Anyone used a Wacom Cintiq 12WX?

Wow. I'm impressed.



I have a Wacom Intuos but it's collecting dust most of the time. It's a waste of good money, I have to admit.

Here's my first and only attempt so far at 100% digital illustration (by "100% digital", I mean completely sketching, drawing and painting the image directly to a computer and not sketching on paper and scanning it in to fill in the colours):


The problem isn't with the painting. It's the initial sketching process.

Let me try to explain.

I need to see WHERE I'm drawing to figure out the relative size of WHAT I'm drawing. If I'm drawing an apple on a A5-sized paper and similarly onto a A2-sized paper, my brain-hand-eye have no problem doing the mental translation for both the A5 and A2 sized paper.

But I don't find it intuitive when attempting the same thing on a computer directly. I'm limited by the screen size, so to speak.

No problem with A5 since the computer screen can show 100% of A5.

But I can't do it well for A2, or anything larger than what the computer screen can show at 100%. I'd have to zoom in and out to figure out the relative scale of things on a A2 size area on the computer. The typical computer screen (i.e. 15" to 17") isn't as large.

I wonder if it's because I'm not a "Digital Native".

Anyway, I'm going to learn more about the Cintiq (having a YouTube video for the product demo is a great idea, btw -- and maybe the defacto standard for advertising soon?)

From the public library's perspective, I mentioned about Digital Storytelling (posted in 2005).

So I didn't manage to do a digital story yet.

Or have I?

Looking back at the post I realised now that producing a story is more than just providing the equipment to draw the artwork. There's the sound, and image sequencing...

Maybe technology will evolve to allow that to happen. And soon. Then it just might be realistic to have the National Library and or Public Library actively collecting "Citizen Digital Stories" as part of its collection.

If not that, perhaps a tool like the Wacom Cintiq could be used as another sort of input device. E.g. Advisory Services.

Instead of typing out words via Chat to ask questions, some people might want to write on the tablet or draw something. Would this be considered an assistive device for people with disabilities?

Something like this could be done now (Tablet PC?), but seems something like Cintiq is more elegant.

Is anyone aware of current applications using something like that (i.e. Pen Tablets as input devices) as part of delivering services -- libraries or otherwise? I'd be very interested to know.