Afterlife Blues update.

Had a wacom graphire for years... don't really use it that much but then I mostly work with 3d.

Basically wacom is the only brand worth considering, their intuos range is a little on the cheap side and the top of the line ones are a bit too expensive if you're not sure you're going to like using 'em so graphire makes a nice compromise first purchase (Though looking through amazon some seem to be extremely expensive, I'm pretty sure I didn't pay much more than 100$ for mine) .

Some people never really adapt to the whole drawing on the screen but I never found it too troublesome. The feeling of the nib on the tablet is different from drawing, plastic on plastic gives less tactile feedback but it's not a major thing.

The nibs apparently wear out and need replacement but it's never been an issue for me, maybe I don't use it heavily enough.

The mouse is a complete waste of time, but the pen itself works well enough as a mouse.

Ah Intuous is actually the higher grade, bamboo is what I was mistaking them for, the lowest. The difference is pressure sensitivity levels. Graphire is 500 odd and intuous is double that. Amazon seems to have cheaper intuos than graphires so I don't know what the hell is up with that.

Drawing tablets

A friend of mine that recently started using a drawing tablet (for doing celtic knotwork) said that it takes time to get used to them. Maybe you could try doing stuff in parallel on the tablet and hand drawn for a while and switch to the tablet when you're happy with the results?

Owen Smith, Cambridge, UK

I use a Genius from newegg.com and had no problem for the past 3 years with it. You just need a light touch with the pen. Here's a really helpful way to get used to it. Play solitaire with it to start then replace your mouse with it for a week. Soon, you will be comfortable with both, I often use the mouse for every day and the tablet for the special effects in my comic, (I now go 3d) or even to draw my textures.

I advise against paint shop pro tho, there is a bug where the tablet becomes unresponsive to pressure with things selected unless they fixed it in the newest version. Photoshop remains the best one for the fine detail work like shading and even has editable text, long as you dont rasterize it, which is really good for fixing a quick typo and even has a spell checker to boot.

Of course, you already have psd CS3, so that wont be a problem. I'm unsure what the mac os is like but after a few weeks you will notice that your hand doesnt shake and you will know where to place your hand to get the result that you need. Most tablets have an anti-jitter setting, so whichever you use play with that setting.

I'm painfully not an artist, but I got a cheap Bamboo a year or two back and it vastly improves my ability to make recognizable shapes on a computer; mice suck, and pens are so much easier to use to define shapes and curves.

ymmv. :P

That's the truth; I know better than to think I can draw anything with the mouse. What is "cheap" in the context of a pad, though? Are we talking around $100 or so?

$70.

Or $200 for a larger one.

The following is just based my personal experience with the tablet... Opinions may vary :)


---- My experience with tablets in general ----

- If you decide to buy a tablet, don't expect to start drawing on the computer right away. There are a few things that need to be gotten used to. Hand-eye coordination is different: drawing in one place and seeing results in another. Also, there are minute differences in the way the pen behaves compared to the real one. They are small enough not to notice, but will at first affect how well you can predict the pen movements. A little practice, and it will become second nature.

- Compared to the mouse though, using a tablet makes a HUGE difference. Even before I got used to the tablet, it was still much more comfortable than a mouse. If you're doing any drawing work on the computer, a tablet will save you a LOT of time.

- Although many people draw, ink and paint on the computer, I still found that drawing is easier on paper. I like to have an overview of the page and the ability to work on small details at the same time. This was more difficult for me on a computer, where you would have to switch between views.

Also, the tablet has a limited resolution. This means that the closer you zoom in, the more precise lines you can draw.

The workflow that worked best for me was drawing and inking on paper, scanning and coloring on the computer.


(Comment split because it didn't fit into the maximum allowed length)

---- My experience with different kinds of tablets ----

I've looked into different kinds of tablets a few years back when I was buying mine, so the information might be a little outdated. I doubt things changed too much though.

As far as I can tell, there is really little competition for Wacom tablets.
I haven't tried any other brands, but I own two Wacoms and I'm really happy with them.

There are multiple types of tablets Wacom makes.

Top-of-the-line are Cintiq - monitor and tablet in one, where you draw on the screen. Never tried one of those. They are very very expensive, although perhaps have more intuitive hand-eye coordination. From what I read, have a few other drawbacks: for example, they are pretty heavy: bad if you like to draw on your lap.

