The Interface of a Digital Artist

      I want to talk about some more open source programs, but before I do that, I would first like to talk about a wonderful piece of hardware that I personally own a unit of. This periferal is a graphics tablet; it's a way to interface with your computer as an artist.

      Have you ever tried to draw or paint digitally with a mouse? It's frustrating and difficult, and some (many?) would say even impossible. Now imagine drawing and painting digitally into almost any creative program with a pen stylus and a small to large tablet similar to the mouse pad on your laptop.

      This hardware has a name, and it is called Wacom and works natively on a Windows or Mac OS X machine. There's even a driver maintained for Linux.

Yay Linux!

The unit I currently own...

      The Wacom Company is headquartered in Japan, and others in the United States and Germany. The tablet comes in different sizes, versions, prices, and features, ranging from $50 US to $2,000 US. Regardless of only the few headquarters around the world, they still ship to just about anywhere, if not everywhere.

      Some of their newer units offer touch capabilities, tilt sensing, and more, all very impressive, especially concidering the price. If your are a digital artist of any industry of medium, be it 3D modeling and sculpting to sketching to digital painting to just writing down notes or even writing a paper inside of Microsoft Word, then you should seriously concider a graphics tablet from Wacom.

... and the unit I will eventually own!

                 

      But you may be asking me “Are you being paid to say such things good sir?” and to that I would reply with “Good God no!” and then show you for yourself. So here it goes.

      If you have any interest in digital sculpting in a program like Zbrush, Mudbox, or even using the sculpting tools inside of Blender, you will probably already know that it can be done with just mouse and keyboard, but that like all other forms of digital art, it would just be so much simpiler using your own two hands. Using a graphics tablet means you can directly influence and work with your sculpture. Draw lines on it, cut into it, sculpt features, all more simply with a graphics tablet.

      Digital painting shouldn't even be attempted without a tablet. Get full control over your brush and paint with pressure and tilt sensitivity.

      Wacom does what Nintendon't... wait...

Photo-edit on a budget

         Oh Adobe's Photoshop, one of the miracle programs of the late 20^th century. Few even realize how much this application impacts and alters our perception and vision in our constant day-to-day lives. One can't see a photo in an advertisement anymore without it having gone through Photoshop first. Billboards, commercials, movie posters, Internet ads, and even video games all gain assistance from Photoshop.

         And you too can learn this professional program and use it for many variously applications, be it hobby or professional. But what if you cant afford the price? At nearly 700 bucks, few of us small guys CAN afford this miracle program. So what can you use now if you want to 'shop your dog's head onto your little sister?

         Open source offers the answer in a wonderful program by the name of GIMP (or for you old schoolers “The GIMP”). The Gnu Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, works very similarly to photoshop, offering you the ability to composite photographs together into a new artistic, humorous, or professional image. And that's only the beginning. Much like it's Adobe counterpart, GIMP limits you very little.

         Want to make new icons for the files on your computer? Do it in GIMP.

         Make textures in the video game you're currently making? GIMP allows that freedom.

         And so much more. What's that you ask? The price? Why my good friend, its simple.

         GIMP is an open source program and follows a specific philosophy. Its Free: Free as in beer, and free as in freedom. Thats right. If you know coding, you can get the code the makes up the program, and alter it, making it work better for you. Or perhaps you need a tool to behave a different way, or need a new one all together. Make it and share it for others, many others already do just that.

         If you have been holding back on doing those silly or hobby artist images because of the cost of other well known programs, don't. Download GIMP from here, and set yourself free!

An Introduction

Hmm... a little about me huh? Well, I am a current student in Graphic Communications at ITT Technical Institute, and i have been using various digital art programs for about a year now. I have been teaching myself so it has been slow going but enjoyable.
This blog will be me talking about various programs i have used and enjoy or just in general find to be very interesting. My hope is you as a reader will discover something new, something fresh, and maybe even learn somethings. Enjoy