iPad Pro + Pencil Artist Review (vs Wacom Cintiq Companion)

I've been using the iPad Pro + Pencil for a couple of months now, and I think it's the best digital drawing experience that I've ever had. For sketching and drawing, the Pro and Pencil just feel so natural. Apple made something different, whereas other drawing tools and tablets are either made by Wacom, use Wacom, or trying to copy the Wacom stylus. I'm a huge Wacom fanboy, so it's hard to win me over, but Apple did it! The Apple Pencil is truly is an incredible first gen device, see the review video below, to see why:

iPad Pro + Pencil Artist Review


Procreate is my favorite drawing app on iOS, it really is an amazingly powerful app. It has everything you need for sketching and painting. Here is my tweaked Pencil brush for Procreate. Here are directions on how to import brushes into Procreate from Dropbox: The brush is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8y5grf3eqsbnkd/Apple_Pencil_Crabfu.brush?dl=0

I found the tilt setting on most drawing apps make the line thickness way too much, and Procreate was no exception. This may make the Apple Pencil look really impressive at first, tilting will turn your pencil into a gigantic graphite stick, but is very hard to control. After a lot of tweaking with this brush, I'm very happy with the results. It feels like a natural pencil, when a bit of shade when you tilt it down low. This pencil brush, along with the pressure curve + screen protector shown in the video, made all of the difference.

Here are some of my sketches, using 100% iPad Pro/Pencil & Procreate:

Portrait sketch practice, me and my boys. I used ipad's split screen view, to see reference pictures on half of the screen, and sketch on the other half, worked out great.

I'm not much of a painter, but testing out painting rather than drawing.

Sketch of my wife

Love the blue pencil feel!

And a sketch using Sketchbook Pro

Previously, I reviewed the Wacom Cintiq Companion, Wacom Creative Stylus, and Galaxy Note, and other Tablet PC's, but now it's hard to imagine wanting to use them over the iPad Pro/Pencil. I still need to keep the Cintiq Companion, for heavy duty photoshop stuff for work. But if I want to just draw, design some characters, sketch out ideas, even render in color, I think iPad Pro can handle just about everything I need. At half the cost of the Wacom Cintiq Companion, I'd strongly recommend iPad Pro and Pencil.

SFBT-3 Artist Figure Review

It's hard to define S.F.B.T-3, is it a toy, action figure, model, mannequin, maquette, or a doll? Whatever purpose it's made for, I am reviewing it as an artist pose-able figure, for concept art.

Useful artist mannequin are hard to find. There are lots of them out there, but most are useless, lacking pose-ability or not enough attention to anatomy. The wooden ones that you see in any art supply store, are especially useless. I've been in search of a good pose-able figure to drawn from, for quite some time now, and I'm happy to have found an amazing ultra poseable figure. It works amazingly well for figuring out poses.

We are all hard wired to read body language. We subconsciously notice the most subtle of poses with the human body, which makes drawing compelling figures especially tricky. References always makes the art better, and having a really good pose-able figure at your finger tips, can really help. I find it easier to figure out poses on this figure, than to do it via 3D software with a good rig.When you squint at this figure, you can really read the forms, and even make out the general muscles and shapes. This figure serves as a good model, and works great for seeing shadows across the body. It also keeps the silhouette extremely well, due to the massive amount of plastic parts, with the sole purpose of keeps the form as you pose. The attention to detail, and the number of parts, are insane. There are no screws, everything seems to just fit together. I've had the wrist and feet come loose several times, but they just fit back in easily. So far there hasn't been any loose joints that will not hold shape, only time will tell, how well it will hold up over time. I'll be keeping a special eye on the ball joints that supports weight. Luckily, the shoulders has 3 independent joints, which will help relieve the stress on a high use area. I've been posing this figure a lot for a week, and so far no issues of holding the pose.

SFBT-3 has over 80 points of articulation. The shoulders, arms and fingers, are especially impressive. There are even rotatable eyes and eyelids. It is made from a very hard plastic, and does not feel cheap. This is the only figure in this line, there are no other body types etc. I'd love to have a version with the breasts toned down... they are rather high and ahhhh... stylized. More optional heads would be cool too. I'd actually love to have a more faceless head, just enough to read the angles and shapes. But even as is, for purposes of concept art, it works great. I'm finding that I am able to pose this female figure, but adopt it to different proportions and gender, without much trouble.

In full disclosure, I got this free from the Japanese manufacturer Dolk Station, to do this review. Unfortunately this figure is priced at $300, ouch! But considering what it must have went  into making this figure, and how useful it is, it will be worth it for some. I just hope that it becomes successful enough to see a price drop in the future. It really is an work of art, and engineering marvel.

Some pose examples:

Pros:
-It is the most pose-able figure on the market
-Beautiful, an engineering/artistic feat.
-Nice hard plastic, does not feel cheap
-Comes with display stand

Cons:
-High price. As of Sept of 2013, it is priced at $300 US + $14 shipping from Japan to the US.


