A great idea (that someone already came up with)
I was editing some photos for a friend’s website using a graphics tablet and realized that not looking at your hand while you are drawing/writing/painting is one of the most unnatural things known to man – if only I could see what I was editing and watch my hand at work all at the same time!
And then the light bulb flickered in my head – what if you could combine a graphics tablet with an LCD screen? After all, all the technology is readily available: graphics tablets, flat LCD screens, touch screens. What an awesome idea! I would be a millionaire … uh … except someone had the idea long before me – I’m about as quick as molasses on a cold day at the North Pole.
Of course someone had done it before: Wacom released their awesome Cintiq range of products back in 2001. But, with prices starting in the $hundreds, owning one for myself is a pipe dream.
Ok, so maybe my idea isn’t quite dead yet, I already own an Intuos2 and you can pick up lcd screens dirt cheap from eBay – can’t I somehow duct tape the two together to create my very own poor-man’s Cintiq?
A quick search on Google leads me to Bongofish (a.k.a. Drew Northcott). Well crap, hundreds of people have already beat me to the idea (why do I even pretend to be surprised).
The light bulb in my head is not only off, but also unscrewed and smashed to smithereens. But, reading through Drew’s experiences really opened my eyes: he, and the contributors in his forum, have already solved problems I didn’t even know existed. Bongofish has really encouraged me – even if it’s not original, my idea is possible!
Join me over the coming weeks (months?) as I build my very own Cintiq clone. Hopefully I’ll have as much success as Bongofish et al, if not what have I got to lose? I can always put the Wacom back together, right?
Tags: cintiq, graphics tablet, intuos2, project log, wacom, Wapaq
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm and is filed under Wapaq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.