Thanks for the comments and the questions regarding the Cintiq. The price tag of $999 put me off for a long time. I figured, if I had that much money I'd buy a new computer! Ha! My goal in getting a Cintiq, even though it was the cheapest model available, was to increase my speed and be able to go completely paperless. After two years I can say that it has helped me to increase my speed but I still do all my roughs with paper and pencil. It just feels more natural and I am still much faster that way. I can rotate my paper, see the overall sketch at all times and still be able to focus in on the small details. It's kind of like the difference between a digital watch and an analog watch. The digital just shows you the current second while the analog lets you see the overall concept. So I like that while I'm sketching. As you see in the tutorial, I try to adhere pretty closely to my pencil sketch as I feel it has a more organic, handmade look to it. Vector is so concise and technical it just sucks all the life out of art. As a side note here in regards to sketching with pencil and paper, my current favorite mechanical pencil is a Uni Kuru Toga 0.5. It has a mechanism for rotating the lead as you draw thus keeping the point sharp--at least that's the theory. I really like it and have begun frequenting the JetPens.com site to see all the latest pencils and erasers. But I digress...
Back to the Cintiq. I hardly ever use it with Toon Boom as the 12WX is so darn small it's hard to see all the many already microscopic palettes. I only use it with Toon Boom for doing some custom drawing that I forgot to do in Xara before importing into TB. I haven't gotten used to TBs drawing tools so much as I am much more comfortable with Xara and way faster. I have been doing all my storyboard sketching directly on the tablet while using TB Storyboard Pro as the sketches don't have to be final drawings but just rough concepts, so that is nice and saves time for that aspect of my work.
That's one thing I really miss, drawing on a large monitor like when I used my Intuos. I see many artists using them with a nice big screen and I have been tempted to install my old tablet and use both. But my desk is already cluttered up enough so I'll stick with the Cintiq. Some day when I am "rich and famous" I hope to get a larger model Cintiq and maybe then I'll be completely paperless. Who knows!
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