To order SFBT-3:
English: http://dolk.jp/s.f.b.t/en/
Chinese: http://dolk.jp/s.f.b.t/cn/
Japanese: http://dolk.jp/index.php

Jot Touch Review and Mod

Here is my review of the Adonit Jot touch:

Jot Touch with cap and USB charger:

Top: stock tip. Bottom: modified bent tip

New modified tip allows for extreme angles:

Sketch examples using Jot Touch with a New iPad (iPad 3) 

Procreate:

ArtRage:

My Procreate pencil settings, for Jot Touch:

Pros:

-Great design and build quality

-Great pressure sensitive solution for the iPad

-Works well with ArtRage and Procreate

-Easy Bluetooth pairing

-Long battery life

-2 function buttons, great for future app support

-Great see through tip disc, for detailed line work

-Comes with cool USB charger with magnet attachment

-Comes with extra tip and disc.

Cons:

-Only works well with Procreate and ArtRage, as of early Aug '12. Some other supported apps have various issues. This should be all resolved with future app updates.

-Nothing really works for the iPhone :(

-iPad 1 is not supported.

-Pressure sensitivity is low, feels like tablet PC's. Not the pressure levels like the newer Wacom tablets and Cintiq.

-Tilt angle is not enough, often miss lines when too angled. Solved by modifying the tip!

-At $100, it is a bit steep. Understandably so, but not for everyone. 

For more info or to buy Jot Touch

Art rage for the iPad

ArtRage the iPad, another must have painting tool for the iPad. I love the oils and watercolor, the look and feel is the most realistic of the iPad apps. The interface is nice and simple. Big watercolor brushes tends to bog down a lag a bit, but well worth it for the natural look.

This is a painting that I painted tonight with pencil and watercolor on ArtRage. Doing this made me realize how much I miss doing traditional watercolor.... Maybe it's time to break out the old paints :)











ArtRage for the iPad: http://www.artrage.com/artrage-ipad-main.html

Made By Hand

I recently finished the audiobook version of "Made by Hand : Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World", By Mark Frauenfelder. Mark is the founder of one of my favorite blogs, boingboing, and editor in chief of my favorite magazine MAKE Magazine. He recently won Stephen Colbert over with The Most Useless Machine. His geek cred's longer than my 2 year old son's Thomas the Train collection, and that's no small feat. So I don't take what this man has to say lightly.... I'm not being paid to say this, I've only met Mark once at the last Maker Faire, but he's a hero to all of us Maker Geeks, I've been followed him for years.

What I love the most about the book, is his courage for sharing his failures. The fear of failure is what keeps most of us from attempting. That is because the fear is often legit, you don't even know enough to estimate the chances of succeeding, and failure usually comes at a higher cost than you are willing to risk. It is an honest fear that you will screw things up, because you most probably will. I will never get over the fear of failure, but I'm getting better at accepting it in my art and hobby, and thrive on the challenges of doing something new.You loose the fear once you've learned, and you learn by taking the first step, by trying. You don't often forget your mistakes, in fact, Mark makes it clear that failure is necessary for success. Every little success builds onto a better foundation for future projects.

Mark's honesty in his book, about his own maker history, was very inspiring. I learned a lot reading about his failures, and feel connected and proud of him, when he mentioned his successes. I think this is a trait of a maker, perhaps it's just human nature, to find things more impressive when you can relate to them, especially when you can see the human element in the things we love.

Here is something I'd like to share with my experience in inspiring others, and what I mean by the "human element".Years ago, at the first Maker Faire, I was really nervous about presenting my steam robots, this was my first exposure to the public with them. It's one thing to hide behind the internet as this "crabfu" thing, but quite a different animal to show my hobby to thousands of people, and to answer a million questions about the absurdity of "steam powered robots". Not only the public, but here are real makers of real robots, of real kinetic art, real stuff that these masters have made by hand. And how did I end up showing my stuff here? I mean, I didn't even make any of this stuff.... I felt really embarrassed about confessing to people, who rushed to my table, that I mearly combine stuff together in unusal ways, and didn't actually make the parts. In fact, I feel more like an hip hop artist in this respect, than a real "maker". I combine stuff, and make something new and different, as a whole. To my suprise, when I told people that I only Frankensteined the parts together, and I don't actually know how to work a lathe, or a mill, or use much more than my trusty dremel, that's when they became REALLY impressed. How could this be? I thought they would chase me out of this "Maker" faire, because I don't have the skills to use a CNC machine, but they were far more impressed at that fact. It took me a while to wrap my head around this, and to the reason why. I believe the answer is, when people were exposed to how I had made and hack these things together, it made them realize that they could do it too. I told people what worked, what didn't, and how I ended up with the final design. This is empowering, and probably the best motivational kick you could give someone, to let them know how they can do it too, and to make the project tangible, relevant, and human.

This, is the feeling I got from Mark's book. The great stories of how he learned the skills, is more of a human story, and not really a "how to" book. He gives you the sense of how cool making these projects are, which hits me right in the sweet spot. I now want to make a cigar box guitar, raise chickens, maybe even get back into wood carving, and many others projects mentioned in this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in making things. In fact, I think this book is great for people who have always wanted to learn to make stuff, but don't, because that little voice in your head saying: "I don't know anything about how to do this, I don't want to f*)#* it up". Get yourself a nice cup of coffee, kick up your feet, and get ready to be inspired. I've gota get back to researching more about this chicken rising business....


You can find a print version here on amazon, or audiobook version here on audible.