The 'Digital Artist' - Toolbox necessities??

[willyum]

What are the absolute 'must haves' to make the novice, Digital Artist's job easier? Someone mentioned I should get one of those writing tablet things. How much is a decent one (any recommended models?)
I have some good Ideas but no 'know-how' so please don't recommend anything that I'll need a degree just to understand the 'Features' list, much less be able to actually use it. I have access to Paint Shop Pro 8 that I use for correcting pictures. Is that one a good program I should use?
(I like that Pixelhugger, motorfish, johnnysmitch kind of style)
Thanx

[mahuti]

The basic wacom tablet is nice, but worthless unless you are tracing stuff in I'llustrator. If you want to do anything more advanced, you'll need a tablet that runs between $200-$500 range.

Besides that, I don't kow what a novice digital artist would need. A novice that wants to become amateur, intermediate, or professional, needs to at least understand the basics of Illustrator (or freehand) and Photoshop.

What "digital art" are you planning on creating? There's a lot of different requirements for what you need based on what you are trying to accomplish... just like any medium. Paint can be used on a house, or a canvas or a car.... can make a masterpiece or a mess. What is it that you want to do?

[neuromancer]

I consider a wacom graphire (us$99) to be essential for any graphics work, but the greatest benefit is with programs like Photoshop or PSP, where the pressure sensitive bit makes the brushes 1000% more useful.

I suppose you can (and many people do) do a lot of vector work without a tablet, but it would be a lot more tedious, especially if it were freeform (e.g. Dragons Lair) vs. linear (e.g. Defender).

wacom propaganda on why you need a tablet in Illustrator:
http://www.wacom.com/tips/tip.cfm?ID=61&category=Other

Bob

[johnnysmitch]

I agree with everyone else here that you need to tell us what kind of art you really intend to do... if you just want to do Illustrator work, then you can get by without a wacom, or with a low end tablet [I use Illustrator many hours a day at work, and I only really use my Cintiq for doing pencil-tool work...].  However, if you intend to do alot of rendering, or even 'coloring in', then you'll definitely want a better tablet, like an Intuos or higher.  You'll also want to pay attention to how you draw - do you draw from the wrist or from the arm? This will determine the size of tablet you'll want - I've talked to several people who 'draw from the wrist' [even though just about every art teacher speaks out against this practice] and hate working on the larger tablets because there's too much area to cover. I draw from the arm, though, so I'm much more comfortable with a larger surface, and I prefer to have a work area that's a little closer/relative to the size of my screen [though I'm spoiled at work, and have the Cintiq, which IS the screen   ] Hope at least some of this makes sense and helps you out!

[willyum]

What I like.

I do a little bit if art myself, but I will have a lot of help from my graffitti friends but they don't know anything about computers at all. so I will be doing a lot of digital conversions (not just scans). Also shape manipulations and merges Like, me riding the Joust ostrige ( big bird. spelling sucks). Also a lot of custom control arrows for control panel.
As far as physical stuff, I want to cut up an acrillic peice in the shape of puzzle peices for each section of my control panel and bevel the edges and install lights so the edges of each peice glows. Either that or carve the arrows and instructions into the acrillic (see what you started johnnysmitch!)

Anyway this is the direction I want to go in. Will the tablet, Paintshop Pro, my dremel and some really artistic friends get me there? I know it will take a lot of practice, trial and error. I just want to make sure I'm not wasting a lot of time using all the wrong tool and wondering why I can't get what I see in my head, to paper (screen). I'm not trying to be an overnite artist.


Some random pics from the net

Real wall (says - DAIM)



Computer enhanced Graff (Deviant, Reason)












BYOAC stuff

[willyum]

Also is the 60 degree Tilt & bearing, as well as 1024 over 512 pressure levels importantant enough to spend the extra $100 to upgrade on the tablet for my artist. They have never even seen a tablet in person and I have never used one. We are all strictly paper artist.

I was looking at the Intuos3 (4x5) $199

[mahuti]

DPI & pressure enhancements make a HUGE difference. I can barely use my graphire for any type of photoshop work.

If you have the money, go big. When i bought the Wacom, i thought I'd never use it. I use it alright, but I definitely need to upgrade.

[grueinthebox]

I'm no professional - I'd venture to say that my skill level when it comes to the graphic arts is laughable as compared to some of the other guys around here...  Take my input with that in mind...

That said, I've had a Graphire2 4x5 for about awhile now, and I can honestly say that if I had it to do over again, I'd definitely spend the extra money for a better tablet.  The 4x5 size is really too small to be worthwhile, and it seems it could benefit from a little higher resolution as well.  For any kind of freehand work, it's hard to stay within the boundaries of the tablet, and it lacks precision.  Even for things like tracing in Illustrator, it's much easier to deal with a mouse than the small sized tablet - it's not even wide enough to allow full cursor movement across the screen (imagine using a mouse on a pad the size of a post-it note).

If you're looking to spend $199, I'd look at the larger Graphire (the sloppiness is bad, but a 4x5 tablet is entirely useless IMO), but if you can swing it I'd take a look at the bigger Intuos tablets.  There's a good chance that part of my tax refund will be going toward a 9x12 Intuos3, myself...

[mahuti]

MMMMM.... cintiq........

I smell a purchase, and and a substantial tax write-off coming.

[neuromancer]

with a mouse than the small sized tablet - it's not even wide enough to allow full cursor movement across the screen (imagine using a mouse on a pad the size of a post-it note).

You must have it set up wrong -- In pen mode the 4x5 surface is exactly mapped to the screen by default. I change mine to make it map a 3x4 area to the screen so I don't need to move my wrist at all to navigate.

While I instantly found the pen to be way superior to the mouse for photo retouching -- I got one for home, too -- I don't see any reason to upgrade it.

The extra levels would allow one more precision in pressure, which might come in handy. Sometimes it takes me a couple tries to get a stroke just right. I don't get what the angle does -- my guess is that it is most useful with the airbrush tool.

The picture illustrates the use of pressure in Photoshop. The paintbrush is on top, while the airbrush is on the bottom. Each line is a single pen stroke. You can see a little unevenness in the strokes, so it seems to me like the Graphire is accurate enough to catch the unevenness of my stroke.

Bob

[grueinthebox]

You must have it set up wrong -- In pen mode the 4x5 surface is exactly mapped to the screen by default. I change mine to make it map a 3x4 area to the screen so I don't need to move my wrist at all to navigate.

Was using fairly old software...  Went ahead and upgraded to the newest from Wacom (came out a few days ago, seems to be more "feature rich" than what I was using), and it seems to be working as you describe now (mapped to screen size).  Still feels a bit small to me, but I think that's just a personal preference that boils down to the different drawing styles that johnnysmitch describes (I'm of the "draw from the arm" variety).

Definitely a significant improvement over before, though.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...  

[willyum]

Thanx guys, I picked up the Intuos3 (4x5) yesterday, and it's really a big improvement from a mouse. I realize I draw from the wrist so the size is more than enough for me.
I can't seem to get it to be pressure sensitive in PSP yet, however the scaled down photoshop that came with it works fine. I can't tell the difference with tilting it yet, I'm probably doing it wrong.