Wacom Bamboo. Software and info for Art on them (XP from High School forum)

[Lanny]

When I read a thread on WTM (begun on 23 July 2021) in the High School forum,  I asked my DD to write a response, which I will Copy and Paste Below. We bought her a Wacom Bamboo tablet by surprise, when she began taking a Math course from TTUISD in 6th grade and it went off to UNC Chapel Hill with her.   🙂  The only other thing I know about this topic is that years ago we bought her the Paint Tool Sai Software and it was sold by someone in Japan.  Below is Copied and Pasted from an email DD sent to me this morning. Possibly this will help the OP or someone else who has participated in this thread or will read it in the future. This is my first Cross Post and is also on the High School forum. 

 

Since she's interested in animation, highly recommend https://creatureartteacher.com/ . This guy used to animate for Disney, and often his courses go on discount for a handful of dollars.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxYH9DWyVmMpS9NgyxoTFQ this guy might also be useful - they might recognize him from "animator vs animation" fame. I can only really speak to his 12 principles of animation video though -- I have more experience with 3d than 2d animation (little though that is).

 

If she's interested in 3d sculpting/animation, this guy's videos were super easy to follow along for me: https://www.youtube.com/user/mediagabbitt

 

If she's looking to just get familiar with the tools of digital art programs... Honestly a lot of it depends on first choosing a program, and then looking up a tutorial for said program, because often they have different features. If she's familiar working with layers, masks, brushes, filters, etc. the basics won't change and it will just be a matter of getting familiarized with a specific program. From there it's easier to work on specific parts of art she might want to improve, such as... anatomy, composition, color palettes, etc.

 

She's asking about courses, not programs, but since I first misread the question might as well include...

 

Paint Tool Sai is the one we bought. She should likely get v2 - I think it's out now, and it has more features. It's simple but powerful. No animation feature that I know of.

 

If she wants a full-fledged digital art program that's also free, she should try Krita. A lot more complicated than PTS, but if she's familiar with say, photoshop or gimp, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch. It does have animation but it's a feature still in the workshop and won't be 'fully realized' until the next version (5.0) comes out at least. Even so, it's still usable, if basic, and the digital art side of it is excellent. It also has a database of tutorials, iirc.

 

Clip Studio Paint is the most expensive of the digital art options I know, but it's also an industry leader. It constantly goes on sale so if they're willing to wait or pay the full amount, that can work. It has several different packages available, and a very good animation feature. I'd recommend trying out the free trial with this one and seeing how she likes it before buying, or at least waiting for a sale.

 

I've heard lots of good things about Procreate lately, but I think that's for Ipad only.

 

For animation specifically there are also several ways to go--  Blender is a 3d modeling/animation program that, technically, supports 2d animation. It's a very powerful program, and even pros rarely master all aspects of it, so it really depends on how her interest in animation intersects with 3d.

 

Purely 2d the only one I have experience with is OpenToonz, of Studio Ghibli fame. It is a very powerful program, but not entirely intuitive. Pencil 2d is widely regarded as the simplest (but still usable) choice. It might be better to learn animation using that, before diving into powerhouses like OpenToonz.

[Kasongo]

OpenToonz, Synfig Studio, Pencil 2D,  TupiTube are completely free 2d animation software options. for digital painting programs there also have free options such as Krita, Medibang Paint, Sketchbook, Mypaint....

The Wacom bamboo tablets are pretty old, The Intuos replaced the Bamboo series, but you should be okay if you’re using windows OS. (MacOS Catalina drivers are problematic for the older tablets...).
Im a professional animator and ill tell you nothing is as intuitive as drawing on to a screen with an expensive cintiq but if you cant afford this a new XPPen Artist is actually a more accurate drawing device than all but the very newest cintiqs.
I remember in the past dreaming about a Wacom cintiq 16', but  it's super expensive and only huge studios have one for demos, and class, no one was crazy in the time to spend so much money in a tablet.
But nowadays I have a XPPen Artist 15.6 Pro screen drawing pad 16", something I used to dream about, for 1/3 of the price of a Cintq, and I can't be more happy about it, I mean, I don't have problems, I don't see people having problems, the support is awsome, the brand XPPen does so much more than wacom that I feel like, wacom does not care anymore about their products.