No, really. The first of my first impressions, even. I had some things to do last night and setup actually took a little longer than I had expected so I didn't have as much time with it as I had hoped. I'll just hit a few points as they occur to me for now.
Size and Dimensions:
I don't have much to say about this because I don't think it matters all that much if you need the device's functionality. Though as far as first impressions go, I was pretty surprised at how thin it was.
Drawing and Writing:
The accuracy and sensitivity are incredible. I was really surprised because I've never used anything remotely as accurate. SketchBook Pro on my iPhone is also precise, but I don't have a stylus for it and the screen is small, so I still haven't used it for much other than to let my friend's kid play. The matte finish on the screen feels really fantastic as well. I wouldn't say it feels exactly like paper, but gloss would have made for a much less enjoyable experience.
Using the preloaded applications I felt a little let down. Just as I had read, they are as bare bones as it gets. There is a serious lack of tools and functionality. I've heard for Android apps that SketchBook Pro is a great buy and I saw some people talking on the Wacom EU forums about something called Artflow, but I have yet to check it out. I kind of get what I had read to be the consensus anyway: in mobile mode preliminary work is not a problem, but it's not really possible to take an illustration from start to finish without plugging into a PC and loading up a graphic art suite.
Android:
I've never used an Android device before. Navigating menus was smooth and comfortable, more so than I had anticipated. Using a device with all my Google apps and data integrated is the cake-taker though. I had sort of forgotten that this would be the case and was ecstatic when it prompted me to load all my Chrome bookmarks and my Google account. I think I'm going to really like this.
I'm going to buy a card for Google Play today so I can pick up some sketching apps. After the Sony Playstation Store hack and credit card info scare I stopped using credit to buy apps online or I would have downloaded some last night. I'll post about it when I get into some of the other mobile apps.
Edit: Probably the first thing I noticed were the little rectangular insulators you can see in the screen. I used to wonder what that grid of dots was before I worked for Micro. Now I know they're insulating bridges that allow current to pass through the X and Y axis without shorting out. Depending on the touch panel they might be clearly visible or maybe not at all. Some designs don't have them, but I haven't personally worked with those. Just a neat tidbit in case you've ever wondered about those as I did.
I used Sketchbook with my Wacom only once so far, but it did what I wanted it to do (though I'm not using my thingy for nearly as complicated projects as you plan to use your thingy for). I ended up buying the box that came with some Japanese manga-art program. It seems to be hugely powerful and capable as a piece of software, but there are no English versions available so I'm going to need some time before I can recommend it. At any rate, it doesn't completely zap my computer of RAM, but it seems to knock the wind out of it a bit more effectively than does iMovie.
ReplyDeleteIt sucks that Adobe apps are all subscription-based nowadays. I have a lot of experience using Photoshop from when I was younger, but now it seems like I'll have to work on becoming awesome at Pixelmator or that manga-drawing program I mentioned earlier. (The only drawback to the latter is that the program detonates after two years. Or its license expires--something along those lines.)
As far as I know SketchBook differs on PC and mobile. I was talking about the Android and iOS versions. I've only used the iOS one but I thought it was pretty good considering the constraints of my hardware. I found a post on the Wacom forums with a ton of Android art app suggestions. I'll post it up seperately this evening.
DeleteYeah the Cintiq desktop interface is all Japanese. I've gotten used to JP Windows, but not by choice. I had to learn Windows, Office suite and GIMP without an English UI. It layers extra hassle onto something that is already pretty complex.
If you're used to Photoshop then GIMP is probably the way for you to go. It's pretty much open source PS. It does all the same stuff and the UI is super similar.