The cheaper ones were Graphire. My first tablet was a small Graphire 4 tablet. It seems this line was discontinued and replaced by Bamboo.
These are basic, but are reasonably priced and have a decent resolution, and offer pressure sensitivity.
(I think that's why Graphire are so expensive on Amazon: they are no longer being produced. Their site, wacom.com should give good estimates for the prices).

The more expensive are Intuos. They have additional features, such as increased pressure sensitivity and more built-in controls (express keys and touch-strips).

Here's my opinion of the features:
- Pressure sensitivity: absolute must! I usually set it to control the line width in Photoshop. Powerful and useful. I have no idea what I would do without it!
I didn't feel the difference between 512 levels and 1024 though. I think my human error is much larger than the difference in sensitivity.
Verdict: essential

- Eraser: on some pens there is an eraser on the back of the pen. You can just flip the pen, erase, and flip the pen back to continue drawing. I didn't have to set up a thing and this worked with Photoship. It's really fun and I found it useful, although if you remember the keyboard shortcuts (E for eraser, B for brush), you can switch just as fast.
I once thought Photoshop went crazy until I realized I was holding the pen the wrong way :)
Verdict: somewhat useful

- Buttons/touch strips. Once you know your workflow, and what you are using most often, you can set up the buttons and touch strips so that you won't have to use the keyboard that much. The default settings are also very reasonable. This saves a lot of time and is very comfortable: you don't have to move your hands to the keyboard as often. But for what I usually do, I found that even the 8 buttons and 2 touchstrips of the Intuos tablet are not enough for EVERYTHING that I need to use. I still have my keyboard handy and use it a lot.
Verdict: comfortable, but not the deciding factor

-Tilt control. Intuos verson adds tilt-sensitivity. You can set up Photoshop to use it to control brush width, tip orientation, or many other things.
Personally, I think it's a fun feature, but there is something that limits its usefulness. This can only sense how the pen is tilted with respect to the drawing board. It can't sense which way the pen is faces. For example, if you turn the pen while holding it vertically, this won't make a difference. I found that when I'm using tilting, I'm intuitively trying use orientation as well - and it doesn't work.
The feature is still fun to play with, and was even one time I actually used it (with some weird brush that I created specially for some picture). I didn't find it too useful though, and the feature hasn't (yet?) made its way into my normal workflow.
Verdict: fun to play with, opens up many possibilities, but hard to use in practice

- Mouse. Some tablets include a mouse together with the pen. Again, maybe fun to play, but I've never used it in practice. It only works on the tablet, which makes it much less useful, and I think that using my normal mouse is easier and faster.
Verdict: useless toy

- Size
One of the main decisions in choosing a tablet is choosing its size. Small tablets are much cheaper, but offer less precision. And yes, the difference is really noticeable. But even forgetting about the price, larger tablets still have a drawback: on a large tablet you need to reach further to access the whole screen. And, of course, they take up more table space.

... cont

I have a small Graphire for mobility, and the large Intuos to use at home.
I got the Graphire first, and used it extensively for a few years. When I got the Intuos, it was celebration and amazement, but after the initial WOW wore out, I don't think my workflow changed much, for better or worse. The only thing it adds for me in practice is a little more precision, which is nice but not earthshattering.

Of course, this might not be the case for more "serious" artists who use much finer techniques than I do. :)


Bottom line: if you're just starting with tablets, I would recommend getting a small cheaper one first, so that you have time to get used to it, find out what you need and decide if you actually need anything more.

My goodness, that's a lot of info. :)

Thanks! I'll have to chew through all that. Everybody says that it'll take some time to experiment with a tablet and see if it works out for me. But, it sounds like a cheap tablet is cheap enough to take a flyer on, so I just may be trying that out.

I do all my artistic flailings on a Toshiba Satellite tablet PC, but before that I used a cheap Wacom tablet. Functionally, there's really no difference beyond price and learning curve (although some tablet PCs don't natively support pressure sensitivity; I had to install additional drivers). Like that other guy said, start cheap and work up if you feel it necessary.

Do you sketch the page with ordinary pencils, scan it in, and go from there? Or is your production all-digital?

I personally scan a rough drawing and then trace over it and fix things, but I've heard of some web comic artists doing it all on the computer though - Sarah Ellerington of Inverloch for one (http://inverloch.seraph-inn.com/index.html in case you want to look - it is in color). I personally don't have a web comic (mostly because I'm too busy with school etc. to keep up with an update schedule, and because I know I'm not that great of an artist.)

