Spanish artist Xoan Baltar, illustrator and fingerpainter par excellence, was one of the first to kick off the iPhone art revolution in 2008. Now he has pushed the curve again by releasing a game entirely fingerprinted on the iPad.
You can download it to your iPhone or iPad here
Way to go Xoan!
OK Fingerpainters, for those of you who prefer the comfort of a stylus there is a new one on the market, that I have had the honor of testing for the last 6 months and I must say it is my favorite of the new crop. It’s the Pogo Sketch Pro. Yes, made by the same people that gave you the small foam tipped beauty you could clip to your iPhone. The Pro version sports many new design features, each hitting a home run as far as I’m concerned. Fist, the purified solid aluminum tapered body, more reminiscent of a paintbrush than a pen. It’s about 5.5 inches long, an inch longer than the Wacom Bamboo and inch and a quarter longer than the griffen/targus/boxwave brands. Like the Bamboo it has extraordinary balance. Unlike any others though you can hold it at any angle.
That’s right, 5 degrees to straight up 90 it works. I have many, many styluses (styli?) in my collection and no other performs like this one does. It has a new patent pending tip technology involving patterned structures with in the tip itself. Kind of like little perforated holes so the tip is in constant contact with your preferred slab of joy. It is comfortable with my iPad 2 on an easel or iProp as well as my iPod Touch in hand.
It’s really responsive. The rubber tip being the same size and “squishiness” as the Bamboo (which is also a good choice for those who prefer a pen type stylus). The Pro also has a comfort grip, my hand never tires of using it. And best of all, it’s affordable at $24.95. It comes with 2 tips (I didn’t know that while I was testing.) The new rubber one and the classic foam tip. And even more good news, in October you will be able to purchase just replacement tips if anything happens to your Pogo Pro. I have had a fair share of the rubber tipped wonders just stop working and I love the idea of protecting my initial investment. I don’t know the price on those yet. I’m sure an announcement will come soon.
Now for those of you who are going to ask how it compares to my stylus socks…. I still LOVE those too. I am going to admit that my homemade charcoal holder with a shapedad plug shoved in it is still my favorite, but that’s because working with an easel the almost 10 inch length is best for me. But I am an odd duck.
I do carry the Pogo Pro everywhere I take my iPad or Touch. It’s especially good at taking notes as well as painting. I am waiting for the kickstarter Flow brush and the Cosmonaut… last I’ve heard they are still in production You will get my opinion as soon as they get to my door. Conclusion… if you like a stylus, You’ll love the Pogo Sketch Pro.
I recently discovered a really cool and fascinating animated series called Johnny Scribble. Its about a well dressed (ok, well, i like his tie!) stick figure who faces endless threats of of mobile digital mayhem orchestrated by his arch nemesis Bowtie Bibble. The series is drawn and animated on an iPad using Red-Software’s Animation Creator HD app . Continue reading
Like we mentioned earlier, Adobe has just announced an update of Photoshop CS5 along with three iPad companion apps. One of those apps might be of particular interest for fingerpainters: Adobe Eazel. If you expected a photoshop-like paint experience in Adobes next iOS based painting app, be prepared to be surprised.
When you open up Eazel for the first time a short intro video shows up to introduce you to the interface. Which might be well needed, because Eazel doesn’t come with your well-known toolbars, popup menus and all. Instead it features two UI modes called up by a 5-finger-tap: the persistant and the ephemeral mode.
In the maybe more familiar persistent mode, you get 5 buttons to change size, color, opacity, to get to the settings and to undo/redo/clear. The buttons sit centered in the middle of the screen and get dismissed once you tap on the background.
The ephemeral mode in Eazel
So how does it feel?
The iPad 2 “feels” like a much smaller tablet. It’s lighter and thinner. The thing that surprised me the most about the iPad 2 was the weight. It’s much more comfortable to hold. If you lay it on a table it doesn’t wobble like the original iPad.
How fast is it?
Just swiping screens around you won’t notice much of a speed bump. No big deal.
I decided to give Artrage a try. I did a memory wipe restart on both iPads so they started with a clean slate.
I sat with both iPads on my lap and launched Artrage in unison. Artrage started some seconds faster on the iPad 2. I should have timed it, but it was more than noticeable.
