I have bearly sketced a stick figure over this past month or more. Been severally depressed (still can’t find work … you’d think with two degrees in STEM I’d land work easily, but nope … seems like nobody wants to hire a freak and has trouble communicating verbally …) anyway enough self loathing.
I managed to get my hands on a drawing tablet (a cheaper Chinese one, not one filled with corporate greed … ironically this little guy I got works better than the slightly older cintiqs I used at uni (just much smaller surface) … won’t be long before they’re on par.
So I’ve had this for 3 days now and I’m going to show you the fun I’ve had since then. This is all cartoony and logo/tshirt design stuff (because that’s what my head is full of atm)
Some very cartoonish designs … I’m playing with two software programs atm. This all came from one called Affinity, which I managed to nap on special for about $50 AUD, amazing program for that price. I feel it’s already paid for itself (and FU adobe) great vector based pen tool … a few annoying things but nothing to write home about. And given that Adobe suite went up to over $70 AUD (and over $20AUD for one program) a month (not to mention the evil subscription BS they sneak in there) … I’d say yeah … Abandon the adobe ship … they don’t deserve customer loyalty and there are really good alternatives out there now.
Ok, no drawing for this one, just manipulation. I still have other ideas I want to pen down. A couple of tshirt designs and some funnies. Nothing serious.
And this is some freeware I briefly played with called Krita (recommended by a friend) … what I was disappointed in with Affinity is made up for in abundance in this little program … I really wanted something that also had a natural pencil tool to just sketch around with and have fun. This was perfect for that … together these two programs are a force to be reckoned with. My only quip was that the pencil sensitivity isn’t what I was hoping. But hey, it’s free and what it does for free program is amazing.
It isn’t all smooth riding concerning the tablet. The tablet itself works wonderfully (It’s a Huion GT-156HD V2 and is a third of a price for the equivalent wacom tablet at close to the same quality [for those interested in knowing])
I did have issues with the Driver … I used the CD it came with (yes I still use a DVD driver, CD’s will never DIE!) but turns out that the CD they provide is the earliest for the model and might not actually be the one one needed (why would they do that? it’s just weird) so after a little rooting around I found the correct version and downloaded it … and now it works great, but my computer does weird random shit … it’s a game of Russian Roulette every time I turn on the computer … what won’t be working today? and do I require to restart the computer? Sometimes it’s the mouse, sometimes’s it’s sound, sometimes it’s web browser, haven’t discovered what else is on the list … yet. Memory also becomes an issue, but if I have spotify running I get a heads up that everything is about to freeze and I can than make a cuppa and let it sort itself out (otherwise I don’t realise and it crashes)
Outside that it’s all rainbows though and enjoying it immensely …
