Looking for USED Tablet PC for Comic Strip Artist

[TedRx]

Wow!

This site is by far the BEST resource for Tablets on the Web. I have spent hours and hours and hours searching and reading everything I could find on Tablet PC for artist, and none have been better than the forums here!
So, First , I want to thank ALL of you who have spent your time to share your thoughts and experiences.

I have a fairly simple and focused reason for getting a Tablet Pc,
I am working on a Comic Strip as my Hobby, and I am creating it with all the guidelines of a Newspaper formated strip such as black and white dailies and color only on Sundays. To this end, I am using Corel PhotoPaint X3 (nothing against Adobe PhotoShop, but I had Corel on an old computer and am used to it ... and Corel is considerably cheaper). The only 2 other things I do with a computer is casual Emailing and casual Web-surfing ... NO gaming, spreadsheets, intense word processing, etc...as I have a desktop and a notebook if need for other task.

I have been working on the strip with my 2 year old budget notebook (1.4 GHz Celeron M, 512 Mb Ram with 14" widescreen) and Graphire Wiacom tablet. And as you experienced artist know, there is a strange dis-association with this set-up, drawing on the tablet while looking at the screen for results. So, I THINK the Tablet PC configuration would eliminate this problem and be a more natural form factor for art creation. Also it would be less of a "footprint' to deal with too, as the notebook PLUS tablet is awkward at best for me.

After reading most all the related forums here and looking on EBAY for a Tablet PC in my target range ($500 ballpark), I think I have narrowed my choices down to Motion M1300/1400, Tecra M4, Toshiba M200, Fugitsu T3000 series convertible or Fugitsu Stylistic ST4000 series slate(under $350 .. is this a deal or what??).

Since this does not have to be my main COMPUTER but rather an artist tool for me, the things I don't need in this tablet is
-Vista capability, Windows Xp works fine for me.
-anymore processing speed than needed for 2-d artwork creation
as I am willing to give up some processor power for portability and
form-factor.
-battery life longer than 2-3 hours with wi-fi off, as often I have
access to outlets, and don't require wifi while working on art
-an on board optical drive (DVD/CD), I don't watch movies on my pc's
but I do TIVO-to-Go via a wifi connection download (usually while plugged in when I sleep)from time to time -- TIVO IS AWESOME!!!
-a hard drive bigger than 20Gb, as I have a desktop to archive on.
-pressure sensitivity beyond 512, as 256 would probably do
-outdoor viewing, as I work inside
-any more weight or size than necessary

Also, I am not looking for the PERFECT Tablet PC ... but rather an acceptable Tablet PC. Anything that works as good, or almost as good, as my 2 year old buget notebook (1.4 GHz Celeron M, 512 Mb Ram with 14" widescreen)).

Also, I understand the Cintiq is the modern 8th wonder of the world, but I have no desire for it because I am mobile when working on the strip (at work on my breaks, in den, kitchen, bed, and where-ever else I have a minute or two to work)...and also I WILL NEVER be a talented enough artist to use the advantages of the Cintiq, nor the over 512 pressure sensitivity.

All that said (and thanks for listening so far), I would like to hear from those of you who actually use a Tablet PC for comic strip style art, or 2-D illustration creation. On one post I read some where, I think the guy who draws the OVER THE HEDGE strip said he used a M200, but that was years ago.

In additon, I would like to hear your thoughts on SLATE vs CONVERTIBLE, as I am naturally leaning toward SLATE since it looks like an art tablet and seems to be much lighter and thinner, and with things like wireless keyboards and Motion's keyboard in the hardshell cover, I think my limited keyboarding needs would be handled acceptably. Also, for those of you with a CONVERTIBLE, do you find the thickness of it to be a hinder when drawing on a flat surface, such as counter-top, or is it a worthy price to pay for the ability to convert form?


[u]Please include:</u>
Your tablet(s)

Your Processor and Ram,
and the affects you think they have on [u]acceptable</u> performance

Your screen size and resolution, and if you think it matters to go higher or lower in either

Whether your screen is view anywhere and if you think it matters

Your opinion of screen protectors, and screen feel with the sylus

You opinion on SLATE vs CONVERTIBLE

Your Battery Life

An example of art work you did, or link to artwork done on Tablet Pc

And your overall grade of Great, Good, Good-Enough, or "wish it were more" for your Tablet PC

As well as ANYTHING ELSE YOU FEEL SOME NEEDS TO KNOW ....

And lastly, if ANYONE reading this (artist or not) has any experience buying one of these, or similar, used budget Tablet PCs on EBAY recently, please share your reflections on the buying process as well as the general condition of these machines and your over-all satisfaction with the device for what you do with it, and considering price you paid.

THANK ALL OF YOU SO MUCH!!!