On new canvases, I selected the largest watercolor brush with the wet on wet setting. I applied a large red triangle with a fast stroke on both iPads. The iPad 2 finished the three triangle sides before the original iPad finished the first side. The iPad 2 is quite a bit faster, but not fast enough to remove the lag of the watercolor brush. I changed colors (blue) and brushed again making sure to do some round circles to mix the colors. The original iPad had barely started the stroke by the time the iPad 2 finished. Not impressive, but almost.
Next, I opened up the Artree app. The purpose of this app is to auto generate trees. I never thought anything about the speed or growth of the tree. The original iPad seemed fine, growing the tree in a relaxing way. Artree on the iPad 2 grew much much faster, it was a little shocking.
Last, I tested the Brushes app. On new canvases, I just made some fast strokes. Brushes is already really fast and neither iPad lagged. Not a very good test.
I exited the painting to the gallery and highlighted a painting I did a few weeks ago. The painting has a good number of strokes. I timed the playback on the original iPad. The movie of the painting played back in 3 minutes, 4 seconds. That same painting on iPad 2? 2 minutes and 2 seconds. Damn fast in comparison.
Those were just a few quick tests.
Should you upgrade?
It depends on a couple of things. If you feel like the apps you use are slow, then you could certainly benefit with an upgrade. For instance, I love Artrage, but some of the tools are really slow. For me that was a deal breaker. Artrage on the iPad 2, while not lag free, seems much more up to the challenge. But it’s not as good as my iMac.
If you think that painting on the iPad has been revolutionary and you are happy with how it’s going, I wouldn’t recommend the upgrade. If you have the spare cash, I think it’s worth the upgrade. I obviously made it myself and doubt I will regret it. I’m painting more than I ever did before and now it will be faster.
The iPad 2 is a step in the evolution of the tablet genre, but it’s not in my opinion a new product.
Rebelpapa
iPad 2 has been unveiled with a fast approaching worldwide release date (March 11, 2011). Looks like its got some cool new features. But are they enough? Does it meet the mark for the mobile artist?
I had a wishlist for only a couple new features–MORE memory (to minimize crashing) and video-out–for ALL apps. Though I have to say, the thinner, lighter in white does draw me a bit.
Check the list of upgrades: Continue readingThe long awaited iPad vector app from Steve Sprang debuted at the last MobileArtCon has been released today in the App Store.
Steve Sprang’s first app Brushes became an immediate sensation in 2008 triggering a fingerpainting revolution. Inkpad is a full feature vector software.
Here is the description from the app store:
From the creators of Brushes! Inkpad is a professional vector illustration app designed from scratch for the iPad. It supports paths, compound paths, text, images, groups, masks, gradient fills, and an unlimited number of layers. Inkpad was designed with performance in mind – it can easily handle drawings with hundreds to thousands of shapes without bogging down.
To celebrate the launch, Inkpad will be available for $1.99 for a limited time. Get it now before the price goes up!
Features:
• Very high performance. Select, scale and rotate hundreds of objects with zero lag. • Create arbitrary bezier paths with the Pen tool. • Create compound paths, masks and groups. • Create text objects. • Place photos from your albums. • Powerful scale and rotate tools. • Gradient fills with interactive editing on canvas. • Swatch library. • Unlimited layers per drawing. • Rename, rearrange, delete, hide and lock layers. • Snap to grid, points, and path edges. • Isolate the active layer for easy editing. • Email drawings as SVG, PDF, PNG and JPEG. • Send SVG, PDF, PNG, and JPEG directly to your Dropbox.
Michael, you have been an inspiration to me and other bloggers and artists for years. From your hilltop in Wales, even though you have an illness that saps your energy, you draw every day, blog and post links to the best art known to man. You have helped many other people ill or not, make better use of their time and energy or be, as you put it, Sustainably Creative.
Last time we spoke you were still waiting for your ipad and your daily drawing was with pencils and sharpie pens.
FP: So, how do you like the iPad?
Autodesk (creators of Sketchbook Mobile and Sketchbook Pro for iphone and iPad) have teamed up with O Magazine to create Sketchbook O, a free drawing/painting application for readers who’d like to explore and partake in the joys of fingerpainting. Continue reading
