Well, FC has come and gone once again. I ended up catching the crud fairly early on this year and missing a pretty sizable chunk of the con, so I apologize people I'd promised to meet up or draw with, and it just didn't happen. I also want to thank  aquacoon and  argonvile for some super fun times, and trying valiantly to match my meal schedule.


I had bought a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 just before the con, with the idea I'd try it out as a drawing device, and then I have 30 days to return it if I don't like it. I have some thoughts on it.

What I like: The screen is fantastic. Really good color reproduction under most conditions, and an insane pixel density. Portability is excellent too, this is the first laptop I've had where I can just have it with me in my bag all day and not have it break my back. I'm impressed with how much power this mid-range i5 model packs -- enough for casual games, easily.

What I don't like: There's a bug where sometimes it won't wake up the screen when coming back from hibernation; This seems to happen especially often if I've closed it with Clip Studio open -- which, of course, is more often than not. Hopefully there's a fix for this coming soon.

More importantly, I just can't get the hang of this style of drawing. I'm really good with a Wacom detached from the screen; I'm not too shabby with pen and paper; But for whatever reason, give me one of these draw-on-the-screen devices and I may as well be a 5-year-old with a crayon. I can't draw with any precision or symmetry.

Additionally, the Surface doesn't fully deactivate touch sensitivity when you're drawing with the pen. This is especially irksome with all of Windows 10's touch actions on the edges of the screen. You'll be trying to draw, and suddenly you'll be looking at your desktop or the notification area instead of the canvas.

Clip Studio seems badly suited to a physical interface as well. I haven't found a way to move the all-important Undo button away from the top-left of the canvas, so if I'm trying to undo some recent strokes, I have to put my arm physically across the whole canvas, and I can't see what I'm undoing.

Despite all this, I'm still thinking about keeping the Surface. It's just so handy to have a full computer that's so portable, and a similarly light computer without the pen stuff really doesn't cost any less these days. And there's no reason I couldn't hook up my old Wacom to the Surface to draw, except I'd look like a dork doing so.


Oh yeah, and FC still continues to botch the Creators Lounge area. They had two rows of rectangular tables instead of a few round ones, which made more seating... but their idea of night lighting was, no joke, little USB-powered reading lights.