I finally broke down and bought myself a drawing tablet. Since trying to design my game Steel Samurai, I’ve been thinking a lot about creating my own assets.
My Steel Samurai project uses free pixel art assets. I tried for a moment to mess with pixel art but dropped it quickly. Instead I figured if I was going to learn something new, it might as well be Blender.
Between tutorials and asking ChatGPT for assistance, I was able to make basic shapes. I noticed in tutorials that many people used tablets inside Blender.
The obvious way is using it when sculpting. (Is it called Z Brush? Hopefully you know what it’s called.) But even startign with the basic cube I watched people tap away with stylus and create shapes easily.
Of course my brain said, “I can’t learn anymore Blender until I get a tablet!” So for $40 I ordered the Wacom Intuous.
I knew there would be a learning curve to this style of tablet. Most obviously, looking at your screen and not your hand. So, before starting Blender back up I loaded in Gimp.
This is when I discovered there is a difference in drawing software and image editing software. Gimp can handle tablets….I think. But out of the box I was having issues.
For my sanity, and just to try it out, I downloaded Krita. Instantly everything worked. (Aside from needing to contain my tablet to one monitor instead of both)
I’m not an artist by any stretch, but I tried sketching a few things from reference.
Digital art is fucking hard! I KNEW it was going to be harder, but for some reason I didn’t think it would be…..that hard..ya know? I really thought traditional drawing would translate better digitally. Definitely not!
Here is a few attempts I made:
I’m not winning any awards with these, but it is extremely satisfying to see them digital rather than on a piece of paper. I’m impressed how much they still look like pencil sketches.
Now what this did make me realize is the sheer amount of talent and labor that goes into making a fully rendered and colored digital piece.
Overall, I’m happy with the tablet. It gets the job done, and I think after a few hours I got more comfortable with using it. I’m going to continue with Krita for a few days before going back to Blender though.