I've been using Wacom tablets for many years. I started off with a first generation Intuos back in high school, and got acclimated to the unique style of drawing "remotely" that such things demand as I used it through college. In fact, the art for the original Zombieville USA was all done on the same ancient first generation Intuos I'd been hauling around for nearly a decade.
After the success of Zombieville, I decided it was time to upgrade, so I picked up a Cintiq 12wx. I firmly believe in the adage "it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools", but I really felt the speed and ease with which I could generate art for my games improve dramatically by being able to draw directly on screen. And honestly, if you look at OMG Pirates and Battleheart next to Zombieville USA... there's a stark improvement there, and partly that improvement is thanks to better tools.
After a couple years of squeezing the most out of the 12 inch model, I decided to upgrade yet again and get the beastly 24HD model which wacom just released. This thing is the Ferrari of graphics tablets. In fact, that's a perfect analogy, because like a Ferrari, its prohibitively expensive, and not necessarily all that practical at times. Here's the gist of it.
Display Quality
This was the main reason I was interested in the 24HD - the 12 inch model is great, but the LCD in it is not. The color leaves quite a bit to be desired, so I would often find myself doing hue/value touchups on my main monitor after doing a drawing on the 12. No amount of calibration can make it an acceptable monitor for checking final art.
The 24HD boasts a much improved display over the 21 cintiq (which is itself superior to the 12) and is finally up to the task of being a primary monitor. In fact, it's a damn good thing that's true, because the thing is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier. You may not fully grasp when you see it in pictures, but a 24 inch monitor with a HUGE bezel for extra buttons and room to lay your elbow is going to engulf just about any desk, leaving little room for another adjacent display. You really have to construct your entire workspace around the 24HD. But that's not to say this thing can't move, which brings me to...
Ergonomics
You might have seen the promo video Wacom released of this thing. The stand (which is built like a tank to counterweight the display) is designed to allow the display to be positioned in a variety of different ways. The highlight, for me, is being able to pull the thing down over the edge of my desk so that it's basically hanging in my lap. This is far and away the most comfortable drawing position I've used with any tablet - I'm used to curling up with the 12 inch model in my lap, but this really almost feels like cheating by comparison. If you prefer, it can be laid flat, or locked into just about any angle you can ask for.
The Little Things
A better display, larger size, and better ergonomics were not unexpected, but I've noticed a few other things which took me by surprise. I didn't realize just accustomed I'd become to the 12 inch models screwy pen behavior - it has diminished accuracy at the edges of the screen, so the center area is where you do all of your work. The 24 is rock solid all around, no cursor warble, every stroke is as steady as can be. Other details that stand out are a convenient on-screen keyboard, for quickly naming a layer or saving a file while the screen hovers in your lap and obscures your access to the keyboard.
Honestly, the 12 has been a great ally for the last couple years, but the 24 just makes it look like a toy by comparison.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Games I've been playing
Since wrapping up Zombieville 2, I finally have a little free time to burn, and usually for me that means checking out some new games. Here's my thoughts on some stuff I've been playing lately.
Dark Souls
This game is astounding in many respects, and I have a ton of respect for its developers. For the uninitiated, its basically a brutally difficult action RPG that plays a bit like metroid - you slowly explore a large world which steadily unfolds as you defeat bosses and gain in power. It's decidedly "retro" in many ways, not the least of which being that it will kill you over and over again, like you're kid icarus, and medusa's on her period.
For me, one of the best feelings a game can evoke is a sense of discovery. I love the experience of finding a new interesting location, character, or power, and Dark Souls is both full of things to discover, and devoid of tutorials or in-game hints, so you really feel like you "earn" whatever successes you can scrape up. Exploring every nook and cranny of the game's world rewards you at every turn, and it's immensely satisfying to master the challenges it throws at you.
I don't think Dark Souls is for everyone - it's slow-paced, methodical, and downright frustrating at times, but it reminds me of the feelings that games used to give me as a kid. More than any game I've played in the last ten years, it conjures up feelings of horror, wonder, and accomplishment.
Battlefield 3
I was a big fan of Bad Company 2, the last entry in the Battlefield franchise. The environmental destruction was awesome, and the visual/audio experience was really quite incredible. Battlefield 3 ups the ante in the visual/audio department, and is truly a spectacle to behold. It also has "Call of Duty"-level production values in the campaign this time around, for those who like to have their game occasionally interrupted by canned cinematics, but mostly I've been spending time with the multiplayer.
So far, I'm not having as much fun with this entry as I did with Bad Company 2, and I think the core of the problem is the size of the maps. They've bumped the player count back up to 64, and the size of some of the maps is truly gargantuan to accommodate. The result is basically a clusterfuck - you typically spawn in somewhere, are disoriented for a few seconds as you try to figure out which direction you're facing, explosions kick up huge amounts of dust and debris, bullets whiz by... and then you die from some unseen foe in a bush somewhere. If you're lucky, you survive long enough to get your bearings, and maybe flank some poor fools on the other team before getting killed by some invisible person. Repeat until bored. I can usually manage a positive kill/death ratio, but at the end of a match, I don't feel like I've actually contributed to our success or failure in any meaningful way. It's just a mindless merry-go-round of death.
Dark Souls
This game is astounding in many respects, and I have a ton of respect for its developers. For the uninitiated, its basically a brutally difficult action RPG that plays a bit like metroid - you slowly explore a large world which steadily unfolds as you defeat bosses and gain in power. It's decidedly "retro" in many ways, not the least of which being that it will kill you over and over again, like you're kid icarus, and medusa's on her period.
For me, one of the best feelings a game can evoke is a sense of discovery. I love the experience of finding a new interesting location, character, or power, and Dark Souls is both full of things to discover, and devoid of tutorials or in-game hints, so you really feel like you "earn" whatever successes you can scrape up. Exploring every nook and cranny of the game's world rewards you at every turn, and it's immensely satisfying to master the challenges it throws at you.
I don't think Dark Souls is for everyone - it's slow-paced, methodical, and downright frustrating at times, but it reminds me of the feelings that games used to give me as a kid. More than any game I've played in the last ten years, it conjures up feelings of horror, wonder, and accomplishment.
Battlefield 3
I was a big fan of Bad Company 2, the last entry in the Battlefield franchise. The environmental destruction was awesome, and the visual/audio experience was really quite incredible. Battlefield 3 ups the ante in the visual/audio department, and is truly a spectacle to behold. It also has "Call of Duty"-level production values in the campaign this time around, for those who like to have their game occasionally interrupted by canned cinematics, but mostly I've been spending time with the multiplayer.
So far, I'm not having as much fun with this entry as I did with Bad Company 2, and I think the core of the problem is the size of the maps. They've bumped the player count back up to 64, and the size of some of the maps is truly gargantuan to accommodate. The result is basically a clusterfuck - you typically spawn in somewhere, are disoriented for a few seconds as you try to figure out which direction you're facing, explosions kick up huge amounts of dust and debris, bullets whiz by... and then you die from some unseen foe in a bush somewhere. If you're lucky, you survive long enough to get your bearings, and maybe flank some poor fools on the other team before getting killed by some invisible person. Repeat until bored. I can usually manage a positive kill/death ratio, but at the end of a match, I don't feel like I've actually contributed to our success or failure in any meaningful way. It's just a mindless merry-go-round of death.
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