, and is like 75% drawn, but I've had some hang-ups about changing scenes around and moving forward. But working digitally makes it SO much easier to edit! Yay for the UNDO command! And inking is pretty much like tracing with pizazz anyway. I've gotten frustrated with my traditional inking tools, like unexpected globs of ink plopping out of nowhere. Having to switch pens each time you want to change line widths (I find the brush to be too blobby for inking small works). Trying to draw a line and no ink will come out even when I just dipped it in ink. The list goes on. It'll still take awhile for me to master the Intuos and digital inking, but I think it's a step in the right direction. Mostly experimenting in Photoshop, and tried Illustrator but have had some problems. While Illustrator is great about smoothing the line, when I lift the pen from the tablet the line ends quite bluntly and not gradual like in Photoshop. Any comments on digital inking are appreciated! I've been looking at some online tutorials too.

WHOO that's a long post! So much to blog about on this topic!

Sometimes it's good to be thrifty, but when that thriftiness is holding you back from being productive, it's better to invest in tools that will make your life easier. If you're just entering a field, it's good to begin by seeing how you can get by on cheaper materials that work just fine but maybe they take more time. But once you're on the professional scope of your field, it's time to get serious and invest in some better tools. I'm not saying buy the most expensive things, because even though business expenses are tax deductible, you only have so much $ in your account. But growing in knowing yourself, your habits, and your field will help you to spend money more wisely in a way that will benefit you the most.