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Wow. I already was anxiously awaiting the moment my funds could merit the purchase, now i’m just restless. Now available in the US? RRRGH. MUST WANT HAVE GET WANT.

droool……drooool……droooollllll……been drooling since you showed the first video commercial of it…… come on tax check……

Wacom sent me an email about availability a couple weeks back. I should be picking one up in late January or early February. I’m really glad they introduced this model, as I had no idea when I’d be able to afford a 21UX!

Might even trade in my Intuos3. :-)

Well…it seams to work well.
But something shock me a little…it’s the eu price. I mean, why we must pay nearly 200% of the us price. Ok it’s a little terre à terre. They don’t have to translate … the pen…no?

Quite so, slDavid. In USA, $1000 or so. In UK (no, they don’t even translate the instructions or the box) £839 = $1600. Hmmmm.

I guess this is one of the tools we’ve been expecting for a long time. It looks just perfect to me, except for a couple of little things including the size. I wrote an article in my blog about the pros and cons of the digital technologies for illustrators and the tools that still need to be developed:
http://www.intuitivedesigns.net/analog-vs-digital-pros-and-cons-in-digital-technology

If you are interested in the future of the virtual artist tools I think you may also like to check this link of some amazing Virtual Chinese Brush that has been developed:
http://www.cs.ust.hk/~cpegnel/VCB/

I think Wacom should be thinking of implementing this technology into their devices the sooner the better! What do you think?

Nice review and vid. I’ve been working with my 12wx for about a week now and I’m already in love with it. Working on it is quite intuitive (much more than compared to a regular intuos tablet). My new blog is an online sketchbook dedicated to work I am doing on the Cintiq. I’m surprised nobody ever mentions the new 20″ model.

I really don’t see what all the hype is about. It looks like a cool toy but for that price I could buy 15 years worth of painting supplies.

john.red you are obviously trolling.

guilty! haha sorry.

*puts two cents back in pocket*

There is also an open LEGO CAD system called LDraw , which has many compatible programs and thousands of parts modeled by community members. LeoCAD , MLCAD , Bricksmith , and LDView are some of the most popular tools.

There is also an open LEGO CAD system called LDraw (http://ldraw.org/), which has many compatible programs and thousands of parts modeled by community members. LeoCAD (http://leocad.org/), MLCAD (http://www.lm-software.com/mlcad/), Bricksmith (http://bricksmith.sourceforge.net/), and LDView (http://ldview.sourceforge.net/) are some popular LDraw programs. A limited degree of translation between LDraw and LEGO Digital Designer models is possible, too.

Here’s an LDraw art gallery! http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/anoved/Bitsticker/bitsticker-gallery-2.jpg

(Sorry about the double post.)

Wasn’t Douglas Coupland designing something like this in his book, Microserfs?

Very cool, but I’ll say the obvious. Isn’t the whole fun about playing with Legos actually PLAYING with LEGOS? I guess you wouldn’t have to fight with your brother for the best blocks.

Please complete the following sentences with “lets” or “let’s”:

1) … play, says Frank!

2) Frank’s mom … him play.

sorry ;)

Typo fixed, headsign. (No need to be a jackass about it, though)

@ Johnny
you’re right! I just have one of those days: slept badly, should be working, too tired, surfing around leaving silly comments in blogs, trying out silly keywords in google and youtube etc.
I should stay away from the web on those days…

i cried a little…

Christmas (and wishful thinking) is just around the corner…

I got to get me one

What gets me is when it turns into a normal tablet when accessing a secondary display… genius.

Ok… we just had a Wacom sales rep come by our studio and demo the new Cintiq12WX so I wrote up a some thoughts on it …simply put, it’s amazing. All of us were drooling over it within seconds of seeing it. It’s about the size of a 9×12 wacom tablet in width and thickness and is extremely light and seemed to stay cool. The screen is bright and crisp. That said, the screen itself is a bit small, which is also part of it’s appeal in some ways. The rep had it running on a Mac with all of his fonts cranked down to like 6pt to make more real estate on the screen which was fine and readable. The side buttons are something I rarely use but will likey use now. The sliders are now pen stylus sensitive and can be tapped like a button to increase/decrease or scroll up/down or whatever buttons you want to program into them. Also you’ll notice the edges of the Cintiq are sloped downwards with the sliders on the outer edge to prevent accidental zooming/scrolling etc with your arms.

