Rattlebrained

I’ve been using an Intuos 3 8×6 for the last couple of years and really consider it the most useful tool for working at a computer so I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve been looking at the Cintiq series screen tablets with some curiosity and desire since I focused on them a few months ago. It also seemed that my mom, who is also an artist, could profile by using one. She tried a Intuos 2 way back when, but drawing on the pad while looking at the screen didn’t work for her so after some hesitation I suggested she try one… Which is why she asked me to install it on her Mac a couple of weeks ago, which I quickly tried to do (being in a bit of a hurry at that time), but wasn’t able too. Which led to it coming home with me so I could figure it out first… So here I am adapting, kind of, to a Cintiq 12WX.

Sticking it onto my Windows 7 machine worked fine and it didn’t take long to figure out that it had probably also installed perfectly on my mom’s Mac. The issue was simply that since it’s screen was set as an extension of her main screen I hadn’t realized that unless you set the “display toggle” to “pen display” and “force proportions”, when you switch between the two screens you can end up with the mouse pointer on the main screen but off to one side of it… As it was I couldn’t set anything up since whenever I toggled over to the main display the mouse pointer disappeared. So I’m like “where’s the pen? This isn’t working…” :P

Which is why “what I dislike about it” gets listed first. ;-)

What I dislike about it:

• The screen is a bit small, quality wise it’s okay but nothing special.
• Because it’s small, you really need to organize your workspace, chose the most important commands to have on the Cintiq’s screen, leave everything else on your main screen. Even so you still need to switch back and forth a lot which will take some time to get use to.
• There’s a centimeter wide border around the edge of the screen that definitively lacks a precise correlation between where your pen is and where the mouse pointer is. On the right side you end up off the screen which is a nuisance for scrolling, on the left the pointer stops before the edge and often jumps around randomly. (It seems a bit better now that I purposely calibrated the tablet “to the right” but still…)
• The scrolling pads aren’t as smooth as those on the Intuos, even with a lot of pressure they don’t seem to respond as well as I would like.
• The installation guide doesn’t mention anywhere obvious that you will need two graphic cards if you want a specific color profile for both monitors!
• So far, since I only have one, the color sucks (and yes, of course it’s plugged into the VGA output…)
• You can’t turn the screen off when you don’t need it and just use the pen like a “normal” tablet.
• It’s really too hot to have in front of you or hold in your lap during these days of stifling heatwave.

(Take note that I’ve only used it for a week, maybe you can do a few of these things and I just haven’t figured it out yet…) ::P

What I like about it:

• Although as mentioned it definitively takes some getting use to, it’s truly cool to draw with; it gives you a lot more ease and precision than with the Intuos; which is really what counts.
• In the winter it will be great to have it! (it gets pretty cold in my apartment ~16°c ).
• It’s nice for writing too.

So as you can see, for the moment the dislikes clearly outnumber likes. Although it is great for drawing, it has a learning curve that you need to invest in. And on that regards I don’t think it is going to be easy to convince my mom to take the time to make it “second nature”, the Cintiq 12 has a lot of little “irritations” to overcome for those of us who aren’t always as zen as we should be.

That said, the more you use it the better it becomes, this morning for the fun of it I made the above “comic blog” styled illustration of yesterday’s electrocardiogram, my first…

Update ’17: FWIW my mom never got use to it and I prefer using a tablet (an Intuos Pro M), so after a few years it found a new owner.

The link to the: Wacom Cintiq 12WX
And BTW, It was drawn with Xara Designer Pro 6 and Photoshop CS2.