My Time Machine

I was checking out various solutions for digital sketching/painting. The brand which caught my eye was the Wacom range of digital sketching products. Out of all their products, Cintiq interactive pen display seemed to be the premium tool for a digital artist. The price range is Rs.70,000 for a 12 inch pad and Rs.156,000 for a 21 inch pad.

Working in Wacom Cintiq

As I was thinking about the ways to buy this product, yesterday I went to Ampa Skywalk with my friends. When we were window shopping at the mall, we came across a HP shop. They have showcased various laptops and desktops from HP brand. Something caught my eye. We went inside to check that out. It was “HP TouchSmart” tablet pc. I checked out the price and it was around Rs.41,000.

After reaching home when I checked out the sepcifications of these two completely discrete products. The one impressive thing was that both these products have pressure senstive touch sensors. If you’re an artist you’d have already got the point. That’s right, you can use this table pc to create your master peices.

HP TouchSmart tablet PC

Just in the store I opened msPaint application and tried some sketching, and found that it wouldn’t restrict a artist in anyway. The response was very fast, which is very important when you do a professional design. You need to try more creative ideas quickly.

Another important thing is that Cintiq interactive pen display can not sense finger touch. You can only use a stylus. But in TouchSmart you can use both finger and a stylus.

Another important thing to note here is that the “HP TouchSmart” uses wacom sensor technology only. This is a pretty good deal to have a Rs.70,000 worth of digital sketch pad with a high end computing power for the price of Rs.41,000. Isn’t that wonderful?

Eventhough the Wacom Cintiq interactive pen displays have been crafted for the special purpose of digital art, isn’t it good to have extra features for a lesser price? Ofcourse a part of your subconsious mind is telling you that there must be something extra for the money invested on the elite digital art solution. But I checked out the thouchsmart tablet PC, for how much it qualifies to be used as a digital art solution.

By now you probably would be familiar about iPad. Its a new product line introduced by Apple in Tablet PC industry. Simply put, its a jumbo version of iPhone. It won’t fit inside your shirt pocket, but you can carry it where ever you carry a diary/notepad/journal/planner.  For a digital artist, how helpful this technological innovation can be? Let’s assess the possibilities:

There is no software comes bundled with the device to use it as a drawing tool. But there are few applications which can be downloaded from the iTunes app store. The iPad SDK being released already, we can expect more applications to come. There are some applications for iPhone like MotionInk, Brushes, Colors and Layers to name a few. As per Apple’s claim, these applications should work with iPad also. Let’s do some comparisons.

Classical Paper drawing vs iPad drawing:

Pros of iPad:

1. Won’t get clumsy with too many tools
2. Can undo if something goes wrong
3. Storage of the work is easy and safe
4. Share easily
5. If digital output is expected, iPad is productive as you don’t have to scan the drawing and give finishing touches seperately
6. Easily create wonderful effects
7. Save paper, go green
(… It may sound awful to compare paper drawing with a product like iPad. But its good to know the points anyway)

Cons of iPad:

1. Can’t feel the texture of paper or the tool
2. Though the display is bigger than iPhone, still its limited when compared to paper
3. If paper output is needed, its hard to determine the output

(…The pros out weigh the cons after all)

You may raise a concern like “The digital artists are saving paper already with other pointer devices like laser mouse, digital pen or digital pad etc. So what is the point?”. You’re absolutely right. We need to compare classical pointer devices with touch technology in iPad. Let’s see that now:

Classical pointing devices vs iPad touch:

Pros of iPad:

1. Like paper you get a perfect feedback on what you sketch
2. Few limitations on expressing your creativity can be lifted
3. The setup is simple
4. With an accelerometer the possibilities are more: you can put a drop of ink and shake the device to spread the ink in the paper… and more

Cons of iPad:

1. The display size is limited. With a classical pointing device you can use a bigger display
2. Processing power of the CPU is limited (1 GHz in iPad). So some complex filter may be slower.

I think in this case the pros may or may not out weigh the cons, depending upon the need of the artist. I believe if I get a chance to lay my hands on this device, I give more points.