[bmhome1]

Member Chad Essley (aka cartoonmonkey) recently reviewed Motion LE1700 vs Sahara i440 from professional illustrator's perspective and basically concluded his long-used Motion 1400 with VA screen STILL is state-of-the-art artist's tablet. His review:

http://www.cartoonmonkey.com/Sahara/shootout.html

A mint condition Motion 1400 VA screen with maxed 2GB RAM and 7200rpm Hitachi drive would be ideal solution well below $1,000-1,200. Wait another year for better slate offerings worth spending 2-3X more launch.

Be VERY wary of eBay sales, there's 1400's scams and end-of-life offerings. Pay a premium for fully accesorized unit. No one keeps original boxes and abuses their gear also.

XP tablets MUST come with original recovery disks and intact serial numbers. Scratched off and/or missing disks signal bad choices, no matter the price. Forget price as guide, pay for condition!

I bought M1300 used $600 with new LCD and two batteries in mint condition 1 1/2 years ago and still consider it certainly one of, if not best, tech purchase ever made. It runs PSCS3, ArtRage and anything else thrown at it, in Vista no less. The key is maxed RAM and 7200 drive above all else.

Felt tip nibs from Wacom and Targus Tornado USB cooling pad best accessories artist can have.

[TedRx]

Thank you for your response bmhome1.

At $600, I would have to agree that it was a DEAL

I have sent the word out to many veteran Tablet Pc users for thier advice as well, and I want to encourage anyone and everyone who has used a Tablet Pc for art to contribute as well. It will be vauled by myself and many others searching for similar answers.

One thing I left out was that I would love to know WHICH art progam(s) you run and how they generally do on the Tablet Pc. Especially since I know many of you use more than one, and have had experince with the programs on non-Tablets as well. A contrast and comparison of your experience would be great too!

And EVERYONE please remember ... long answers are wonderful resources, so don't be bashfully.

TedRx

[schroder]

Well you don't have a lot of range in your budget to work with but it might be good to know what resolution those comic strips are drawn at. The responsiveness in most 2d graphic apps has a direct relationship with image size. I've never used Corel Photopaint but I do use Alias Sketchbook Pro 2.0 (probably the majority of the time for sketching), Adobe Photoshop CS3, Corel Painter X, Artrage 2.5 (rarely), Manga Studio (for comic inking and panels... still use sketchbook to sketch layout and roughs for the most part). I have always found the native ink use in sketchbook and artrage to be more responsive with less lag in pen strokes than the wintab based programs such as photoshop and painter. This has lead to me doing as much of my work as possible in those programs and only resorting to photoshop and painter for detailed renderings or finishing full color paintings since its superior color processing and layer modes overcome the slight pen lag for those tasks.

I owned a Fujitsu Stylistic 5220 and used it for over 3 years. It was durable, lightweight, had a great screen, and amazing battery life (approx 4.5-6 hrs on one battery depending on use - and I had 2 batteries with an external charger). Its downsides were relatively slow processor, low resolution (1024x768), and no bluetooth for wireless keyboards. I got really good at using the tablet interface since its a slate and even though I currently own a convertable I still use it in slate mode the majority of the time. That training on the slate certainly made me more likely to do short text input and notes in slate mode while before I almost certainly would have tried to type as much as possible.

I rarely use my computer flat on a table as I prefer to use it in my lap. If you want to know if a convertable or slate will be too thick to use the way you normally use it, get a clipboard and stack some white paper on it until it is the same height as the tablet in question. Put it flat on the table and draw on it. Everyone's preferences and comfort zones are different and this is the only way I know of to accurately test whether you'll be comfortable or not. For extra points you could cut the paper to the same dimensions of the screen but I don't think thats really necessary if you are only concerned with screen thickness. If drawing is the tablet's primary function and you will do all your word processing and other tasks that it is not as suited for on other machines, I would almost certainly go with a slate. I owned a slate for 3 years as my only laptop (had a desktop) and I would not hesitate to buy another one in the same situation. I loved drawing on it.

I recently bought a convertable gateway C-140X to replace my Fujitsu. The only reason I bought a convertible is that it was the cheapest for the features I wanted. Those were a higher resolution/bigger screen to draw on and fastest processor available without sacrificing much battery life. The gateway has fulfilled all of these things. The only thing it doesn't have is the excellent viewing angles of the Boe-Hydis based Fujitsu and motion VA screens. Unfortunately they don't make screens greater than 12" but maybe on my next upgrade! When working with many layers or high resolution images, raw processor speed and RAM are the limiting factors so I wanted to have as much headroom as I could get there. I rarely use the convertible function and if I had been able to find a high end slate with the features I wanted I probably would have gone for it.