In size, it’s basically like working inside of a margined 8.5×11 surface. Some of the cool stuff about it is that it finally is practical to spin it around to draw tough angles thanks to its size and weight plus the little perfectly centered low profile nylon nub on the back that allow one to spin it on an axis. The stand on the back only has 2 positions standing or folded, but the standing position seemed fine if you need that. One could get a little creative and figure out how to angle it to diff positions if need be. The really cool thing is that it’s now practical to put the thing in your lap and work with it.

The ugly part of this is all the cabling. There’s a 4×4x1inch box that all your cables, including a monitor cable, have to be routed through. I guess there’s really no other solution to this unless they adopt the HDMI standard somewhere down the road. (not likely)

But the news that caught me by surprise was the price: According to tour rep here in the PNW, it’s going to be available mid December in the US for $995.00! We had all calculated $1700+ based on the Euro conversion rate but I guess they’re getting aggressive with it’s pricing in the US to get it out to as many students and professionals with portable studios as possible. I have a feeling you’re going to see a lot of these in cafe’s soon, I may be one of them:)

…ok after watching their little ad it looks like they’ll have multiple positions for the stand. We must have had an early version with only up or down position. Anyway I think you’re going to love it.

$995.00 US?!

# vincent giard says:
November 29th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

$995.00 US?!

That’s what the rep said…

The whole thing isn’t 26cm x 16cm, that’s just the size of the screen. Wacom’s site says the real dimensions are 405mm x 270mm and 17mm thick, or for US losers like myself, about 16″ x 10.6″ and two thirds of an inch thick.

That price is about what I thought it would be when I first saw this. A lot of things are more expensive in the UK so you can’t just estimate the US price by converting the price to dollars (which would come out to ~$1700). I mean, the regular Cintiq 21UX is selling for £2190 which is ~$4500, waaaay more than the $2500 it actually sells for here.

I estimated what it would cost by using percentages though. This new Cintiq 12WX is £830 which is about 38% of the cost of a Cintiq 21UX is ~£2200 in the UK. In the US, the Cintiq 21UX sells for $2500, but the price of the 12WX will still be about 38% of that which comes out to $950 — pretty close to the $995 that Rayl was quoted.

This is great news. I was just about to pull the trigger on the 21UX. I’ll be checking out Wacom’s site every day.

As tough as it is to find a great sketchbook, I’ve taken to making my own. Bookbinding is really fun and rewarding, and only takes a little practice to deliver very professional-looking results. The best part is you can create the ultimate-best-ever-perfectest book, entirely to your own specifications. Your favorite drawing paper for the pages, the perfect size and shape, the ideal cover design. Plus the satisfaction of doing it yourself. I really, really recommend this.

There are a million tutorials online. Here is a very thorough one that employs a bunch of professional tools and techniques: http://www.csparks.com/Bookbinding/index.xhtml

But fancy tools aren’t neccessary; here is a much easier approach, good for beginners: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-bind-your-own-Hardback-Book/

Choosing the most appropriate paper can drive me crazy. I understand you :-) I strongly advice the trademark : “VANG” with a strong paper (watercolour,gouache,oils) and hard cover. You have some samples of the work you can do on it by visiting www.sketchtravel.com

I make some sketchbooks with plywood covers. With a drill, you can add any paper you want, but they come with an offwhite, recycled 24 lb paper. Not the best for paint, but good for ink and pencil. Here is the address: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5146800

i just love them boesner-products: http://www.boesner.com/boesner/servlet/frontend/articleDetail.html?command=display&btUid=bt_Article&iDf_id=ac11532:4845aa:102399be2a8:-4a60&iDf_locale=de_DE&iDf_relayClientId=1
they are based in europe though, overseas shipping might be expensive..

