Computers

My rich younger brother bought a new Intuos for reasons I do not comprehend and gave me his old one. This is nice and all, but having used my tiny 6x4 Graphire. Problem is, thanks to the size change, my work flow has been completely thrown off. It's hard to explain, but basically I can't judge the distance between objects on screen anymore. I'll be looking at something, but I can't tell how far or at what angle I need to move the pen in order to undertake what I'm trying to do.

Finally, I gave up for the time being and thought "Well, maybe I can plug my Graphire back in so I can finish off today's page?" I tried this, and all I managed to do was crash my computer. :/

Guess I'll just have to keep practicing with the Intuos so I can get the page up next week.

I ended up having to replace my 19" CRT display (the screen was turning yellow) with an old 17" one that I had lying around. Losing two inches may not seem like much, but... My goodness, everything is so small now! I'd take my resolution down, but Photoshop is hard to operate (for me, at least) at anything under 1280x960.

However, more importantly, this aged moniter has an awkward distortion issue. If I have a bunch of squares on the screen that are all the same size, the ones in the middle will be thinner than those on the sides. I can even drag things around the screen and watch them "magically" resize themselves!

...Yeah, this is going to be a problem. XD

I have a two moniter setup, so I may just switch them around and use this one as my secondary moniter, and the other one to do the bulk of my work in. Granted, it's not like the other one is in that great shape, either. :/

My computer continues to have trouble, so I'll be giving it a much-needed upgrade, as well as a hard drive reformat. Hopefully this won't be too troublesome... Oh, who am I kidding? This week is going to be miserable! I don't expect to get a whole lot of work done, but I will still get Friday's page up. Sketchbook Monday, on the other hand, may not apparear this week. A pity too, because I actually had several things to use!

I use an entry-level professional art scanner for Vision Riders, purchased for the mere fact that it was the only 11x17 flatbed scanner that was within the company's budget at the time. Weighs a half a ton (well, almost) but it has a wonderful scan quality and, of course, it's big! However, it is now the only scanner hooked up to my computer and, even scanning in low resolution, this thing is SLOW. S-L-O-W! Normally, this isn't a problem. Swordmaster Odyssey pages come into my system at 600dpi, and I only need two or three at a time.

But for animation, where I need to scan many sheets at a time... Sheesh... It takes a great deal longer than it probably should. If I had room, I'd considering hooking up another scanner, but for the time being, I will have to learn patience (and multitasking).

Today I learned that my computer simply can't handle a 10x15 inch image scanned in at 1200 dpi. Guess I better stick to 600 dpi...