No direct experience here, but I'll point you at http://jrw.livejournal.com/39932.html

If you're willing to spend the money -- and it's a lot -- take a look at the Cintiq line. It's a combination tablet and screen, meaning you get to draw/paint right on the surface. They're sweet.

---

The artist on "my" webcomic (I'm mostly just a webmonster) has been using a cheap Wacom (probably the Bamboo equivalent) for years. She doesn't do her drawing on it, though. Her work flow goes like this:

• Write the script for the next 100 or so pages, including initial layout ideas. (This is where the webmonster earns his "additional dialog and layout" credit.)


• Arrange panels in Photoshop. Print.


• Draw panels (with pencil) in printed pages.


• Put panels on light box; place fresh sheet over, and ink.


• Scan inks into Photoshop.


• Use fill plug-in to color inks. (BPelt Multi-fill)


• Add textures and gradients with Photoshop.


• Add speech bubbles and dialog.

Currently, she manages four full-color comics a week.

Note: Autumnside currently updates twice a week because she originally managed two-and-a-half before refining her process a couple of times. Winterside (volume two) is going to update three times a week.

Buffers are good.

Minor technicalities (my webmonster pointed me at this since he said he was talking about my workflow (: ) ...

I actually do my panel design in Illustrator. I store the designs on a bunch of layers in one file, and select the one I need, or create a new one. Then I print the panels out and draw the comic in the panels, then ink as mentioned.

I make a copy of the Illustrator panel design for Photoshop, and scan and import the comic.

BPelt gives you a random color-in that you can just go back and paint-bucket over. It makes things REALLY fast for your base-coat, so you don't have to spend lots of time selecting areas to color. It's a lifesaver.

[Edit: Moved my reply up here...]

Oh good God. I wish I'd had those Photoshop plugins when I was coloring A Miracle of Science. It would have saved me so much time!

That said, I'm kind of curious as to what the benefit of using a tablet at the CG/gradient/etc. stage is. I didn't have trouble using the mouse to do all that stuff on MoS, and always kind of figured that the tablet would be better suited for the actual sketching/inking stage. It sounds like I'm wrong about that, though.

I use the tablet to handle coloring my highlights and shadows as well as putting on textures and gradients. I don't actually use gradients all that much -- maybe one or two every ten comics or so.

I find that it also gives me finer control over things that I want to layer colors on -- for example, the Wolf's fur is layered on with a single brush (shortened and lengthened in spots, and frequently rotated) in several colors, starting with a light cream, then a couple of tans, then a couple of very dark browns. Doing that level of detail with a mouse would drive me crazy. (:

I do the same thing with fire effects and basically anywhere I want a more hand-painted look.

Oh, forgot to mention.

I actually did try using the tablet for inking, and you can see it in the first ten or so Autumnside comics. I found that I had a hard time getting the right effects in my lines, and stopped doing it out of frustration. I think that would be much easier to do with a Cintiq than with any other kind of tablet. *sigh* I can only dream. (:

Later Autumnside comics are all darkened-up pencils. I didn't shift to doing real inking until Winterside, when I started using BPelt and found it gave me a much cleaner and better drawing to work with.

As I never put in the time to get even halfway decent at drawing I mostly use the Graphire I have for dust spotting scanned film. The direct translation of space from pen to screen makes it very quick for hitting a dozen little points on the screen very quickly. For drawing I'd actually think something larger than the 4x5 I have would make sense, not too large, but big enough to not magnify hand jitter so much. Oh, and chuck the mouse, always chuck the mouse, unless of course you get a huge tablet then you could keep it otherwise the limited mousing area really messes you up.

I've used tablets of a couple of different sizes, my current is the wacom 5x8 graphire. I totally agree with the pressure sensitivity thing being the most important aspect of having a tablet. I use the mouse that comes with the tablet for my usual mousing with no problem, but I don't game on my mac either (g5 os 10.4), no need to install drivers, it's plug and play.

It also came with a bundled version of photoshop and painter, which was useful to me but sounds like not to you. The cheap end is $100, and a good way to learn drawing on a tablet (it's very different than drawing in real media).

In my experience, the nice thing about actually drawing with a tablet is that you have all the options of your favorite image editing program in a format that is closer than a mouse to actually drawing. But for inking, my hands shake enough that it takes 2-3 times as long to do so with my tablet, and a LOT more erasing.