Wacom Bamboo Tablet?

[Taniaetc]

Hi everyone,
I'm currently planning to buy a wacom bamboo pen (find more information here). And yes I'm getting kinda tired colouring in pencil since the some of the colours I want are not "there". So I decided to buy the tablet to help me in digital drawing and colouring.
Before I waste my money on that, I just wanna ask whether bamboo tablets are satisfying or not.
And a bit offtopic, has anyone tried corel painter essentials 4? was it good?
I'm gonna use gimp as the program to colour in, and has anyone tried that too?
edit: I actually am NOT using a tablet for spriting. It's for colouring artworks and stuff BUT sprites. that would be way too... hard?

[LutiChris]

hmmm i im gonna get one for my birthday....hopefully my dad will buy me one
practically same question as taniaetc...
what would be the best tablet out there, or more suitable for these sorta stuff?

[Alectric]

im no expert, but a bamboo is pretty good.
I use this one which is way more expensive:


Wacom is a good brand, and you cant really go wrong with them.

Corel painter is ok...but i find its too fiddley (thats just my opinion) and so i stay with photoshop. Its pretty darn expensive too.
Plus, its not that good for lf2 sprites unless you are pro like Hell_fighter.

[Taniaetc]

...

Is that intuos?
...
Corel painter is ok...but i find its too fiddley (thats just my opinion) and so i stay with photoshop. Its pretty darn expensive too. Actually my dad's also planning to buy a bamboo fun tablet which has a photoshop elements 7. anyway whats the difference between photoshop cs5 and elements?
Plus, its not that good for lf2 sprites unless you are pro like Hell_fighter. meh. im using it for digital drawing, not spriting. in that im still using photofiltre

Have another question for anyone else, whats different between bamboo fun and the normal bamboo pen tablets anyway?

[Chishio]

Personally, I am rather dissapointed in my purchase of my tablet, right now it is sitting gathering dust. I really should crank it out and 'get to know it better'. But that could also be due to my lack of motivation in doing anything of art relation. Cirno... if you are out there.. I wish I had listened to you about IB art... anyways. Back to the main point. I would seriously due some major research in to this. Identify if you truly need a tablet or not. For my needs, all I need is a touchpad, and on occasion I will drag out my tablet for coloring work. But usually I can satisfy all my specifications with the tools my laptop provides. Then there is also the fact that my old laptop wasn't really tablet friendly so I guess that could have been a turn off for me as well. I am sure with my newer laptop, I could put the thing to much greater use.

I am not saying that you shouldn't buy one though, I am saying that you should really address if you need it or not. Do not get it for the solo purpose of hoping to improve your spriting. Get it because you know you will be able to increase the level of professionalism in the output of your piece. I hear a lot about the bamboo, mostly good things. If you plan to put a lot of use in to it, I can almost assure you it will be worth the money payed.

You really can not go wrong with a wacom tablet. They are reliable, but that reliability comes with the pretty hefty increase in price. I would suggest you go to a site such as newegg.com and looking up their tablet inputs. Read reviews there. Weigh the pro's vs. con's. And if you need further input, bring those thoughts here once more.

To answer your most recent question, from what I can tell, the bamboo fun supports a variety of things. Not only pen input, but it can also double as a trackpad it seems. It also has the nice addition of multi-touch. How this is used exactly, you will need to do more research. The bamboo pen seems to be just a standalone pen input with pressure sensitivity. From what I can tell, it is a more low tech version of the bamboo fun, once again do your research and don't take my word on this.

I hope I was of help to you. Its late, so I apologize for any typos.

[Taniaetc]

Personally, I am rather dissapointed in my purchase of my tablet, right now it is sitting gathering dust. I really should crank it out and 'get to know it better'. But that could also be due to my lack of motivation in doing anything of art relation. Cirno... if you are out there.. I wish I had listened to you about IB art... anyways. Back to the main point. I would seriously do some major research in to this. Identify if you truly need a tablet or not. For my needs, all I need is a touchpad, and on occasion I will drag out my tablet for coloring work. But usually I can satisfy all my specifications with the tools my laptop provides. Then there is also the fact that my old laptop wasn't really tablet friendly so I guess that could have been a turn off for me as well. I am sure with my newer laptop, I could put the thing to much greater use.
Yes, I truly need a tablet, and I've checked comp specifications (and my laptop's compatible with the tablet). One of the advantages I will have while using a tablet to colour is that it feels more natural, as if you are drawing on paper, not in computer.
I am not saying that you shouldn't buy one though, I am saying that you should really address if you need it or not. Do not get it for the solo purpose of hoping to improve your spriting. Get it because you know you will be able to increase the level of professionalism in the output of your piece. I hear a lot about the bamboo, mostly good things. If you plan to put a lot of use in to it, I can almost assure you it will be worth the money paid.
I'm actually NOT using it for spriting, because of possible difficulties. My main purpose of having a tablet is for making digital drawing A LOT easier and natural.
You really can not go wrong with a wacom tablet. They are reliable, but that reliability comes with the pretty hefty increase in price. I would suggest you go to a site such as newegg.com and looking up their tablet inputs. Read reviews there. Weigh the pro's vs. con's. And if you need further input, bring those thoughts here once more.
That's why my dad is in ebay now searching for a secondhanded or discounted tablets, due to the price.
To answer your most recent question, from what I can tell, the bamboo fun supports a variety of things. Not only pen input, but it can also double as a trackpad it seems. It also has the nice addition of multi-touch. How this is used exactly, you will need to do more research. The bamboo pen seems to be just a standalone pen input with pressure sensitivity. From what I can tell, it is a more low tech version of the bamboo fun, once again do your research and don't take my word on this.
Hmm... just checked it in wacom.com Larger area, touchpad, hand gesture thing etc. Unfortunately my dad canceled buying it since he was afraid of getting a broken pen. So i'll still have to buy the bamboo pen one anyways.

Replaced the typos with bold of what I think the proper spelling is.
btw I've just remembered that I tried Corel sometime ago and it is of no good (way too complex), so is using the bamboo tablet with gimp proven to be useless too? I'm asking this because I read a tutorial about using a tablet in gimp, and it looks quite promising. Read it here.

[snorsorbet]

I use the simplest Bamboo tablet and GIMP while spriting. Works well for me.

[Reaper]

Using GIMP and a tablet is working very well. I always switch between GIMP and Corel Painter Essentials (can't afford my tablet and photoshop). Depends on what I want to do at that moment. What makes Corel special is the variety of brushes, pencils, oil-colours etc. But when you don't need stuff like oil-colours and the like, GIMP is just as good.
Wacom is from what I've heard a must. I haven't tried the Bamboo, but the most important part is the pressure-sensitivity and a bamboo tablet has it (and GIMP supports it. Photofiltre however doesn't. At least my version.). An Intuos mainly has a better resolution (and a bigger drawing area I guess)
And I agree to snorsorbet, a tablet works very well for spriting. It's a lot faster.

[Marshall]

if you are really good with pencil sketches already, getting a tablet would be way way better than using a mouse, but obviously depending on the tablet as well, though with Wacom I'm almost certain you cannot go wrong.

I suggest you work harder on your pencil sketches first, then you'll get stunning results like this (by xFire):

[Bamboori]

i also use bamboo pen and have to say its good enough for me. the only thing is that its a bit small -> unprecise, but thats only a matter of training.