Yes, yes I do, compliments of the company,and I have gotten this baffled expression of, "what are YOU complaining about?" before. Don't get me wrong, I know it's a very expensive piece of equipment that can do some amazing things (great to watch DVD's on, too!), but I do have some "issues", although they may not be a problem for anyone else: -The display is nice and big, but not quite as crisp or color-accuate as a regular monitor -It's very big, heavy, and cumbersome - to really take advantage of the "spinning" base, you need a pretty big, clear space on your desk, and I have two desks, neither one the right size or height to use it properly (the worst was when I tried it on my animation desk - I was cramping up my back and my legs to achieve the right posture to use it - ugh! A tablet, on the other hand, can fit comfortably on your lap, be turned any which way, AND you have the advantage of not having your pen or your hand obstructing your view of your work, which can be a problem with fine details, or when you're clicking on small type (I tend to hit the wrong stuff a lot). But the number one problem I have with the thing (and, more specifically, with Photoshop and Iview) is that for a few months I HAD to use them to produce my storyboards, under a lot of pressure and tight deadlines. Now, there are people here (you may be one of them) who would have no problem with that - they love drawing this way, they got used to it quickly, and would never go back. For ME to do continuity boards on the computer from start to finish was pure agony and frustration - I worked at a fraction of the speed I'm used to, my drawings were stiff, overworked, poorly staged, and I had tremendous problems with "flipping" the drawings so they flowed together properly. I'm accustomed to working very quick and dirty, needing only a pad of paper, a marker, and maybe a pencil to be as rough or as detailed as I wanted, making changes on the fly anywhere and being able to show them to people without finding and opening a file, waiting for the scene to boot up, dealing with network problems, power outtages, memory issues, corrupted files (despite all of the backups and safety precautions, we've had weeks' worth of work vanish in the blink of an eye whenever two people accidentaly tried to view the same scene at the same time!), etc.,etc. All of the bells and whistles that actually come in handy when I'm cleaning up a sequence, or making adjustments, are a nuisance at best when I'm just trying to rough out a sequence quickly. To compensate for the loss of productivity and quality in my work, I was literally living at work for weeks on end, barely sleeping, and getting no compensation for the overtime because my show didn't hav it in the budget. Those months represents an absolute low point in my life, not to mentin my work. There are several of us here who, after killing ourselves trying to learn this AND meet our deadlines have given up on generating artwork (from scratch) on the cintique, and have gone back to paper (primarily), and luckily the studio is supporting us in this. The reason I'm back on the cintique now is I have to go in and make changes to the awful sequence I started on the cintique previously, and after a few months of wonderful freedom, it is painful to go back again! Eventually, I do hope to get more comfortable with it (perhaps Disney will allow us to use better software for storyboarding, too, someday), especially if I have some downtime to experiment with, but as long as I have tight deadlines to keep, it is a heavy stone around my neck, dragging me down...! (yeah, I know, you STILL don't feel sorry for me, but I'm being totally honest here!)
Ah, the Cintique in all its glory...(stand back! He's gonna blow!)
-The display is nice and big, but not quite as crisp or color-accuate as a regular monitor
-It's very big, heavy, and cumbersome - to really take advantage of the "spinning" base, you need a pretty big, clear space on your desk, and I have two desks, neither one the right size or height to use it properly (the worst was when I tried it on my animation desk - I was cramping up my back and my legs to achieve the right posture to use it - ugh! A tablet, on the other hand, can fit comfortably on your lap, be turned any which way, AND you have the advantage of not having your pen or your hand obstructing your view of your work, which can be a problem with fine details, or when you're clicking on small type (I tend to hit the wrong stuff a lot).
But the number one problem I have with the thing (and, more specifically, with Photoshop and Iview) is that for a few months I HAD to use them to produce my storyboards, under a lot of pressure and tight deadlines. Now, there are people here (you may be one of them) who would have no problem with that - they love drawing this way, they got used to it quickly, and would never go back. For ME to do continuity boards on the computer from start to finish was pure agony and frustration - I worked at a fraction of the speed I'm used to, my drawings were stiff, overworked, poorly staged, and I had tremendous problems with "flipping" the drawings so they flowed together properly. I'm accustomed to working very quick and dirty, needing only a pad of paper, a marker, and maybe a pencil to be as rough or as detailed as I wanted, making changes on the fly anywhere and being able to show them to people without finding and opening a file, waiting for the scene to boot up, dealing with network problems, power outtages, memory issues, corrupted files (despite all of the backups and safety precautions, we've had weeks' worth of work vanish in the blink of an eye whenever two people accidentaly tried to view the same scene at the same time!), etc.,etc. All of the bells and whistles that actually come in handy when I'm cleaning up a sequence, or making adjustments, are a nuisance at best when I'm just trying to rough out a sequence quickly. To compensate for the loss of productivity and quality in my work, I was literally living at work for weeks on end, barely sleeping, and getting no compensation for the overtime because my show didn't hav it in the budget. Those months represents an absolute low point in my life, not to mentin my work. There are several of us here who, after killing ourselves trying to learn this AND meet our deadlines have given up on generating artwork (from scratch) on the cintique, and have gone back to paper (primarily), and luckily the studio is supporting us in this. The reason I'm back on the cintique now is I have to go in and make changes to the awful sequence I started on the cintique previously, and after a few months of wonderful freedom, it is painful to go back again! Eventually, I do hope to get more comfortable with it (perhaps Disney will allow us to use better software for storyboarding, too, someday), especially if I have some downtime to experiment with, but as long as I have tight deadlines to keep, it is a heavy stone around my neck, dragging me down...! (yeah, I know, you STILL don't feel sorry for me, but I'm being totally honest here!)