![]() ![]() Alias Sketchbook Pro is incredibly easy to use and it took me about two minutes to become totally proficient at the new gesture based interface (read below). Once everything was installed, the app was open and the tablet was ready the magic started. ![]() This is unfortunate since many digital artists use two monitors in a dualview setup.Īlias Sketchbook Pro is so incredibly lightweight that it launches in just a few seconds. I read some online help and found that I can shut off dual view and the software will work fine. When you make a mark, the mark is drawn many inches away from the actual stroke that you created. For some reason, the software cannot handle dualview. After launching Sketchbook Pro, I hit my first hurdle. Since I was focusing on the Sketchbook Pro/Wacom tag-team review, I threw my keyboard aside and moved on. Even a Palm Pilot-style writing system would have sufficed for the text apps issue. Personally I would have liked to see the Cintiq ship with software that emulated a keyboard on the bottom of the screen or even put a physical, lightweight keyboard into the Wacom hardware itself. The whole keyboard issue is sort of a big deal. The solution? Well, you could maybe get a swing-arm for your keyboard and move it in place or get one of those sliding drawers for under your desk. All of these need keyboards either for writing text, navigating 3D or using shortcuts. ![]() However, as a production artist I need to work in 3ds max, Photoshop and also mail and web apps like Firefox and Thunderbird. This is no problem if I am in Sketchbook Pro because they ingeniously created the software for tablets so no other input is needed. So my keyboard needed to shift to the side. If I want it near me to make use of the awesome new adjustable stand for drawing, my keyboard needs to go somewhere else but where? You see, if the tablet and stand are right in front of you for drawing, there is no room for anything else. Where do I put it? It is large, so I will need to actually move my monitor off of the desk. Placement on the desktop exposed a few issues: It is a great bonus to be able to spin the tablet around as if you were spinning paper around while drawing. Rotating the tablet while drawing is a snap. You can position, tilt and rotate the big tablet monitor so that it is most comfortable for drawing. The 18 Cintiq ships with an Imac-like adjustable stand. I run a dualview setup, so I figured I would replace my main 19" monitor with the Wacom Cintiq. Only the physical placement posed an installation issue for me. The Wacom needed the Wacom drivers, which I downloaded from its site. Alias Sketchbook Pro installed with no problem. Setupįirst things first: setting up the new hardware and software. It really felt like a digital sketchbook. The drawing tools were a breeze to use and immediately yielded great results. Just a small little nub in the bottom corner of the screen suffices as a portal to all of the tools in the package. The interface has been equally simplified. All of the extra selection tools, filters, complex alpha channels, etc are nowhere to be seen. Alias did an amazing job at getting rid of all of the junk and left only the most important tools for drawing. Well, that is correct, but in a good way. Later, I will talk more about the weight, but as a note, that is basically the only major drawback of this Wacom.Īt first glance, one might think that Sketchbook Pro is just a simple drawing program with a lightweight interface. and its dimensions are 18.4"x16.0"x2.8." On top of that is a really thick cable that adds a pound or two and then there is the metal stand. Now with the invention of the Cintiq series, the tablet is once again a huge monster but it is worth it. As the years passed, my tablets got smaller, lighter, more comfortable and pressure sensitive. Learning to use a tablet took time since you had to become accustomed to drawing in one place and looking at another. It was heavy like you would not believe with a bunch of thick cables connecting it to my computer. It was a huge, non-pressure sensitive monster. I remember back in 1990 when I got my first Wacom tablet. I would like to take this opportunity to review the two tools independently and also as a working pair. I was lucky enough not only to try it back then, but again this past month. ![]() These two tools just immediately felt like the next generation. Without even trying it I knew that this was huge. At the Alias booth, they were running a copy of their then brand new software Alias Sketchbook Pro on Wacoms also new 18 Cintiq LCD tablet. © Alias.Īt the 2003 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Jose, California I came across what I believed to be the next big thing for computer artists. The Wacom Cintiq 18sx tablet and a screenshot from Sketchbook. ![]()
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