Cintiq Poseur

I am lucky and spoilt - I work for a boss who LOVES buying the latest toys for the office. About two months ago, I was given a 21" Wacom Cintiq21UX to "test and evaluate" for a couple of days. Also that week, I got to work with the well known and well admired Design Guru, Stefan Sagmeister who was in the house and he and his team were so very impressed - and envious ;).

The Cintiq 21UX combines a 21" LCD screen and a pressure sensitive tablet to create a surface you can paint on directly using a Wacom pen. It's a wonderful tool for drawing, painting and rotoscoping. Digital drawing has long been a different world from the traditional pencil and paper. The pencil and paper way is more intuitive and organic. You turn your canvas around, adjust the angle, you feel the lead press against the paper - a highly artistic process. Digital drawing on the other hand is upright, emotionally boring and un-ergonomic. I just completed a DI job and using the Cintiq made it truly pixel perfect! Touching up, erasing, stamping, and painting were literally at the tip of my pen. The ExpressKeys on both sides of the panel are great in replacing spacebar, shift, option controls - the side Touch Strips make zooming in and out a breeze. There is a slight delay especially for super large stills but it's nothing to moan too much about - if you're RAM abundant it's not a problem.

However, I don't use it much for my other work applications simply because of the design of the interface. Menus drop from the top and using the Cintiq is not practical because your hand is blocking everything. For other apps I stick to my Intous3.

After my glowing and gushing promotion of this wonderful technology he immediately went out and bought 2!

How cool am I? *Haha!*