Comparison Wacom Intuos 3, Bamboo Pen & Touch and Genius Tablet

Hi,

As I stated in my last post, I'm currently attending a 3 month + training on Animation Pre-production. On the class, we were given the opportunity to use Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch that is provided in the computer lab. We also were given permission to bring the tablet back home to do our assignments.

Three of my friends brings their own tablet, one of them bring Genius M609, the other M609X and Genius G-Pen 450.

Curious with the difference, I've asked permission from them to test all the tablets throughly in Photoshop, while also playing around the sensitivity using the tablet driver control panel. Of course I also tested the Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch.

The specs for the tablets are below :

Wacom Intuos 3

1024 pressure sensitivity
Tablet resolution : 5080lpi.(line per inch)

Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch
1024 pressure sensitivity
Tablet resolution :2540lpi

Genius tablet, M609 / X
1024 level of sensitivity
Tablet resolution :4000lpi
 

 Genius tablet, G Pen 450
1024 level of sensitivity
Tablet resolution :2000lpi

 The spec written makes Genius and Wacom seems on par, but there is more than that. What is the most important thing in tablet is how natural we feel when using these tablet to draw something digitally. We want the feel to be as close as traditional pen on paper feel.

Genius use battery on their digitizer pen while Wacom pen doesn't need any battery at all. This makes the pen on genius tablet a little bit bulky than wacom.

I test the tablet by drawing a few strokes in Photoshop.
First thing I notice  that Genius pen tip feels a little springy and spongy. Wacom Bamboo tips meanwhile feels solid and little bit hard, while Intuos feels just nice.


The tablet surface of both Genius pen feels like scratching on hard plastic. Wacom Intuos surface feels very smooth and a bit slippy. Bamboo surface feels just nice, like writing on paper.

Both Wacom Pen has dual sensors, bottom for normal pen tip while on top has a bigger pressure sensitive button for eraser. Both Genius Pen doesnt have that.

Wacom Bamboo Pen is shaped like natural ball point pen, with 2 sided single buttons that fits right onto our thumb.

Wacom Intuos3 Pen is cylinder shaped, longer than Bamboo Pen with rubber grip and 2 sided single buttons. The button is ergonomicly design to fit on the side of the thumb, but little bit loose fitting compared to Bamboo.

Genius G-Pen 450 Pen is closer to fountain pen shaped, with a handle to hang on our our shirt pocket. It also has 2 button, however the button doesnt fit onto my thumb perfectly.
Genius M609 Pen design is also like 450, but much bigger and bulky. The pen also have 2 button, also doesnt fit onto my thumb, it is place higher than my thumb when holding the pen in natural way.

The brush strokes produced on both Genius is quite good, with variety of strokes width as I play with my hand pressure. However, as the pen tilt 60 degree to 180 degree, the pen fails to register. The strokes that I draw snaps into pieces as the pen tilt. This is quite annoying as most people will never hold their pen at 90 degree straight. The problem can be repeated over and over when drawing a curved stroke, where the pen tilted as our hand rotates.

Both Wacom intuos and Bamboo doesnt have this problem. Intuos has a tilt sensor to simulate a natural brush bristle that has uneven surface at different angles, while Bamboo doesnt.


From my test, I have decided that I prefer Wacom tablets better than Genius. Genius is good, but Wacom is better. Wacom Pen feels much more natural in my hand than Genius Pen. The pen tilt issues on Genius pen annoy me the most, while I have no problem with Genius Pen pressure sensitivity.

I recommend Intuos series the most, with Bamboo Pen and Touch 2nd. If you want to buy a tablet with tight budget, I really suggest you try getting a second hand Wacom tablet instead of Genius.

Scenery background Project - Garden

Hello,

I've just completed a background scenery which I inspired from a beautiful garden in Bukit Tinggi 3 - Parklands in Klang, Selangor, Malaysia. Actually I'm experimenting a new method (to me) called negative space drawing. More about it can be read here: Sibleyfineart . 

Below is the picture which I used for reference :

Because I'm still new in that drawing method, I have difficulty using it for too long. For example, I started with the center hedges. Drawing the details took around 2 hours+ and when I finish on that part and try to work on the rightmost hedges, the details vary and look really sketchy compared to the previous one as shown below (click to enlarge)

Of course I frustrated and stop working for that day. The next day I redo the rightmost hedges from scratch again.

The details are now on par with the center hedges. It really satisfied me. The rest except the background are done using similar method but I keep a long break before I start the next part. It took 3 days to complete the artwork.


The drawing are a little bit tilted like on a hill so I ignored the rest of the elements on the picture and decided to do a simple background.