I recently went the DIY route couldn’t be happier, I chose the size and the paper, I even added the band to keep it closed and a small folder with tabs to keep all my stuff into one place.

I followed this tuto and picked some other things from others wich URL I don’t remember

http://www.michaelshannon.us/makeabook/index.html

Could you buy a three-ring binder (old cloth-bound ones abound at thrift stores), buy whatever paper you like, cut it to size, and finish the margins with a 3-hole punch ? Very cheap and a no-brainer. Hey, I might try it. If there is a downside to this, I can’t think of it right now.

Not mentioned is one of my favorites. Like the bullet point, the football shaped point can give you a tone without any discernable edge. Carving in a little at the base of the exposed lead to make a little bubble of lead at the edge can make for interesting work.

Cool. I don’t use mine nearly as often as my other PITT pens, but if it ever becomes frayed like that, I’ll know what to do.

Unreal. I don’t know how many PITT pens I’ve tossed out because I considered them “dead”. Thanks, Adam! This is a fantastic tip.

Pigmented Ink Tip … something? This is perfect timing for this post, my pen is just about dried up.

Best
Tip
EVAR!

Seriously, why were you taking pens apart?

A tip tip!

SON OF A GUN! I use these things all the time, and I’ve got a stack of about thirty of them with plenty of ink and worn-out points. I mark the old ones and use them when I WANT a slightly more unpredictable line, or when I don’t want to have to handle the pen as gingerly as I do the new ones… but this is a great, uh, pointer. Gotta try it! Thanks so much!

Hi,
Stefanie Lang at http://www.faber-castell.de just answered my question regarding the name PITT:
»(…) Für den Namen “PITT” gibt es 2 Erklärungen:
vom engl. Wort “pit” bzw. “pitt” für “Grube” abgeleitet, denn die meisten Materialien diesen Segmentes wurden damals unter Tage abgebaut oder aus dem Italienischen, denn “il pittore” bedeutet Maler. (…)«
which means the name is not an abbreviation (my first guess) but just »a name«. It could refer to (engl) »pit« (because most of the basic materials were formerly won by mining; by the way, they produce PITT drawing chalks, too) or (ital.) »il pittore« = painter. Therefore, no real reason for capitalization … maybe it just looked nicer this way, or it was easier to print the name on the pens in small grades.
cheers, Achim

Thanks, Achim!
& @xadrian: rrllmm over on flickr said she has been able to replace the ink in them with copy toner, so I was trying to figure out how to get it in there. I don’t have any copy toner, and I wonder how effective it would actually be, but thought I’d have a look anyway since the one I was experimenting on was so haggard.

Yeah a couple folks at Penciljack have been saying they’ve been putting ink in the arse end of these already. I’m like you, though. I must be using them wrong because my tip is always shot before I’m out of ink.

And no that’s not a euphemism for anything.

Cool! I ‘ve been pouring all kinds of things in the back of my PITT B-pen, but i always stopped using them because of the tip. I noticed that this trick works for lots of felt pens (for example stabilo’s pen68, but u ll need smthng stronger to pull the tip out)

>my tip is always shot before I’m out of ink.

Listen, that happens to everybody at one time or another.

I’m in the tip-wears-out-first camp as well, but it’s interesting to know that there’s a way to get ink back into these things. Man, this post is saving me a lot of money on pens- I’ll have to go check out Penciljack as well. Thanks for the additional clue!

you just saved me so much money i could cry.

i too mark the pens and use them for fills etc…wow…glad they are all in a cup on the bookshelf!

Adam,
Great tip!

How did you film this? Did you have a webcam on a small tripod and then ‘hug’ it to get your arms around to the paper? I want to do some ballpoint tutorials but I haven’t worked out how to film it so anyone could see what I’m doing.
Thanks!

I used a tripod and knelt behind it. I did this on a night-table. Another trick I learned that I’ve used in a couple of videos is to set up a tripod in front of me on the table and tilt it right over the paper. It films me upside-down, but then I rotate the image in movie maker.

sweet !!

Thanks, Adam! I go through dozens of these excellent brush pens, and in one bold stroke you just doubled the life of these things. An excellent post and a nice short to-the-point video. Thanks again!

