Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - Wacom Tablets and the sort, any tips?

Hey homies!
So I recently got a wacom tablet to ink Mad Dog in! but I'm still getting used to it,
anybody have any tips on how to ink comics nicely? I use Photoshop, but I have mangastudio, just got it recently. Haven't tried it much though. Is Manga better you think? Or do you have any tips for photo shop inking?

It would be really appreciated, thanks!!!! :D

Congrats on the new purchase. I have the Wacom Bamboo and I love it. I don't use it to draw for my comic (since everything in it is computer generated) but I have attempted drawing with it. It comes in handy for easily navigating through my 3D scenes. A glorified touch surface so to speak.

For me it takes a lot of getting used to. Looking at the screen while you're drawing on a tablet still feels strange for me.

I'd also be interested in hearing some tips from the experts here :)

Very cool! Yeah that's a big thing for me as well, looking up at the screen while drawing!

You'll get used to looking at the screen while drawing :D

I still kinda struggle with it at times but practice makes perfect and it's becoming almost second nature now :D

I have faith in yer skills, my friend.

One thing that I really found to help me in getting used to it is to trace pictures, either mine or someone else's, to practice just basic drawing because it really is a new skill to move from drawing with pen and paper to drawing on the tablet. Also, pushing myself to draw with longer motions because they can look a bit wobbly is you draw a line in short stunted motions.

So, practice.

Thanks man! I appreciate you saying that!! Yeah I just gotta practice with it a lot! :D

That's a great idea actually! Trace pictures! I'm going to try that! Sounds fun and a good way to get used to it! Thanks again!

Check out utube for loads of tutorials on inking with tablets,if you have illustrator...try using the tools on that with your tablet,you can get some great clean,crisp black lines ...lovely.

I don't use my tablet for drawing a lot (though locness speaks true, I wouldn't think of modeling without it) but I would have a few tips:
- Its default button settings are unlikely to be the most convenient for you. It really depends on the user too much for the default to suit everyone. I don't know where the guys of Bamboo had the idea that double-click should equal right-click, but it was certainly a dumb place.
- Tablets are very precise and smooth for tracing, but when point-and-clicking, you can't really aim for a pixel like on a mouse. If you also have a mouse plugged in, or a laptop with those mouse-panel-things, clicking with its buttons while aiming with the pen will allow to get that precision back.

'Tablet wobble' is an issue because your tablet and stylus feel more slippery than pencil and paper. Some people counteract this by putting a sheet of paper on the tablet or by using stylus nibs that have more drag. Others use the smoothing feature of programs like Sai, which make the kinks in your wobbly line magically smooth out!

Personally I found the most important thing was to use software with free rotate, which allows you to swivel the page around as a real world inker inker would. This means you can ink all your lines in the direction of the natural sweep of your forearm, creating smooth curves and controlled authoritative lines. At least, that's the general idea! I don't know about photoshop but Sai has free rotate and so does MyPaint. I tried Sai for a while but I couldn't replicate my traditional inking until I discovered MyPaint - it's really important to find the software that's right for you. Otherwise it's like playing a Les Paul through a transistor radio.

I actually love drawing with a tablet because watching the drawing appear on the screen still fills me with excitement (so sad) and your hand never gets in the way.

The biggest advice I can give is to experiment with stroke smoothing settings. Many of the best tablet programs - SAI, Photoshop, FireAlpaca, etc - allow you to set it to your liking, and when inking, it's extremely useful.

Hm! MyPaint looks pretty neat.

I got the hang of mine by using it to color with, rather than tracing. I used to do silly ink messages in MSN for friends too, it's good just draw a picture of whatever with it each day to help get the hang of it I guess.

For drawing with you'll either want to be zoomed in a lot in photoshop, or using that manga program and its smoothing feature.

Yeah, I've watched a few already there are some good ones out there!

Aw, goood idea! Thanks for the tip there!

I never heard of Sai, I should check that out. Apparently my wacom allows me to do that swivel thing with my hand, I have to try it out! Thanks!!

So manga has the smooth feature? Nice!!

I'm just guessing that it does.

Sai has smoothing, you can select from several degrees - and you can get a similar effect by tweaking the brush parameters on MyPaint.

Edit: I should mention that if you're going to try MyPaint for comics, you'll need to use it in conjuction with another program, as it has no editing features of it's own. I use Gimp because you can set it up to open the ora files that MyPaint uses - the latest Gimp 2.8 might even be set up for that anyway; I know it was on their list of additions for 2.8.

I use MangaStudio. I recommend REMOVING the smoothing feature, it actually desensitizes line variation, IMO.

Here's some big things I suggest you should do: draw from your elbow/your entire arm, not your wrist. Even if your tablet is tiny, try drawing from your whole arm instead of just short little strokes. You'll save yourself some wrist pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, and you'll produce smoother looking lines. It will take a while to practice, but it's super worth it.

Try doing a full drawing, from sketch to inks to colors, on your tablet. I found the best way to get used to the tablet is just to draw with it more. My roommate was originally a watercolorist before she forced herself to use the tablet for her digital art classes. It took her a few months but she finally got it, her Photoshop drawings look just as good as her watercolors, skill-wise.