ISO50

Illustrator here. I and all my illustration friends use Cintiqs for our work. In my opinion it is a must-have for a professional who does any amount of digital painting or finishing. You can get refurbished models for half the MSRP, which IMO is the best way to purchase one. However, even at full price I consider the Cintiq well worth the money.

Do I prefer the Cintiq to my regular tablet? I keep both around, and use both regularly. The Cintiq is definitely the ultimate in digital drawing, but sometimes it is nice to relax with a small intuos in the lap for finishing work. Drawing at the Cintiq is tiring just like painting on an easel.

As for the comments regarding color representation, I have never had any issues at all in those regards. Fact is, no projected light will ever accurately match the color of a reflective surface. The Cintiq suffers from this limitation just like every display in existence, but I do not think it is worse or better at color-representation than other displays. That is a matter of calibration.

Last time I visited TekServe in NYC (about two years ago) they had one of these on display, right out where anybody could play with it. I didn’t spend much time with the thing but it seemed quite nice.

I do very little of the type of work that would benefit from a stylus—I hardly touch my little Bamboo—so I don’t see myself ever buying one. But they sure are pretty.

I was looking here in southern Germany and couldn’t find a store where the Cintiq was out on display to play around with it, so I too bought one without trying it out first.

I figured since I have completely neglected my actual drawing skills over the course of my digital webdesign career in the last few years, this will be a great entry point to get me motivated again in doing something about those skills. Bought it for 1400 Euros here in Munich.

If this thing were anything near affordable I would get one.

I use one at work as my only monitor and I love it. It took a little getting used to coming straight from only drawing on paper (as anyone would having not used one before), but it doesn’t take a long time to get the hang of it. I was always used to looking at my pen or pencils tip and expecting lines to start there, but the Cintiq is a little off even when calibrated right.

Since using it exclusively (I even run ProEngineer on it, which seems sacrilegious) I ended up loving it for every aspect in Photoshop. I love using the pen tool to lay down paths because it seems so natural and fluid to do it with your hands on the screen.

I want one for home, but I will get the 12″ version as a few of my friends who also use the 21″ have it and think it works just fine. Ultimately you are usually working in a zoomed in area on the 21″ that would fit perfectly on the 12″.

The best thing for me is to be able to make my sketches look sweet without wasting a lot of paper and ink. The undo function has to be the best invention for the art world.

Not to drag this on and on, but the one thing I hate is glare. As soon as I lay the screen down I get tons of glare from the above light and surrounding windows. It’s really bothersome because I have to move around to see what I’m drawing sometimes. Also the generation before the latest release (what I have) has power cord issues that cause the screen to go into a psychedelic color fit. They can fix it, but I have to give it up for a week.

Man, I couldn’t even justify paying $69 for a Bamboo. I don’t do a lot of complicated illustration though, so it was more of an issue of whether I’d use it or not.

Anyone know if it would be possible to hack an iPad for this purpose?

“Unboxing” just sounds like a fetish to me….but then again, a lot of words do…

they’re great if you can afford them (general consensus me thinks)…i’ve played around with the large one years ago, and my friend has the 12WX which is a grand less…I would imagine extended sittings in front of that LCD would be a problem…it does bring about a certain amount of envy (pretty much makes that coordinated hand-eye learning curve moot).

but brilliant content has been created on our everyday wacoms, so…

look for shops and events sponsored by Wacom, they’ll typically have them on display. Refurb is a great way to go.

cheers, nice site!

I have been fortunate enough to use a Cintiq for work over the past 3 years. It has not only speed up my work flow but it has also increased the quality of my line work as well. I became so addicted that I decided to bite the bullet and buy one for home/personal use about a year ago. If you are a “professional” (meaning that’s how you pay the bills) designer and wish to keep your work mostly digital, I wouldn’t mess with anything but a 21″ Cintiq. You wont regret the purchase.

Get one. I work at a major animation studio as an illustrator and everyone who needs to draw at work uses one, from the storyboard artists to the character designers to the environment and concept artists. I used a tablet up until I started my job and had to use the Cintiq and within a month I could barely even use my tablet when I got home from work. The disconnect from hand to screen just became too cumbersome with the tablet after getting used to the Cintiq. Does your hand block the image while you’re painting? Sure. But then again it does if you do any kind of traditional drawing. It’s not a big deal.

