Drawing / Sketching / Digital Painting

I'm X-posting from the tech and help tablet thread. Hope that is OK.

Anyone have/used/seen this tablet?

I would do things that would shame and disgust even Strangeblades for one of those EEE Slate tablets. I've had my eye on them for quite some time, just can't justify the price tag.

Ebay $600-$700. Well within Ipad range.
It seems they're discontinued.
I wanted the samsung 7 but the quality issues, and no local resellers made me look to this. Turns out its gone too.
Hard to find this sort of format. I don't understand why everybody wants tablets and not computers like this.

Ya got me too. I have always wanted something like this over an iPad any day. I guess if it doesn't have an apple logo, it is niche.

C'mon MS surface. With a core i5 in it, it should run zbrush like gang busters.

stevenmack wrote:

Jeff - just curious but (and note that I'm hardly in a position to be ofering any sort of 'professional' advice on this sort of thing) have you tried using hard-edged brushes rather than soft edged ones?

I started out much the same, trying to use soft brushes and blur, smudge, etc but was very quickly frustrated with not being able to get it to look the way I wanted it to. Ended up reading through a few tutorials (In the first issue or two of ImagineFX I think) which suggested switching to hard-edged brushes and then dropping opacity down to something aroung 5-10% to paint shadows, highlights, etc. Haven't looked back since.

If your happy doing it the way you currently are that's cool - just thought I'd make the suggestion.

I'm grateful for the suggestion. In fact, I just watched this tutorial last night, and he said the same thing as you. I tried the hard brushes and was making coin-stamp hard marks, and thought 'this is weird' Obviously I'm missing something. I know I'm doing it wrong by going soft brush, smudge, etc, but I am adding new ways of doing things daily. I'm trying to learn, but it's a huge subject and I'm taking in what I can. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm not major into digital work, but would 250 levels of pressure sensitivity be worth it? The simple Bamboo versions of wacom tablets have over 1000 levels of sensitivity. I suppose it might not matter as much if you were doing animation and you wanted a consistent line weight.

Re hard edges: One way to think of it is to view your object as a series of planes. The angle of that plane to the light source determines how much light that particular plane receives. The softness of the fall off of that light determines how sharp the edge of where two planes meet are. So if you make all your transitions soft, then your image will have the appearance of a sphere as all the planes flow smoothly into one another. If you *don't* want a sphere, then you need to allow some harder edges to your transitions.

Ghostship wrote:

Ebay $600-$700. Well within Ipad range.
It seems they're discontinued.

Not sure if it's discontinued, or just out of stock. It released just over a year ago, and reviews seem to be pretty good. It may have been a low production experiment to see if there's a market for this type of computer. And even at $600 on ebay, it's more than I can afford at the moment.

I've painted and sketched on my LE1600 which is a bit laggy, and only has 256.
I think you'd have to be finely tuned artist for that to be not enough.
There's no beating drawing right on what you're working with. I have both and intuos and the LE1600 and I'll probably never use the Intuos again.

Rob.
You can get and LE1700 for a couple hundred.
The 1600 is a little older and just at the threshold of useability. It will actually run Revit 8 thought. I used it once to measure and draw a house on site once. It will aslo nearly run torchlight in netbook mode.

The 1700 is a core 2 duo I think. You should get much more computing power out of it (though still very dated). Still way more than an ipad; if you count the open-ness of the platform. Oh, and no touch, just stylus. You have to go to the motion J3400 for touch.

I actually had an LE1600 that a friend gave me. It was slow, but I got Gimp to run halfway decent, then the hard drive went tits up before I could get anything really good off it. I really liked using it, but never got around to getting a new drive since it wasn't a normal size and I couldn't go pick up at Micro Center. It did get pretty warm when I was using it. Poor ventilation due to being so small.
I did do these on it, unfortunately I lost the originals with the drive, and didn't get to finish them.
IMAGE(http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn175/Rob_Anybody_82/general%20art%20dump/armor_8-9-2011.jpg)
IMAGE(http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn175/Rob_Anybody_82/general%20art%20dump/sketch_7-13-2011.jpg)

Late to this thread, so I am pretty sure most of you have probably seen it already, but ctrl paint helped me enormously when it comes to drawing. Can't recommend it enough.

Here's something I did for a client https://twitter.com/Fredrik_S/status/226508129054109698/photo/1/large. Honestly, I doubt I'd be able to do that without the help of digital tools. So my advice to you is experiment with different tools and use the thing (digital or analog) that helps you forget that you have a pen in your hand. For me it was photoshop and a wacom tablet.

Last bit of advice. Try not to compare yourself to other artists, only to what you have been able to do earlier. It's soul crushing to compare your own work to established artists. Trust me, it took me a looong time to stop comparing my work to artists I look up to, but once you do you gain self confidence and with that you work actually grows stronger.

Best of luck!

Fredrik_S wrote:

Last bit of advice. Try not to compare yourself to other artists, only to what you have been able to do earlier. It's soul crushing to compare your own work to established artists. Trust me, it took me a looong time to stop comparing my work to artists I look up to, but once you do you gain self confidence and with that you work actually grows stronger.

Wise words, I agree wholeheartedly. Speaking of self comparisons. I picked up a pencil to draw in 2009 for the first time since childhood. This a then-now comparison:

IMAGE(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/ziffel66/PS%20Projects/then-now.jpg)

It was very easy to berate myself and say "I can't do this ..." and such back then, but the truth is, that's exactly how I should have been drawing at that time. Why should my brain magically know how to do something much better, that I quit doing when I was 12?

That an impressive improvement Jeff! Keep it up, I love seeing people's work posted here

I did this one yesterday.

