Which Tablet?

Shadow_Girl87 · Member Joined: 09 Jul 2005 Posts: 47 Location: sunagakure

I'm planning on getting a tablet, but I need some help. Which kind of tablet is better and doesn't cost waaay too much?
I don't know much about this kind of stuff, and I don't want to spend a fortune on this, okay?

fallenangel · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:12 pm Post subject:

I haven't used anything other than wacom. The other brands out there, while decent, a lot of people have problems with them breaking. Wacoms are practically indestructable. A lot of the others, the first time you accidentally drop it, that's it.

How much you spend depends on how you work. If you draw with lots of short strokes and/or really zoomed in, 4x5 will be big enough. If you make longer lines or work zoomed out, 6x8 will be better.

Graphire is cheaper, has 500 and some levels of pressure sensitivity. Intuos has 1000 and some and more programmable buttons right on the tablet. Shop around and read the product descriptions if you can't try both for yourself. And if any stores are still trying to get rid of the older versions, they're usually super cheap.

I have intuos3 6x8, but it was a gift, so the money wasn't an issue.
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

Hey Fallen, do these tablets come with programs with them or do you have to use it with MSpaint until you get Photoshop ???
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fallenangel · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:36 pm Post subject:

Wacom tablets come with Painter Essentials and a basic version of Photoshop and some image editing program I didn't install. I just installed painter, already had photoshop7.
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

Ok, thanks

Was thinking of getting one myself, but I don't want to get a cheap one then have to get a good one later. It just seems stupid when I'd probably use it a lot. The Wacom Intuos A5 looks pretty good, not extremely expensive either. Still like 350 though Confused

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fallenangel · Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 8:21 pm Post subject:

I like the intuous 'cause, if not for the sensitivity levels (which generally don't make that much difference), it's got the nifty programmable buttons right on the tablet. I've got one for undo (custom keystroke settings, whichever hotkey combo you wanna use), one for 'step backward', and one for the eyedrop tool (comes in super handy for blending). And of course the finger strips to zoom. Love.
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Kitzy · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:22 am Post subject:

Wow...sounds like a pretty nice tablet.
Mine only has two buttons on the side of it that I haven't really programmed at all (due to laziness). They're Click and Double-click.
I kind of wish I had gotten a larger tablet, since I do my pictures in smaller scale than I should (if I want a 300x300, I usually draw it in that size).

What do you keep your sensitivity level at?
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Squidman · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:13 am Post subject:

Mine was the cheapest, tiniest Wacom I could find because I didn't know how tablets worked and I didn't want to drop a chunk of change on someting I didn't understand. It's lasted me two years so far and is going strong.

The pen has two buttons on it down around the bottom (like where the buttons on some mechanical pencils are). By default they're click and right-click, but I could program them differently if I so chose.

The fact that it's so tiny actually worked out well for me, because it's the prefect size to throw in my backpack. Between it and my laptop, I can work on art just about anywhere.
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fallenangel · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 2:44 pm Post subject:

It depends on what size you get, but the intuos 4x5 has four programmable buttons and a finger strip (to the upper left of the drawing surface), and the 6x8 has a set on both sides of the drawing surface. I never really use the ones on the right since I'm right handed, and more often than not the finger strip on that side just gets in the way (yeah, I could turn it off, but I'm lazy).

And as Squidman said, the buttons on the pen. That I don't use either.

[quote]
What do you keep your sensitivity level at?[/quote]

Depends on what I'm doing. Right now it's almost right in the middle, one level towards soft. Never really use the firmer settings.

There's so many ways to customize the wacoms. <3

Oh, and the intuos3 comes with four regular nibs and one each of their new ones. Haven't tried the "marker" tip yet, but the "brush" tip with a spring in it is [i]so[/i] cool.
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

I got a tablet. Wacom Graphire 4, was cheap and its A6. I suck but i've only been using it 2 minutes, i'll have to get used to it. Don't think i'll ever be doing anything as good as I do with regular pencil and paper. Sad

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Squidman · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:09 am Post subject:

I'm bad at inking with the tablet, but that could be because I'm impatient. When I work on a big canvas and zoom in really close I can pull off stuff of the caliber I do on paper... Not saying that's amazing, though. I'm a sloppy inker ayway.
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fallenangel · Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:28 pm Post subject:

That's why you work big and shrink it down. Then nobody can tell. 8)
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Lizkay · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:03 am Post subject:

First thing I can say is.... STAY AWAY FROM AIPTEK I had one, and comparing it to my Wacoms.. *uargh* the senstivity is sh*t...
One thing I discovered is, if you are new to tablets, it is better to start learning with a bigger one, I see a lot people getting insane working on a A6, not to say it is bad, but it is harder to learn drawing with the small one than with a bigger one, to say it with other words, it is more fun to get used to it if the active surface is bigger, at least bigger than A6 Wink

Wacom offers nice and very useful settings, I never saw any Wacom Tablet "dying" and another important fact, they never really loose their value, you can still sell quite old Wacoms for good prices on ebay... etc.
Oh and concerning inking, to make the lines less sloppy you can try to stick a sheet of paper on your active tablet surface just using some sticky tape, that makes the surface less smooth and it is a lot easier to ink with the tablet, the only disadvantage is that the pen tips are shrinking quite faster...

Squidman · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:41 am Post subject:

[quote]That's why you work big and shrink it down. Then nobody can tell. 8)[/quote]

I do work big... I just have to work even bigger to get it to look the way that it would if I inked it on paper. I think the closest I've come to real-medium results was on a 300dpi 8.5x11 canvas zoomed to 200% for the detailed bits and 150% for the not-so detailed ones...

For little scribbly things I don't care to waste that much file space so I usually work on a canvas somewhere between 1000-2000 pixels wide, and then just shrink it down to 50%
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

Hey Fallen, do you use painter when you're doin' your pics ???
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fallenangel · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:46 pm Post subject:

Sometimes. I like photoshop just because, while Painter's ability for color to interact with the color already there is useful for some things, it's really annoying for others, and I don't like having a million layers.

Haven't used it for anything overly realistic yet, which is probably what you're referring to. Christopher, the Winters brothers, all those are photoshop.

These are painter

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/tbagsaintd.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/ljpaints.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/robyoung.jpg[/img]

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/robports.jpg[/img]
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

How did you do the last two [like tools and stuff] ???

If you don't mind helping a fool like me out Sad

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fallenangel · Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:34 pm Post subject:

Pencil tool. Smile

You can adjust the grain level. So I sketched it with the default pencil setting that makes nice lines, then when you set the brush bigger you can blend (like with a standard hard round brush), but it'll have a little grain like a pencil drawing.

And the second to last has the canvas texture option used, makes it look like paper. Sorta.
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TK421 · Elder In Training Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 3711

ehhh ???

Do you draw zoomed in ???
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fallenangel · Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject:

Yeah. At times. All the pictures are at least 1000-1500 pixels wide original size. So I sketch zoomed out, block colors zoomed out, then zoom in to work more detailed. And zoom out every few minutes to check.

almost working size

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/robyoungd.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/robportd.jpg[/img]

Just sketches. LJ n' stuff are a lot bigger.

[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/ljeyes.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/blackleatherart/art/ljmouth.jpg[/img]
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"I care about people as much as I care about lawn furniture" - Dexter/Michael C. Hall