AuthorTopic: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art  (Read 3876 times)

Offline Kain Nobel

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Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

on: January 08, 2011, 03:54:56 pm
Good day everybody!

For the longest time, I've wanted to get a portable tablet (such as a Wacom) with some sort of a touch/pen screen, but thought it silly to shell out $1,000+ big bucks just to be able to pixel on the go. Well, as time goes on I still want to get something that'll allow me to doodle without being stuck to a desktop or laptop. The only problem is I'm not geek enough to know much about all these new iPads, Androids, etc...

I do know that HP Slate supports Windows 7, which is good because I would like to install GraphicsGale and the like to it, plus the 10 inch screen and resolution sound nice. There are other ones I've seen that have better specs 'n the such, but I am unfamiliar with both Apple and Android. For the latter, I had browsed google for its pixel artsy apps, and all I found was a half-arsed app with no undo/redo, then a bunch of fancy NPA photo filter and effects apps (which I don't really care for).

What kind of portable devices have you folks used or, better yet, recommend? I do like the bonus of having all the fancy media stuff (listen to my tunes at least), but the #1 reason I'm getting one is for pixels... is this even feasible? Should I get one of these portable media slate devices, or would a Wacom tablet be a better investment and easier to use?

I would like to hear your testimonials and recommendations on this, thank you in advance for taking the time to help me out :y:

Offline Tourist

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Re: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

Reply #1 on: January 09, 2011, 07:32:55 pm
I had a similar thought a while ago, but focused on older PDAs as an alternative.  Unfortunately I didn't find what I was looking for.  A combination of a good pixel app, long battery life, easy data transfer to the desktop, and a reliable unit at a cheap price.  Hope you have better luck!

Tourist

Offline setz

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Re: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

Reply #2 on: January 09, 2011, 09:05:00 pm
I have an old Nokia n800, it doesn't have any decent pixel-level editors, but it has a few that make it great for doodling on the go, Maemopad+, and MyPaint are both good for that. Maemopad+ just has a doodle/sketch application with no real features, but MyPaint is a lot more of a painting application, it takes some work, but you can set up a pixel brush to use in it. Its got a fairly small screen compared to 10 inches, but it can fit in your pocket nicely :)

Its an older device, so you can probably find it affordable on e-bay and the like, runs Linux (which is a big plus for me, but not everyone). I wouldn't recommend it for serious pixel work, and i've found nothing but other uses for it since getting it, but its very fitting for getting some ideas down before you lose them while you're out.

Other uses: skypephone, irc/aim/msn/email, games/emulators, network storage, reminders, makes a good mp3 player with headphones too, though its got built-in speakers. You can probably find it for sub-$100 on e-bay, I'm pretty sure that's where mine was gotten.

Offline Ai

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Re: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

Reply #3 on: January 09, 2011, 09:47:37 pm
but MyPaint is a lot more of a painting application, it takes some work, but you can set up a pixel brush to use in it.
actually in recent versions of MyPaint, my pixel brushes are included, in the 'experimental' section.
If you insist on being pessimistic about your own abilities, consider also being pessimistic about the accuracy of that pessimistic judgement.

Offline Kasumi

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Re: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

Reply #4 on: January 09, 2011, 10:44:45 pm
Choice 1: A Nintendo DS with a flash card and Animanatee is my choice at the moment. It allows for a lot of colors in its palette, and changing a color's values across all frames is easy. You just tweak the color's values in the palette editor. It has two layers (but one must be cleared each time if you want it to be different across frames) It supports masking, remasking, many brush sizes accessible by a slider, and is a really slick animation program. You can animate anywhere from 1 to 30 FPS. It has quite a lot of undos and redos too! (And the buffer stays even when adding, deleting or editing different frames, unlike  EZtoon) This program is super easy to pick up.

Animanatee Cons:  

1. Getting an image file is tough. Being an animation program, it only exports AVIs. You must run your AVI in something like irfanview that allows you to copy a frame and then paste it to get an image file. You can also drop the AVI into something like microsoft gif animator, and it should read the frames as normal.
2. Because of DS' screen, Animanatee only allows you to choose 32 scaled values for each channel (RGB) rather than 256
3. Picking colors with RGB values is not so easy. I taught myself to do okay with it by seeing how HSV sliders affect RGB values for this program though.
4. Fixed Resolution of 248x194
5. Only 100 save slots for animation. You could use one slot for like 5,000 images as individual frames in an animation though, as long as you made sure new images didn't mess with the old images palette in the same file. Alternatively, just copy them to your PC, and delete them from the flash card.
6. No select tool. You can copy the frame to a new frame, erase everything you don't need, and then use onion skinning with the previous frame to place it where you want, then copy it back. But this is as much fun as it sounds like.  :'(
7. You can't import an image into an animanatee file. This one really bugs me, because I like animating pixel art in it better than anything else.

Animanatee is open source, so if you're a programmer you may be able to fix some of this.

Even with these cons, it is actually one of my absolute favorite pixel art apps (and animation programs) including all the ones on PC. It has such a fast work flow, everything is right there.

DS+Flash card is also relatively cheap. Interestingly, the DS Lite and original DS (not the DSi models) have a form of pressure sensitivity, and while Animanatee barely supports it, there is another program called Colors! which is a real antialiased paint program which uses it if you ever feel like actually painting as well. This is an equally good program, that I also like quite a lot even compared to PC programs. I bought a DS Lite just for the art apps.

Media: DS can play mp3s, videos and display images, but it's not particularly good at any of that. And you can't say, listen to music while you're working in Animanatee.

Price = 155ish USD for a brand new DS Lite and a flash cart + 2GB SD card, without shipping.

Choice 2: There is the GP2X Wiz (and possibly later GP2X models) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X_Wiz

I haven't used it, but it has a touch screen, is open source and has some pixel art apps that SEEM really good. It's an old model of the GP2X handhelds and as far as I can tell, apps written for it have to be changed to work on newer models, so you may have to buy this used, or find a place that sells it new if the pixel app you're looking for hasn't been ported to it.

http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ GrafX2 has been ported to it. But there are probably issues with it you may wish to look into: http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/issues/detail?id=383

There are probably loads of other pixel art apps for it too, but who knows how good they are.

Again, I emphasize I haven't used it, but it may be worth researching. It's an option many people may not know about, so I'm throwing it out there.

Media: I have no idea. I assume it's loads better than DS for this though.

Price = 150ish USD for the console if you can find it new. (without shipping)

If you have any other questions about DS art stuff, let me know. I can't answer questions about the wiz, sadly.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2011, 11:15:15 pm by Kasumi »
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Offline surt

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Re: Slate Tablets & Pixel Art

Reply #5 on: January 10, 2011, 03:07:09 am
I quite like the look of the Asus Eee Note, it's only greyscale, but it's got a wacom digitiser and a good long battery life. It doesn't look to be available yet though.