I became a member to give you a hug. OOO

The brushes look great, Gerard has chops, but his wacky commentary on the videos soon got a little trying. I wanted him to say something, ANYTHING informative about the brushes, or about anything at all. There’s nothing wrong with a little humor, but this was relentless. I would’ve preferred that he teach me something, rather than try to lamely entertain me.

It’s not that he doesn’t have a good sense of humor—-that’s not it at all—-and I don’t mean to criticize him personally. I just think the video would be more effective if he had something to say.

I have a relative who does this kind of thing, but he doesn’t confine it to video. Every time you try to talk to him hoping for something that resembles conversation, he comes out with gag after wacky gag, and polite laughter only encourages him. All I ask is that he offer me the bone of an actual concrete subject to nibble on, but he can’t seem to manage this.

So I’m sure that Gerard isn’t like this ALL THE TIME, but what he may not realize is that he has something to offer here besides Photoshop brushes, and he’s not sharing.

well- i guess the video is to sell brushes, not to “tutorial” us to do our own. i liked his humor too, but what ticked me off to almost smashing the screen were the one million “ah”s in the sentences.
i really like their work, especially gerards, but a lot of chris koelle´s work looks soooo ashley wood ripped off…argh!

I don’t need a tutorial, but I think it would help to sell brushes if he said something other than nonsense.

“chris koelle´s work looks soooo ashley wood ripped off”

I actually think Chris’s work is more rounded then Ashley’s. similarities are there but Chris relies less on the accidents of his art.

I’m not a huge Ashley Wood fan, but your criticism doesn’t make sense to me. I think it’s very difficult to make accidents WORK in your art. To know when to leave well enough alone, and to know when to not to fix something that doesn’t need fixing, or that’s there to reveal something else you didn’t notice.

However, I have noticed that Wood at his worst fudges in his draftsmanship. Not in a Bill Sienkewitz (sp?) expressionistic sort of way, but in a I can’t be bothered sort of way. If that’s what you mean by relying on accidents. There’s a lot of painterly mess sometimes that doesn’t describe stuff, and isn’t interesting in itself for its own sake.

Really, what more could he say about texture brushes, you know? You choose a brush, tweak the size, the tolerance, color, etc. and just work with it. Nothing else really needs to be said about these brushes, if you ask me. It’s just an opportunity to check out what these brushes can offer. And I didn’t mind the humor.

Hey guys, this is Chris. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I openly admire Ash’s work–his sense of design, shape, angles, line, etc. and I have obviously tried to emulate his work in some of my art.

At the same time, there are countless other artists whose sense of design and style have inspired my work and even the work of Ash Wood himself. Masters like Klimt, Egon Schiele, Bill Sienkiewicz, Bob Peak, Dave McKean, Phil Hale, George Pratt, Kent Williams, the list goes on. Anyone who’s a fan of one of these guys is a fan of the others.

And there are a thousand other artists whose work has affected the kind of stuff I do. I actually consider myself kind of bipolar when it comes to my art–different ways of working and different styles come from different moods (obsessive compulsive, painstakingly detailed etchings, carefree loose sketches, and so on). In other words, I’ve done plenty of stuff that looks nothing like Ash Wood’s work (or any of the artists mentioned above).

All that to say, great artists (living or dead) inevitably inspire and inform other artists’ work.

Peace,
Chris

Thanks for posting Chris! Everything you said is pretty much what I thought about your stuff.

You guys should check out Chris’s digital/drawn/animated short done for PBS about a battle in iraq from the perspective of a soldier’s blog called ‘Men in Black’.

If Sanford had a son like Joe Pogan, he would be smiling all the way to the bank. Makes me want to go to Home Depot and buy myself some tools and start to weld some scrap metal. They sell these cool robot like figurines at Hallmark just like Joe’s and they fetch close to and above 100.00. Not a bad trade at all.

I love me some Joe Pogan!! I own one of his bird sculptures and it’s amazing. We featured him a while back on our youtube show - Canned Culture Episode 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0o9BVTj03I. Pogan Rocks. xoxo!