That said, my Fujitsu had a 1.0 ghz processor and 2GB of RAM and the performance was adequate in many drawing tasks. Thats why I ask what resolution you are working in because if its not too large it is workable. Keep in mind resolution vs acceptable working space. Change your desktop or notebook screen to the same resolution as your tablet is going to be. Open your graphic app of choice with all the palettes and menus your would like to have open on your tablet. Screen capture it and then adjust the printed image size to the same dimensions as the tablet screen and print it out. try drawing in the usable area and decide whether or not that is too small for you to work in or if its acceptable. Keep in mind you can freely zoom in and out of an image but thats the biggest space you can move your hand in for drawing.

Hopefully some of that helps, if you have any other specific questions feel free to ask.

[TedRx]

Schroder, Thanks for your info and insights.

The Gateway C140s (one level down from your C140x) for $799 *NEW* at gateway website is MIGHTY tempting as it is a huge screen and all the bells and whistles of a regular laptop. The only down sides for me are:
#1- weight is more than I planned for, but as i have said , I'm looking for ACCEPTABLE not PERFECT ... and that could be acceptable.
#2- it is $300 above my target, but for BRAND NEW I might be willing to wait a little while longer to rat-hole some Christmas money to get to that level of price-point.

The resolution that I have been working at is 1024x768 on my desktop 15" LCD, and 1280x768 on my 14" wide-screen lcd laptop. I did go into Corel Photopaint (very similar to Adobe PhotoShop..but not quite as good from what I read, but it'll do what I need) after changing the resolution down to 800x600 to check that scenerio out. After re-arranging my toolbars and such I feel that I could easily live with it, if it was the price to pay for a Tablet Pc form factor.

My typical image is 300dpi on a 10.5" wide x 6.0" tall template. And I am dealing in 8-bit grayscale or blue scale for dailies and only going to color for the Sundays (also 300dpi on 13" x 10").

Also, if someone can give me a hint on how to post an image I can show sample strips so you can more easily understand the level of "art" I am working on....Thanks again

[bmhome1]

Tedrx,

Here's another artist getting beautiful results on old-school tablet pc's:

http://sewardstreet.com/2005/01/05/t...-life-drawing/

The point is not to get too hung up on specs, rather dive in asap and get feel without high investment 1st cycle.

[schroder]

quote:Originally posted by bmhome1

Tedrx,

Here's another artist getting beautiful results on old-school tablet pc's:

http://sewardstreet.com/2005/01/05/t...-life-drawing/

The point is not to get too hung up on specs, rather dive in asap and get feel without high investment 1st cycle.

I remember I was in Vilppu's class when he first discovered the tabletpc. A student had brought it in and asked if he could use it in class. Vilppu was so impressed by it that he went and got one himself about halfway through the term. Those were Toshiba 3500's if I remember correctly. I haven't talked to him in quite some time and don't know what he uses now but it just goes to show that its not really the highest tech thats important, its really the knowledge of drawing and the software that makes it work. Your resolution is relatively high but I'm guessing your drawings are relatively simple so it should balance out. Painter might be pretty laggy on an older machine but photoshop and sketchbook should all be decent still at that resolution on most of the machines you are considering. Good luck in your search!

[TedRx]

Thank you for that link ... it is the single best image that I have seen credited to having been done 100% on a Tablet. It certainly shows that the tablet (in the right hands) is an AMAZING tool for art creation.

I have a specific question for members, Have any of you, or anyone you know, used a Fugitsu Stylistic ST4000 series for art creation?
And if so , what was the experience like?
At less than $350 used, it would be a great 'experimental' compact slate device to use, before plunging into a $800-$1500 investment.Which I MAY end up doing anyway ...boy that Gateway C140s looks purtydarngood.

Also, many times I have had people ask me WHY anyone would want to use a Tablet Pc for art creation, and I thought I'd take time here to give my thoughts.

For me, it has 100% to do with getting ONE tool to rule all the stages of development.

When I started this insane hobby, my process was to do pencil roughs, then tight pencils, then ink the image. In those stages I went from doing the roughs THEN tight pencils THEN inks, all on diffent sheets of bristol board. This process required a lightbox for transitioning the image from one sheet to another. Eventually I got to the point where I could do all 3 stages on a single sheet as most artist do ... well except for my pal Tony Harris who uses photo reference on many - but not all of his projects - which for any artist reading this post I will touch on breifly.

Suffice to say, actually seeing his work process in person helped to shift my personal opinion on how art is created. The last time I visited his studio, I saw his current Spiderman: With Great Power work, as well as his Eisner award winning ExMachina stuff too. He was using POSER along with photo-reference from his digital camera merged together to create a printer generated rough where he added 'traditional' build-ups all on the same page. This became his "rough". Then using a light-table, he put that work under his finishing sheet of bristol board where he made his polished linework image ready for inking.... so he was doing whatever to get the job done. A further aside- he is by no means limited to using photo-reference or POSER, as I witnessed one day when I saw him doing a page that was nothing but FINISHED line work on a blank sheet of paper..ie-NO ROUGHS OR BUILD UP AT ALL...talk about running the gambit of techniques.

