Recommendations for affordable alternative to WACOM

[willf]

It seems that in order to get the most out of ASP11 I will need to purchase a drawing surface and digital pen. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good pen and tablet that will work with a Macbook pro? Preferably one that is not as expensive as the WACOMs are.

[Víctor Paredes]

I don't know if they work on Mac, but I'm very interested in Yiynova tablets. Maybe it's not as good as a Cintiq, but it's not overpriced and looks pretty nice.
It's not mac, but I have a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet X201. It's a notebook with a "Cintiq" integrated, so you can draw directly in the screen. I bought it used by around 400 dollars and I'm more than happy with it.

[GCharb]

Best deal I could find was the monoprice tablets, got two for my kids, they work surprisingly well, have good resolution, and are tough as nail!

They start at like 25 USD from their site http://www.monoprice.com/

[Víctor Paredes]

Best deal I could find was the monoprice tablets, got two for my kids, they work surprisingly well, have good resolution, and are tough as nail!

They start at like 25 USD from their site http://www.monoprice.com/

Nice! Thanks for sharing it

[GCharb]

I should have posted a link to the tablets themselves, so here it is!

http://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=113&cp_id=11303

Bought 2 8x5 with 2048 levels, they work as good as my intuos in pretty much every aspects, but tons cheaper.

Only big difference I can think of, are the pens, I bought an advanced pen for my Wacom, the one that comes with the monoprice is more like the basic pen that came with my Intuos.

[willf]

Thank you for the replies. If anyone else has an idea feel free to chime in.

Charb, thank you.

Couple more questions if you don't mind: Do those monoprice tablets work with ASP11? And you can buy other pens for them?

Selgin, that Lenovo Thinkpad sounds like it's worth checking out. I suspect that a trip to the local big box electronics store is in order. Don't get me wrong, I still want the WACOM Cintiq 24x36 with the swivel arm. But $500 (or $100) or less is definitely more within my price range.

[GCharb]

Couple more questions if you don't mind: Do those monoprice tablets work with ASP11? And you can buy other pens for them?

Tested them with 10, but not 11, but I see no reason why they should not work with it, and I have seen replacement pens, but not more advanced ones, but these mostly have more advanced tilting options, which are of no use in Anime Studio, only for advanced Photoshop or Painter users!

[chucky]

Surface pro?
I would hold out for a month or two for anything like this, the new stuff is all about to be released and I think people see the value of the pen more this year so wait and get the biggest one you can with the largest HD or get a cintiq, I wish there was a giant portable tablet pc like the surface but BIGGER!

[mattchee]

I have a Surface Pro 3, and I can tell you that ASP11 plays well with it. There were a couple of unexpected issues with the SP3 pen for digital art in general that I wasn't expecting. If you go that route, you need to make sure you have WinTab and getting RadialMenu (to remap buttons on your pen, which is not a native feature). But once I got past that, it was smooth sailing for art, and I'm very happy with my SP3. I actually wrote a blog about this a while back, where I go into more detail:

http://stirfrycomics.com/2015/03/05/sur ... pressions/

For my main/desktop machine, I have an Intuos5 Large (comparable to today's Intuos Pro Large), which I am very happy with. I know you were looking for a less expensive option than what Wacom has to offer. In fact, I know that there are a lot of brands out there that give Wacom a run for their money these days, but I've been using Wacom for almost a decade now, and I guess I am just loyal. But, I will say, even their lower end offerings are top notch. I have a Bamboo Create (comparable to todays Intuos Touch Medium) at work, I use it all day long and love it. It's in the 200 USD range, which seems reasonable enough to me!

[GCharb]

Surface pro are much more expensive, and Cintiq are just out of range for any non professionals, which is why I recommended the monoprice, which works pretty much like the Intuos with a regular pen, which is more then enough for any Anime Studio work, even Photoshop work for that matter, just saying!

An alternative fro the Surface Pro and Cintiq are the Huion tablets, http://www.huiontablet.com, never used them, but the reviews are good, and tons cheaper!

Hello there Chucky, thanks again for the great webinar!

[mattchee]

I should note that I don't use my Surface Pro as my main computer for creating stuff. It's totally superfluous. I got it to replace my iPad, which I loved as a tablet, but hated for doing digital art on (can't use "real" software, not made for stylus use at all, much less accurate pressure sensitive work). So, it's really great to do art on the go, but when i'm really getting into working, I like using my desktop with a big monitor, etc.

[wizaerd]

I got my Surface Pro 3 specifically to work with art/graphics stuff, but ASP (for me) just isn;t that usable since the cursor is so small, the buttons are so small, drawing with the stylus causes my hand to cover up too much of the screen, errant touches on the screen causes artifacts, etc... I'm holding out hope that they eventually make the UI a bit more tablet friendly.

[Víctor Paredes]

I got my Surface Pro 3 specifically to work with art/graphics stuff, but ASP (for me) just isn;t that usable since the cursor is so small, the buttons are so small, drawing with the stylus causes my hand to cover up too much of the screen, errant touches on the screen causes artifacts, etc... I'm holding out hope that they eventually make the UI a bit more tablet friendly.

What resolution has Surface pro 3? I don't have that problems with the Thinkpad x201 and the pen (its resolution is 1366x768). It's also touchscreen, but I don't use that option, because it's simply useless for my workflow. To avoid the errant finger and hand touches when using the pen, I quickly disable/enable the touch screen mode using an Autohotkey script. I don't know if that will work for your computer, but I can share it to you if you want.

[wizaerd]

My resolution on the Surface Pro 3 is 2160x1440... I suppose I could try to lower the resolution a bit, but for my day to day handling, this resolution works fine. Illustrator and Photoshop have tablet UIs that work well with tablets, so I haven't thought to turn my resolution down...

[mattchee]

My resolution on the Surface Pro 3 is 2160x1440... I suppose I could try to lower the resolution a bit, but for my day to day handling, this resolution works fine. Illustrator and Photoshop have tablet UIs that work well with tablets, so I haven't thought to turn my resolution down...

I concur, the buttons ARE quite small. I have some shortcuts set up using RadialMenu for my most commonly used functions. Helps ease the frustration a bit.

Switching the res back and fourth depending on the application being used would be a pain.