A few years ago, I got some of these fonts just for my own personal use, and one of them was a $199 font I could never afford otherwise. So yeah, it does include everything — or it always did before. My biggest fear is that they will discontinue this insanely great sale if too many people find out about it. Nobody else nails the look of fonts that you’d actually see in hand-lettered comics quite like these guys. You can also find some good stuff at Blambot.com, but outside of those two sources the pickings are pretty slim.

Agreed, blambots the place to go. I did a bit of a stint of trying to alert all my comic friends each month to new fonts and news on typography but it got really repetitive after about 4 months.

But thanks for this, I honestly had no idea they did this.

I am hardly able to contain my amazement! Combining toast and art is genius. I was the proud owner of one of those Mickey Mouse toast stamps when I was a wee lad and this technology surpasses that by leaps and bounds. This made my day. Thank you!

Hola soy de Chile, pero de esas tostadoras no creo que lleguen tan pronto por estos lados, claro que sería fabuloso levantarte cada mañana a tomar desayuno con una tostada diferente. genial!

Not unlike Robin Southgate’s weather toaster from 2001:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1264205.stm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/30/java_toaster_prints_weather_forecast/

These are great. Chip Kidd actually used a few of them for a series of James Elroy covers he did a few years back.

More of his work is at the Foley Gallery and Thomas Barry Fine Arts gallery.

I am eager to check out the new photoshop. I don’t want to sound like a total jerk but it’s grand central terminal, not grand central station. Sorry, just one of those pet peev’s I have. Thanks for reposting the link to kuler, i forgot about that app it is addictive:)

I used to be an Illustrator fan until I was taught Freehand…since I’m not a gradient monkey I found I enjoyed the line editing features in FH and them to be much more use friendly…the question is…why doesn’t Illustrator bring in the bezigon feature (which is a trillion times better than the pen tool)…and second…if they aren’t going to do that is anyone going pick up Freehand or is Adobe going to let it die on the vine?

jonasink — True, that it’s officially “Grand Central Terminal” but you’re splitting hairs here — everyone uses the term “station” for the saying that Jaleen used here. Part of our pop culture lexicon. And if you want to get real technical about it, the building that was originally there at the same site where the current terminal is currently was officially called “Grand Central Station.” But whatever, dude.

This isn’t about Adobe, and this is probably a totally inapropriate place to post this, but–they wouldn’t let me post it on Craigslist for some reason, and I thought it would be appreciated here. Also, since the topic is Adobe, and not about any artist in particular, I figured at least I’m not stealing anyone’s glory. So here it is:

Title: (creative gigs) Professional Artist Seeks Professional Work

Hi, I’m a professional artist. I’m looking for starving electricians, plumbers and lawyers. I can’t really pay you very much. Looking for real “eager beavers”. This could be a great piece of work for your portfolio! Must be able to do quality work. I’m sure to get a lot to responses so I’ll be trying out a few of you to see how you work out before I can choose the ideal candidate. If this works out, there will be plenty of work for you in the future, and lots of exposure. To the elements.

I can pay little if anything. I don’t have very much money. Possibly no pay whatsoever.

My pet peeve would include those who cite their pet peeves, yet:
1.) spell “peeve” incorrectly, and
2.) use apostrophes when describing a group of things, rather than something that belongs to the peeve.

: )~

F12 on the Mac, people. That dictionary ain’t there to just look pretty - it’s a quick spell checker, too!

Jed: there’s no reason why Craigslist shouldn’t have let you post that, unless you either posted it in the wrong category, or because they have some new filter that won’t let you use the word “beaver”. LOL

Back on topic, I was at the Chicago Adobe day, and had a really good time. As a lonely, homebound freelancer, It’s nice to just mill around with 500 other Adobe geeks for a few hours if nothing else. And you couldn’t beat the setting at the tip of Navy Pier on a gorgeous day. I found it really educational, and loooved seeing the Wacom Cintiq in person - wow have they come a long way since the first iteration about 11 years ago.

I couldn’t afford any of the bundled Suites, so I simply upgraded my CS2 versions of PS and IL, and so far am quite happy!