I haven’t read every comment post, but I agree with David above a few posts down. Multi touch would streamline the whole experience for me. I use the Intuos 4 like a freak – basically abandoned my mouse. I love the action of retouching and I think having the medium tablet (6×8) facilitates retouching and brushwork on a large display without tiring my body. I haven’t used the cintiq yet, and I’m sure I would fall in love, but sometimes I don’t want to sit up straight and draw on a canvas/easel, I just want to lounge and edit. I don’t imagine that the users of the large intuos tablets would see that much difference in movement, so it would likely be a better fit.

I know someone who was seriously thinking about buying one, and the rep brought one round to his office for him to check out for half a day. I think it took a bit of blagging but he got a free trial with it so it was probably worth it. That was in the UK though, don’t know if you could do the same in the US, probably worth a shot.

My Cintiq 21UX was delivered yesterday, so I thought I’d pop back here and give you my two cents.

Firstly, and most importantly, it plays Peggle very well (http://twitpic.com/1fv3mc). :D

Setup and installation was very quick and painless, and calibration is a simple two-tap affair. Flash and Photoshop cs4 (64bit) both respond extremely well, and the hot keys make sketching very quick and easy. I love the fact that you can assign application-specific keystrokes to the touch strip, so in Photoshop I have it set to [ and ], which allows me to change the brush size by sliding up and down. It’s beautiful :D

I have used many other Wacom tablets in the past, and one of my main issues is the lack of pen friction when drawing. Even when using the ‘graphite feel’ nib, you feel like you are drawing on ice, which isn’t a very natural sensation. TIP: if you are using a standard tablet, and you are finding the pen to be too slick \ frictionless, then simply tape a sheet of paper onto the drawing area. It provides a more natural drawing sensation, and I have even found that it improves the quality of my brush strokes – improved pressure-sensitivity. THANKFULLY, however, the Cintiq doesn’t suffer from this issue; there is a surprising amount of friction when drawing, even with the standard smooth nib. I had to keep reminding myself that I was using a computer – I even found myself instinctively wiping away non-existent bits of graphite after each pen stoke.

The main benefit I have found in working with the 21UX is the cradle, which can be angled \ rotated to suit your posture. It means that you don’t have to contort your hand to sketch in awkward areas of the screen.

I did try to demo a unit before purchasing, but Wacom don’t have enough influence over UK retailers to make that possible. Even in London there isn’t a single store where I could try one out, which is very disappointing. To be honest, if I wasn’t working on a tight animation deadline, I wouldn’t have picked up a Cintiq. They are crazy-expensive, and I’m expecting a big slump in the overall cost of tablet devices in the coming months. If you can wait a year or two, I imagine the market will have evolved significantly, and Wacom will either reduce their costs, or produce something superlative. That being said, I’m glad I took the plunge. It’s an amazing tool.

note: I’m running a production blog for the short film I’m currently working on – http://www.stormMovie.net – and I’ll be posting some video blogs soon, so if there’s anything you’d like to know, feel free to send me an email (dan@stormMovie.net).

dt

Doing Illustrations, and want to try it out for sure.. just pre-ordered the next gen that just came out of the 21UX Cintiq’s, I’m excited!

I’ve been thinking about getting cintiq for past 12 months but been put off by afew factors, hopefully you could give me some advice please?

a) I’ve seen people complaining about 1600 x 1200 res, saying its not high enough for pro graphics? Is this true?

b) on wacom website they say you can now use rulers on 2nd gen cintiq due to no bezel. Is this possible?

C) also it gets very hot, 2nd gen uses same screen so i guess its gonna got hot like the old version?

d) Is there any lag around the boarder? i here afew peeps say alot of jitter towards the outer edge on old version?

thanks for ur help.

Scott

Have used a 21″ cintiq for audio and midi for about three years – love it. Tik, tik, tik…you’re through some nested menus, over to a fader, and back to the midi sequence etc. No more dragging the pointer over here, dragging it over there for everything.

If I need to keyboard (alpha numeric or midi controller), it’s cake to “palm” the stylus and type, or just drop it into the “well” while I play. I had a mixer-like external controller for awhile previously, but I kept having to remind myself how much I paid for it so I would give it another try. The Stylus on the other hand is immediate and intuitive.