The background are the last part that I do and I use a simpler soft painting method. It took around 45 minutes to complete. At first I do afraid the soft painting wont fit the sharp high contrast foreground but after completing it, I think it justified the overall painting, from sharp closer foreground to soft blurry background. Well it might be my excuse for my laziness but hehe who cares.

I'm aiming to draw a background in 1 day limit as I'm planning to use a lot of them on my project later.

As usual the tools used are :
Photoshop CS4
Wacom Intuos 3 PTZ 930

Plus a very great reference for negative space drawing at Sibleyfineart .

Thank you for your visit.

Fanart Wallpaper - Sawada Tsunayoshi XGlove Version Vongola Ring

Hi guys, its me again after a long dawn. Sorry didn’t update the blog much but Im still working with my artwork. To date I’ve created 3 wallpapers and 2 of it has been submitted to Animewallpapers.com. I like the AW.com forum very much because there are very good users that give me a good critics here and there, which help me to improve my work very much.

Okay so let me introduce my first of the 3 artwork I’ve done lately. Introducing Fan-artwork from Katekyoushi Hitman reborn, Sawada Tsunayoshi Xglove version vongola ring. The background is created using 3D Studio Max but because I’m still learning the software so the output from the 3D were edited heavily using Photoshop. Below is the step by step how I do the wallpaper.

As usual, I do the pose skeleton first, then the rough body sketch, and finally refining it based on screenshots.

Coloring process is quite easy as the screenshot provide good enough details for me to refer from. Plus the character is quite simple.

For the background, I try to draw a factory scenery from the photo I got from the net but the result are not very satisfying, so I make my mind and do the background with 3D instead.

The character with the unsatisfying backgrounds..

So here is the 3D version of the factory. Created with 3Ds Max the modeling process goes very smooth but because I’m still learning the software so the output from the 3D were edited heavily using Photoshop. The end result is as seen on the first picture posted above.

Lost of artwork source files

Hello, here is me again after a month since last post. So my past 2 days reveal my deepest nightmare, which is the lost of my latest artwork source files PSD. Where did I put it? Last time before purchasing new Hardisk I burned almost all the files and also numbered them. But last 2 days I just want to re-check my previous artwork on the DVD cake, I've count atleast 4 DVD are missing. This I notice after the I decided to do a numbering scheme! how about those hundreds of DVD burned before this?

Damn, if the DVD which is missing are not so important, or at least anime which I already watch then its quite okay, but unlucky me, the one which is lost is my own artwork which can never be re-download back!.

hah but something similar has happen to me before, which wipes a 400GB worth of many precious files and my own flash source code just because of faulty SATA power cable. Some says "backup your files!", but what if the backup itself gone missing?

Fan-Art Wallpaper - Inuyasha- Waiting for a new journey

Inuyasha- Waiting for a new journey

Here is my latest fan-art wallpaper which I done after watching the 93th episodes of Inuyasha anime. Quite a good anime I'd say, although the story plot is quite simple, unlike Eureka 7 and Gundam series. At some point if I were to watch 2~3 episode in one shot I'll feel abit boring because the story pattern (on some episode) for each episode is quite the same. For rating I'll give 3.8 over 5.

I really impress on their background paintings, very well done and beautiful. The grass blades is painted in great detail, rocks and slides shows their characteristics while sky shows the beautiful scene when the sunset came.

The grass blades are painted in great detail

Beautiful scene of sunsets

I wish I could draw like that too.

So to potray their journey and their world, I create this wallpaper. The wallpaper is designed so that they just take a break from an event (let it be,say, after fighting with "Naraku" people). Inuyasha is tired after fighting so he decide to rest just here, and his friends agree. Inuyasha just about to sleep, while Kagome and Sango watch Shippo and Kirara playing together. Miroku watch the sky dreaming about new girl she just recently met.

Heh hows my story? Pretty good eh?

Supposely Shippo and Kirara is chasing a ball while Inuyasha suppose to hold his Tetsusaiga, but I just let it be.

Below is a step by step progress on how I did the characters and the background.

Sketching the character pose and locate best position for them.

Drawing the characters base on various screenshots

Color the characters

Roughing out the background

Add details such as grass, clouds. I'm using normal round brush with opacity and flow set to 20%~30% to color the background. This will result some blotches and textures similar to watercolor/pastel paintings.

Final results as the first picture above.Color level tweak was done, add some haze below the mountain, add some shines over the characters, and add some sunshine between the clouds. If you look carefully the character pose and lineart is slightly different in the final result as I fix them after I've been commented about the unnaturalness of Kagome and Sango hand pose. I've also re-draw the lineart of all the characters except Kirara (the cat) to make it look crisp and sharper.

I think that all about it. Until my next artwork, bye~