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Cintiq tweak
3 years ago
General
I don't think I've ever actually written a journal entry here on FA. I keep seeing all my friends here doing it. Why not me? :)
So. About four years ago now, I managed to get up and running on a second-hand Cintiq 24 Touch. I, and a couple of friends of mine, have noticed a marked uptick in the quality of what I've been producing since then. Having this kind of space to work and create in really has improved what I do.
A little background, if you'll indulge me. I started drawing and working digitally in a half-serious way around 2010, when I found a guy locally who was reselling refurb Toshiba M400s. These were little laptops with a pressure-sensitive capacitive screen you could draw on with a hideaway pen. PaintTool SAI was making the rounds and I got a hold of it and started. But something I felt I really wanted was the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate with finger gestures, and the M400s were not touchscreens.
Enter the ASUS EP121. This was a tablet computer with a Bluetooth keyboard (which had a terrible propensity to disconnect from the computer). This computer also had a pressure-sensitive hideaway pen you could use to draw, and it was a touchscreen, so at long last, I had both a pressure-sensitive way to draw and a means to arrange the view just using gestures. That suited me for about four or five years, during which time I discovered and fell in love with Clip Studio Paint.
A bit later on, in 2016, a friend advised me that finding an old Surface Pro 2 would be a good idea. Smaller, lighter, a bit quicker than the EP121s, and with everything else I was looking for. That was largely what I used for the next few years. Briefly I used another laptop, the Lenovo MIIX 520, but ultimately, something about it didn't really click.
Then I got up and running with the Cintiq 24 Touch. It's been a fantastic means for creating art ever since. But me being me, it's always nagged me that, if anything went wrong with it, I'd be dropping back down to the Surface Pro 2. I've picked it up from time and time and at point, I find it very difficult to work with. So I've looked, from time to time, to find someone looking to get rid of another Cintiq I could use as a backup. Part of the problem is that, for me, it really needs to be a Touch model, and those ones tend be rare. Most artists seem to get by without it, but it's been a part of how I draw now for about ten years, and it would be very difficult to get used to zooming, panning, and rotating by other means. It would interrupt my flow almost constantly.
Recently, I found a guy out in Victoria who was selling his Cintiq 24 Pro Touch, along with its supporting flex arm, because he wasn't making much use of it and wanted something more manageable in the 16" form range. I reached out to him and, luckily, he was willing to take the trouble of packing the thing up and shipping it most of the way across the country. It arrived yesterday, and as I write this, it's still in its boxes. It's superior to the one I currently have in nearly every respect. The one I have in front of me right now is 1920x1200, 2048 levels of pressure. The new one is 4K and 8192 levels of pressure. The flex arm allows it to be put into nearly any position... though given the Cintiq itself comes with fold-out stand legs that recline it at about 19 degrees, which is more or less what I'm working at generally anyhow, it remains to be seen if I'll bother with it. We'll see.
Because... now comes the hard part. Setting it up. Praying everything works. This is probably a task for this weekend at some point.
I also need to store the current Cintiq away as backup. These are large, complex machines and they need to be stored with care.
Anyway, I'm hoping that the upgrade will lend even more support to what I'm able to do and make me a slightly better artist as time goes by. Watch this space, I guess. :)
So. About four years ago now, I managed to get up and running on a second-hand Cintiq 24 Touch. I, and a couple of friends of mine, have noticed a marked uptick in the quality of what I've been producing since then. Having this kind of space to work and create in really has improved what I do.
A little background, if you'll indulge me. I started drawing and working digitally in a half-serious way around 2010, when I found a guy locally who was reselling refurb Toshiba M400s. These were little laptops with a pressure-sensitive capacitive screen you could draw on with a hideaway pen. PaintTool SAI was making the rounds and I got a hold of it and started. But something I felt I really wanted was the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate with finger gestures, and the M400s were not touchscreens.
Enter the ASUS EP121. This was a tablet computer with a Bluetooth keyboard (which had a terrible propensity to disconnect from the computer). This computer also had a pressure-sensitive hideaway pen you could use to draw, and it was a touchscreen, so at long last, I had both a pressure-sensitive way to draw and a means to arrange the view just using gestures. That suited me for about four or five years, during which time I discovered and fell in love with Clip Studio Paint.
A bit later on, in 2016, a friend advised me that finding an old Surface Pro 2 would be a good idea. Smaller, lighter, a bit quicker than the EP121s, and with everything else I was looking for. That was largely what I used for the next few years. Briefly I used another laptop, the Lenovo MIIX 520, but ultimately, something about it didn't really click.
Then I got up and running with the Cintiq 24 Touch. It's been a fantastic means for creating art ever since. But me being me, it's always nagged me that, if anything went wrong with it, I'd be dropping back down to the Surface Pro 2. I've picked it up from time and time and at point, I find it very difficult to work with. So I've looked, from time to time, to find someone looking to get rid of another Cintiq I could use as a backup. Part of the problem is that, for me, it really needs to be a Touch model, and those ones tend be rare. Most artists seem to get by without it, but it's been a part of how I draw now for about ten years, and it would be very difficult to get used to zooming, panning, and rotating by other means. It would interrupt my flow almost constantly.
Recently, I found a guy out in Victoria who was selling his Cintiq 24 Pro Touch, along with its supporting flex arm, because he wasn't making much use of it and wanted something more manageable in the 16" form range. I reached out to him and, luckily, he was willing to take the trouble of packing the thing up and shipping it most of the way across the country. It arrived yesterday, and as I write this, it's still in its boxes. It's superior to the one I currently have in nearly every respect. The one I have in front of me right now is 1920x1200, 2048 levels of pressure. The new one is 4K and 8192 levels of pressure. The flex arm allows it to be put into nearly any position... though given the Cintiq itself comes with fold-out stand legs that recline it at about 19 degrees, which is more or less what I'm working at generally anyhow, it remains to be seen if I'll bother with it. We'll see.
Because... now comes the hard part. Setting it up. Praying everything works. This is probably a task for this weekend at some point.
I also need to store the current Cintiq away as backup. These are large, complex machines and they need to be stored with care.
Anyway, I'm hoping that the upgrade will lend even more support to what I'm able to do and make me a slightly better artist as time goes by. Watch this space, I guess. :)
