It had been a week since my tablet had broken, a week since I had ordered the Wacom Intuos on Amazon and I was ecstatic. The box was huge and I tore it open like a kid on Christmas morning. I wrote a message to my boyfriend on MSN: “IT CAME” x10 and he was happy to see me… or uh read that I was so happy.
Ah! I was so excited! So excited that I didn’t even install my tablet right away. I took unboxing pictures and even an unboxing video and figured out how to replace the pen nibs. I registered my tablet too. However, when I finally installed my tablet, it wouldn’t work properly in Photoshop nor Paint Tool Sai, only in Paint.net it would work.
I downloaded AutoDesk’s Sketchbook Express that came with the bundle just because I knew that it would have a decent quality drawing function, especially over Paint.net (sorry but open-source software when it comes to tablet drawing tends to fall short of shareware). Sketchbook was ok at best. The Express version didn’t allow you to save your file with layers and wouldn’t tell you that till you had closed the file you were working on and had opened it again. What a joke! God forbid I had started on a more complex project other than the practice warmup sketches I was doing. Plus, there was no text on any of the icons as opposed to Paint Tool Sai and it was just an uncomfortable software package to work with.
After research using both Bing and Google and getting crappy generic results in both search engines, I finally chose the perfect keyword and got a step further towards the solution to this debacle.
Finally I read that the problem with the tablet driver was that I still had my Bamboo installed. So what I then realized I needed to do was to uninstall any tablet-related drivers and just reinstall the Intuos drivers.
Eureka! It worked! Unfortunately I discovered that the wireless function cuts off my wireless internet which kinda sucks. I’m glad I kept the box for it just so I can get 30+ bucks back for it.
But now I’m back to my usual old self. I’m getting used to the new shortcut button placement which instead of being on top was now along the side. I had alway used my thumb to press the buttons but how it was a bit uncomfortable for my thumb. Plus, there are twice the amount of buttons than on my old tablet. I assigned the top row to my old settings: undo, full screen [tab], alpha toggle and pan.
I even did a new picture, of Lily, Misty’s sister.
One lesson in this is that I’m going to find a backup program to use that I can actually be productive in it. I was looking at Corel Painter [essentials] but then realized that said program had no vector features while Manga Studio did. Then I realized that there was a software that was said to be a ripoff of Paint Tool Sai by the name of IllustStudio. I think I will keep an eye on IllustStudio, look for English patches so that I can get a trial and actually know what’s going on and then buy it (since it’s in Sai’s price range).