Any way, after seeing the *potential* of computers at his studio, I felt that I would eventually have to go that way. But I was still hesitant ... until I got to the lettering and coloring stages. At that point I knew I had to have a computer to achieve my goal. My hand lettering was awful and inconsitient at best. And coloring/grayscaling in a physical medium failed for me as well.

So as I contiued down this journey, I developed a process that involved bristol boards, pencils, technical pens (if you can use a Windsor&Newton Sable hair brush - I am in awe, as I was like a monkey trying to fly the space-shuttle with it, and Crow Quills weren't much better), various template tools, erasers, then going to Kinkos to make reduced copies to scan at home (as I found a stop by Kinkos to be much easier, less time consuming and straightforward-er than trying to use cut&paste digitally), then cleaning up the black and with image, converting to CMYK, Coloring, then Lettering. By the way FONTCREATOR is awesome! Even a caveman like me created a NICE hand written font in 2 days. FAR EASIER FOR THE NOVICE THAN PHYSICALLY HAND LETTERING ... TRUST ME!

As you can see, the process was cumbersome and involved way too many tools for me, as I was going to be the total creator of the strip. Now many newspaper comic strips don't employ grayscale and as such may not need as much digital work, but the style I am after has graytones much like For-Better-Or-For-Worse, as opposed to straight black and white strips like most of my old favorites, Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot for example. Why grayscale? Just because ... no other reason ... well other than I think if I 'color' it that will help distract from poor draftsmanship.

So when I saw the Tablet Pc, I feel I have finally seen a SINGLE portable device to do all stages of the process with. And as I have mentioned over and over,the Laptop & Graphire set-up is affected by the dis-assocition of the pen one place and the image elsewhere. But despite that ... as an experiment one day, I decided to create a strip totally digitally. And to my amazement what had taken 4 hours the old way, now only took 2 hours (for a daily). By eliminating all the other tools and transitionary phases, the work-time was cut in half. And that was with the ackward (for me) set-up. I began to ponder how much better an experience it would be if I could draw where the image was ...

So then I began to dream of a TABLET PC !!!

Please EVERYONE feel free to add you experiences as well giving advice to my specific questions that started this post ... as the topic of Tablet Pc for Art deserves as much in-depth discussion as possible.

Lastly, as often times, people like me are driven to the forums when searching for what to buy, and then once the purchase is made they go off to create and don't come back and report results as much as we would like ... 'cause they are working on their passion. So to that end I beg all of you to report back on this post .. and If you have friend who have Tablets for art, please encourage them too.

Personally I can't wait till i make my final post on this thread where I can give a long-winded REVIEW of my personal Tablet Pc experience.

Thanks to ALL!!

[DavidBeoulve]

I do not have time to give my standard, lengthy expose, so I will tell you only this:

• Tablet PC's suck for sketching because, glass or not, the sensation is effectively like drawing on glass; attempt to draw careful, controlled lines and you will see what I mean. You have to do them quickly several times to get just what you want.
• I own and M200 and it's very good (the cadillac of its time) but needs more RAM. You need at least 1 gigabyte of RAM (1024x768 tablets) and 1.5 or 2 on an M200 (larger image format).
• Research that you can boot your future Tablet PC using a USB CD-ROM / DVD-ROM Drive, or you will hate life. The Toshiba M200 basically only boots on a $300+ piece of crap Toshiba USB CD-ROM drive, deliberately made incompatible with normal USB drives, so you can't reformat your TPC, ever.

These were the three things that killed my Tablet PC experience. They suck for anything but inking and color. They need more RAM than they come equipped with. The M200 can't be reformatted and start fresh, and I'm betting other TPC's have this problem as well.

Now that the very usable screen is still stuck to aging hardware, I regret that WACOM makes their Cintiq so impossibly expensive, because if I had one I would still be able to use it, unlike my TPC, which at the very least needs more RAM, and furthermore needs a clean install of the OS (as most Windows PC's do every 8 to 12 months due to the way the Registry works).

If you are going to buy a TPC, get a cheap one and try it out. The excitement lasted a while for me - I made almost 50 strips of my web comic, Gamers Gone Bad, before I switched jobs and had too much of a workload to continue.

[TedRx]

I'm glad you told me about that Toshiba CD boot issue. I have not seen anything about it before. Now I am not NEARLY as interested in that model ... and before your post it was in my top 3.

I guess that new Gateway C140s is looking better and better ... despite the $300 increase above my initial target price range .... especially since I read that the VISTA Tablet Pc functions have less conflict issues with Wacom drivers than the Windows XP Tablet PC does.
And that is even with the dislike of Vista I had on my initial unpleasant exposure to it while setting up my Father-in-laws system this summer.