It’s Monday March 16, 2020 and the world is in shutdown mode over the Coronavirus outbreak/pandemic. The stock market is losing ground again, people are hoarding supplies like the world is ending, schools are closed, businesses are having employees telecommute rather than come in to work and a slight sense of general pandemonium has settled over my part of the midwest.
Here is a way to hopefully help you forget all about what is going on in between washing your hands, coughing into your elbow, keeping your distance and doing all the other things the WHO wants you to do to stop the spread of COVID 19.
“Not To Scale” and “Iris” have collaborated to produce a beautiful series of eye-catching short animations for the Wacom Cintiq 16. The films imaginatively illustrate the typical journey and endeavors that an Artist takes through their career to realize their creative ambitions.
There are 6 in all and I have the behind the scenes/making-of video at the end. So, do yourself a favor and take a bit of time to escape the pandemic news and watch this series of short animations. You’ll be glad you did.
If you are a designer or artist working with digital tools like Photoshop or Illustrator, you might have had a chance to work with the Wacom Cintiq. If you are unfamiliar with the Cintiq, it is Wacom’s monitor/input tablet combined. It allows you to draw and paint right on the surface, mimicking an actual physical work surface.
If you are an iPad or other tablet user, you have probably installed a few creative apps like Procreate, or ArtRage and use your tablet for sketching, drawing, photo-retouching, etc. with some kind of input stylus. And while your stylus does a pretty good job, in many ways it is not a substitute for your Wacom tablet or Cintiq. The fact is most styluses, have larger input tips, and almost all of them don’t offer pressure sensitivity like the Wacom. So, why hasn’t Wacom jumped into the tablet fray? Well they have.
The Wacom Cintiq Companion, and Comanion Hybrid are two new tablets from Wacom. The Companion runs a full blown version of Windows 8 and allows you full access to all of your desktop creative tools. The Companion Hybrid runs Android and give you access to all of your favorite Android creative apps, like Procreate, Sketch, and ArtRage.
Both tablets offer an immersive on-screen creative experience and take full advantage of Wacom’s pressure sensitive stylus on a high resolution portable screen. The Companion running Windows 8 is essentially a mobile workstation with multi-touch control, pressure sensitive input and cloud based connectivity allowing you to create and share you r work from anywhere. Frankly I find this to be very exciting, because it take what I do on my iPad and extends it allowing me to be more creative from anywhere.
The overall specs for both tablets looks pretty impressive, especially for a first effort. Screen resolution is 1920 by 1080, Intel® CORE™ i-7 processor, 2048 levels pen pressure, 256 or 512 GB solid state drive, 16.7 million color display, 8 gig of RAM… I hope that Wacom is successful with this, because competition is a good thing, and hopefully it means Apple, and stylus manufacturers will step up their game resulting in better products for everyone.
There is no word on pricing and or availability as of yet, but you can sign up for email announcements about the tablets as they get closer to a launch date and release pricing info.
When it comes to iPad styluses, I think I have tried them all looking for the best iPad creative tool. Sorry Steve my finger is good, but my brain is trained to use a pencil and paint brush. Over the last 3 or 4 years I’ve tried pretty much every combo of stylus and app, finally settling in on my Sensū and Art Rage as my tools of choice. That might change however now that Wacom has introduced a “pressure sensitive” iPad stylus.
Wacom is the market leader for pressure-sensitive drawing tools and tablets for your desktop workstation so it makes sense that they would bring to market a pressure sensitive stylus of the same caliber as there other Intuos products. The Intuos Creative Stylus is available for pre-order now, and will be shipping in October for $99.00 dollars. Full info is available at the Wacom site, and the video below is a rendering of what the stylus will look and feel like.
The new stylus supports the iPad 3, 4 and Mini, and can be used with creative such apps including SketchBook Pro, ArtRage, ProCreate, Adobe Ideas, Photoshop, Bamboo, and a host of others. The stlus features 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, palm rejection, shortcut functionality and uses Bluetooth 4.0 connect the stylus to your iPad. More information is available on the Wacom site.
About a month ago I got a new stylus to use with my iPad and applications like ArtRage. To test out my new Sensū stylus is unique in the fact that active tip, is an actual paint brush. Unlike the Wacom Bamboo stylus that I still use on a regular basis, using the Sensū is a very different experience. To me it feels more like a real painting or drawing implement. My only wish is that it was pressure sensitive like an actual Wacom tablet.
To test the Sensū out I decided to add another image to the ArtRage motor sports group I did last year. I wanted to create something that I already had a process in place for, and could be compared to what I had done with the Bamboo. Overall I’m pretty happy with the results. Like all styluses, the Sensū isn’t perfect, but with a little practice, I feel like it gave me the best results so far.
In ArtRage, and Procreate there is a little bit more lag time as I draw than I get with the Bamboo. What discovered is, the more often I saved while using ArtRage, the more the lag was reduced. I also began to appreciate that the lag slowed me down, and got me to pay better attention to what I was doing.
Another aspect of using the Sensū that I really like is the fluidity of the bristle tip. The way the stylus moves across the screen got me to loosen up, and really “paint” on screen like I was using a real brush. The bristle tip allowed me to be more gestural with brush strokes, and use my hand in a more natural way.
From an ergonomic standpoint the Sensū feels great in your hand. The weight is slightly heavier than most styluses which I actually like. It’s slightly longer allowing you to grip the stylus in a different way. The length also allows the stylus to rest across your hand between your thumb and forefinger giving you more subtle control it, and reducing fatigue, while painting or drawing for a longer period of time.
The Sensū stylus shines when it comes to things like drawing and painting. Where I still use the Bamboo stylus if for hand writing. The Sensū is capable of it, but the flexible bristle tip seems to make it hard for handwriting recognition apps to get what your actually writing out. Now with that said the the Sensū does have a rubber tip like the Bamboo, so you can use it the same way. The problem is to use the rubber tip you have to break the Sensū down, removing the cap/handle and placing it over the bristle end. This shortens the stylus length by half. I simple found it uncomfortable to use, so I switch to the Bamboo if I’m using an app like Paper or Taposé.
Overall the Sensū is a big winner in my book, and as apps like ArtRage and Procreate improve, using this stylus will only get better.
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