IMAGE(http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/ziffel66/PS%20Projects/thejokerindarkness.jpg)

reference photo

Very work in progress (struggling to come up with a backdrop at the moment). Mostly this was to practice cloth but I'm really happy with how it's turning out so far.

IMAGE(http://th06.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2012/206/7/4/witch_blade__work_in_progress_version__by_stonesfolly-d58kot8.jpg)

Original stock photo http://fav.me/d4ltim8
Photographer - Marcus Ranum

Quick note for anyone that might be interested, it's not shown on the main Steam page but Artrage Studio 3 Pro is currently at 50% discount on Steam.

Seems like a pretty solid digital painting package and given the sort of prices something like Photoshop goes for..definitely worth a look I think.

I also got an email from Smith Micro, if you're on their mailing list they will send you a link on Friday to buy Manga Studio EX 4 for 90% off. $30 total. Download version. Seems like a pretty sweet deal if you like to draw, especially line art.

stevenmack wrote:

Quick note for anyone that might be interested, it's not shown on the main Steam page but Artrage Studio 3 Pro is currently at 50% discount on Steam.

Seems like a pretty solid digital painting package and given the sort of prices something like Photoshop goes for..definitely worth a look I think.

Sweet, I just got the monoprice drawing tablet (around $50) and was using the trial of Sketchbook Pro, which I like. This and Artrage Studio were the two options I was looking at. I already have PS / AI.

For others, you can buy from them directly and get the non pro version for $20.

Quick sketch using a mix of the tools available in Artrage Pro - have to say, VERY impressed with it for the ridiculously price. This took me a fraction of the time it normally takes me to do similar in photoshop.

IMAGE(http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/327/e/4/quick_artrage_pro_sketch_by_stonesfolly-d5lxp4w.jpg)

Wow, that's pretty good stevenmack.

Nice.

Would you advocate buying?
My sketchbook is linked upthread. My skill level is beginner. Do you think it takes away some of the software mastery, from the learning curve? Seeing proportion, and knowing anatomy entirely aside.

Both sketchbook pro and art rage have trial versions. I'd recommend trying them out. You'll want a tablet if you don't have one. The mono price $50 is a great price if this is for a starting hobby. It has good detail level and just not the name or bells and whistles of the Wacom ones. My only gripe is that it has no relative position mode on the pc. It does have one on the Mac though. I just got used to absolute position on pc and it works well.

Sketchbook is supposed to be easier to use, art rage is almost as easy and has some different strengths with paint simulation. Corel paint seems to be the photoshop of painting programs. It's equally as dense, but you can do a lot more with it in the long run. It's also a couple hundred dollars, while the other two are $30-$60.

I didn't see any interest, but in case someone is, here's that link from my email for Manga Studio. I won't need it as I have a DVD version:

Manga Studio EX 4 $29.99
Windows

Mac

I have no idea if they're one-offs specific to my account or if everyone got the same email, but give it a try if you're interested. Cool line art stuff as well as 3D file import as well as perspective tools.

I'll watch learn to draw, scuplt, papier mache, in just about any genre.

The words Manga, and Anime, are off putting to me.
Late Friday Nights in college, a local channel played "japanimation" which I've come to learn is Anime. The only one I really liked a lot was ghost in the shell.
I tried hard for Naruto, but just didn't get it.

Someone enable me.
The closest I've been is Battle of the Plantets, Ghost in the Shell, and there's a feature length movie, which I can't remember the name of; the girl flies on a glider, has a floppy eared pet... That I remember as being a really good movie as a teen. I just consumed it as any mainstream movie. Something about wind?

**edit** Valley of the Wind?

You want recommendations on anime, or the program I linked?

As to the program, you can check some Youtube videos. I know some relatively professional comic book drawers use it along with Photoshop. I think Manga Studio beats out Photoshop for the line art and perspective stuff, but Photoshop probably still works better for coloring, although Manga Studio does have coloring options.

As to anime, I used to watch some, but not lately. Trigun was always one of my favorites, it's funny and has an interesting setting and story.

For full-length movies, I'm not sure about that Valley one... are you thinking this one? Writer Hayao Miyazaki makes pretty good movies. Check out some of his others, like Princess Mononoke.

Turns out is it Hayao Miazaki, and the american title is Valley of the Wind. The real title, looks like Nausicca.

Ahh yeah, I don't think I saw that one. I thought it sounded familiar though.

He's one of the few, probably the only anime movies you can find at a place like Target. Well ok, maybe you still find Ghost in the Shell and Akira there as well, but still...

If anyone is interested in the Monoprice tablet Panda mentions above, there is a nice review of them here
http://frenden.com/the-little-monopr...

I don't have one myself, but the price sounds nice for anyone interested in taking up more digital art. Those shortcut buttons do look nice.

Ghost are you asking for a sculpting software? Blender is free as is Sculptris. I've never used Blender, but Sculptris is fairly intuitive.

Sculptris is a sculpting program like Z-Brush. Blender is a 3D modeling software like Maya / 3DS Max. Blender is very complicated, while sculptris is very intuitive. They aren't comparable software, but if you want to mess around with 3D without learning a bunch, Sculptris is very cool.

I think he mentioned blender because it now has sculpting like sculptris. (why did that program have to go to never never land?)

Nothing beats sculptris as far as being intuitive and powerful. Be sure to turn off the zbrush default navigation. That there is some unnecessary pixologic propaganda.

edit: what? no love for Cowboy Bebop? (greatest anime series evar)

fangblackbone wrote:

edit: what? no love for Cowboy Bebop? (greatest anime series evar)

Dang, you're right. I even saw that at Target before.