13.9.14

Wacom trial


Recently I've been able to tryout a continue companion which is a pressure sensitive digital tablet that is part of the Wacom family. 



This I have been quite exited about as a new way of using digital mediums as I already had been using a small Wacom bamboo stylus with my mac system for the past 5 years or so an want to see how it could further my digital work. 

Unboxing on arrival it taken me a while to set it up in activating it fully as most of the instructions where online instead in the unboxing (….which as typical irony goes i only found out once i had finally figured it out how to set it up on trial and error)

As it runs on a window 8 operating system I was not used to initially (being mostly a mac user to date) but after tweaking all the nessary updates managed to get it working. 
It wasn't too hard to get used to using the pen as the pressure sensitivity seamed to function quite well as clean strokes across the system come naturally if you have ever used a Wacom system before.   
   
Using the pen and having your hand directly on the screen, can be a bit visually obstructing too to start with especially, this can also be a difficult thing to get used to if you have already used a Wacom bamboo before and are used to seeing just a clear screen view if its in digital retouching.

This can become a bit of a similar problem in some softwares in accessing some of the tabs in several of the adobe softwares and menu functions being so small to click on and adjust easily.
Without a keyboard plugged in the tablet using keyboard normal digital shortcuts can be incredibly difficult to do. 

Even with the built in optional digital built in keyboard, this can be tedious an take up a 3rd of the screen space as well as fiddly to open and close for a quick short cut key.

Inspite of this initial difficulty some software applications suited more for design purposes there are some software's applications that too are far better suited for the Cintiq than others.
In particular digital colouring is something I found much easier to do quickly and adjust to the tablet pens system quickly as colouring images was easier given the familiarity of the pen to that of a brush and its pressure sensitivity being very responsive. 
This was also a great plus with some softwares like Corel draw or photoshop being able to build up very detailed digital images that rich in colour an are quickly adjustable layers and brush effects.

This also applied simarly to working in a animation format where as i had previously struggled creating frame by frame animation in flash from just a bamboo that didn't appear as a slightly scruffy style of output I can draw out the frames quickly and easily that are a lot easier also to clean up in-between which makes the process faster and somewhat similar to its lighbox drawing board roots in enjoyment.
Overall i did like using it an hope i can keep it if i can afford to do so, an see how it works better with the new animation project I'm working on.



No comments:

Post a Comment