Tag Archives: 12WX

Cintiq 12WX First Impressions

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I bought the Cintiq 12WX and I have to say using it is great but it took me some time to get it set up to work right.

When connected to my new iMac I have to set the position in relation to the main screen and the position of the Mac title bar just right. For me it works best with the extra display of the Cintiq to be above the main screen and with the title bar set in the Cintiq. That leaves the dock in the main screen. This is good because the dock gets in the way of the drawing on the smaller screen if set into the Cintiq.

The other set up to be done was the calibration, which involves pointing to 2 hairline crosses, top left and bottom right of the screen. That took a while to get the point positioned right relative to the pointer. You don’t want it under the pointer so that you can’t see it when you are drawing. It is better slightly up and slightly to the left (if you are right handed)

Drawing with the CIntiq is pure joy, which is just as well considering the price of the item. It isn’t exactly the same as drawing on paper but pretty close. Maybe the tiniest of lags from pointer to paint movement.

Screen size it something that bothered me at first. I bought an iMac with the big 24in screen and now I am working on a 12in with a smaller resolution ?? It’s Ok when you get used to it though. I did try mirroring the displays but that left me with the lower resolution on the iMAc and that was terrible. I wonder what is the resolution on the 21in Cintiq, if it matches the resolution on the iMac I will consider the 21in next year, for a while I considered sending back the 12 n and getting the 21in now but, was wise enough to give the 12 in some time for me to get used to.

Unfortunately I only had the Cintiq a few hours before having to go away for a few days but as soon as I got back I got playing with it. I spent a day working with ArtRage doing some drawing on the tablet and was pleased with the results and then the next day I worked in Illustrator to make a repeating pattern design to upload to my microstock sites. You can see which Micro Stock Sites I use at Spondicious Photography and Illustration Web site.

I will post up a couple of drawings when I get around to it….

I am planning to make a new design each day to build up the portfolios in the Microstock sites because I have been doing well selling the illustrations, better than with the photo sales. Dreamstime has been a good one for the illustrations but not as successful as Fotolia

Just seen that the repeating tile pattern I uploaded to BigStockPhoto has been added to my portfolio there and the wait for the image to get on to Dreamstime is around 120 hours.

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Wacom Cintiq 12WX on it's way

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Wacom Cintiq 12WX drawing tablet

I have bought a new Wacom tablet so that I can pass the one I have now, an A5 wide to my son, it wil be good for his art studies. The new tablet is a screen as well as a tablet. It will be like having a digital sketchpad. I will be able to draw directly on the screen and according to others that has such a device is a joy to use.

Today i have been working with the old tablet and I made a design which is a repeating pattern. I have uploaded it to a few sites but I have to wait to see if it is accepted.

On the subject of images being accepted you really need a thick skin because sometimes files get declined for a variety of reasons. I have found in the past that the vector files I would have more or less total acceptance rate on the microstock sites. Today though I had 2 file rejected by Fotolia and the same files added to my portfolios at Featurepics and Crestock photo. Weird – lets see what happens with the repeating pattern I just sent to Fotolia.

Maybe the reviewer was having a bad day. One of the files was a reworking of a file that sold multiple times for me on Dreamstime already.

I have also just sent in 2 files to iStockPhoto. Both were files that I used to gain acceptance on that site as an illustrator so theorectically they should go on without problems, though I was somewhat annoyed with the whole prcess.

With iStockPhoto you have to get accepted as an illustrator first. They make you jump through a pile of hoops to get you you verified on their books. The size of the file has to be just right for both the JPG thumbnail and the EPS vector image too and you have to put the vector inside a zip file and send it all in via the web site. What bugs me is that when it comes to the actual sending in the files again to submit them to your portfolio the sizes are all different and the procedure is different also. Why???? I would have thought that the idea of the hoop jumping would be to train people into doing it a certain way so that it would be correct for submissions.

BigStockPhoto and Fotolia on the other hand are super easy for submissions, you only have to upload one file – the vector file and their system makes the thumbnail for you. You still have to do all the keywords and the categories though.