31 – Coming to Terms
So, I drew this page entirely on my Surface Pro. While overall not a bad experience, I think I’m going to return it.
First of all, GIMP doesn’t support Microsoft’s special API for the pen interface. Since GIMP is all open-source, one might think it would be available soon, but when I looked into it, it just didn’t seem likely that anyone was going to do that.
So I have to draw everything in Sketchbook Pro. Overall, not too bad, but whenever I want to copy and paste a portion of my work, I find the interface severely lacking. Furthermore, I found it completely inept when it came to selecting custom colors. With some smart use of layers I can overcome such drawbacks, so overall, not too bad.
But the greatest problem of all is that the stylus is not calibrated properly, and I cannot get it calibrated properly. I’ve got a new stylus coming in the mail, and hopefully that will resolve the issue. But until then, I’m having a hard time getting my lines to connect where they are supposed to.
It’s such a shame, too. It’s great to be able to lay out my panels on the page as a whole, instead of scrapping several pieces of paper. It’s nice to be able to take it anywhere and work like that. If I could get it to either work directly in GIMP or draw exactly where the nib touches, I might keep it. But as it stands, I am leaning more towards the generous return policy.