I have bad spelling errors here i am sorry its because i am really tired and my typing is really slurry
I can hardly believe my my dumb geek-wannabe jackas self actually managed to pull this one off and really well i might add.
This is THE FIRST DIY project a ever completed. all of my past attempts ended up breaking, not working or like most, i just gave up near the beginning/middle due to lack of parts/ knowledge of stuff i should know, experience money Etc.
The most i could ever do, is build a computer, fix a laptop (i even built 2 working laptops out of 4 broken ones of the same make) and i am really starting to hate most of the laptop making industry but anyway.
Long post since this was a really funand awesome experience results that are above what i expected and an the thrill of sucess which i didnt have in a long time as latley i failed at fixing some things and a bunch of my other thinks kinda broke down as well along with overall general bad luck in recent months building a working device like this is exhilirating so dont mind my psyched mood today
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Sorry pictures are taken by a webcam due to my laziness to get my other camera.
Where should i begin? i wanna tell you guys the trick to building one and my own adventure behind building this.
I wanted a cintiq really gbadly and i was actually willing to pay the price back then but its impossible to even find any oplace that sells them in russia, only if someone brings them over from the US.
A friend of mine said that that i should just start learning to use a bamboo like everyone else but i only drew stuff oldscool before on paper canvases, wuith chalk, paints pastel, a lot of pen drawings too.
so obviosly using a drawing pad is not natural to me and i kept wanting to get a cintiq and was only told that all i do is whine and complain instead of trying to (in my opinion relearn all drawing skills from the start) i actually believed that using a tablet will greatly slow me down in advancing my drawing skills and i knowing myself i knew that i would eventually get one. Alternitevley i believed that in a few years some company might start prodcing theitr own Cintiq-like devices finally offering Wacom serios competition. And all the time i waisted drawing on a pad would end up pointless wasted time
then i stumbled upon an article for some dudes small diy project he made out of his old, slightly broked Eee PC. He sounshow stuck a small sensorboard from a genius graphics tablet inside the screen of Eee PC and got himself something people called micro cintiq. Of course people said that its a stupid idea as its impossible to calibrate and it will never be as accurate as the real thing blah blah blah. But this idea did stick in my head untill i discovered there are actually a lot of DIY Cintiq projects on the internet. Coincidentally, or for some reason, everyone had gave their diy cintiqs names that all ended in "tiq" ir "iq" (i remember one named "Trashtiq") Some of them were questionable in terms of quality/accuracy etc.
As i kept looking, i eventually stayed on a fourum i found of one of such projects the owner of which decided to share his experience at creating his DIYtiq and he even managed to gather a forum community of like-minded individuals who want to build a cheap cintiq.
his website that documents his attempt step by step in detail
http://www.bongofish.co.uk/wacom/wacom_pt1.html
This is the forum i ended up scanning and absorbing every bit of info i could find for the next 2 weeks.
http://forum.bongofish.co.uk/
(i will later join their forum so i can thank everyone there for keeping the forum open for everyone to read and maybe share my experience hoping it would help someone.
So the basic concept of how a cintiq works is actually pretty simple:
Cintiqs are based on the same sensor board as the large screenless Intuos drawing tablets.
wether you are using a Bamboo or intuos, the plastic case of those is usually nothing more than just plastic with nothing special only this plastic takes up up to 5mm of pen detectection lenght., you can draw on the actual sensor board if you want. The sensor board in an intuos is pretty much the whoe device.
You just find an LCD display preferably the same size and aspect ratio as the active area of the sensor (youll have easier time calibrating it later if the screen matches up)
Speaking of, the forums where i learnd most of the stuff about these has a nuce little app that helps you see how different size/standard scrteens fit on different sensor sizes
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11275473/simtiq_planner.html
What you do is put the screen in top of the sensor, make sure to remove any metal sheets from the back of the screen (and carful to make sure the layers dont fall out you dont want dust getting inside the screen). Also, you will ned to carefully unbend the LCD driver board because the stylus cant read trough that board. Most monitors should be less than 10mm thick prividing the extra 5mm you got when you removed the case so, most screens should be able to be read trough.
Old CCFL screens tend to cause a lot of interfear3ence, causing the stylus cursor on the screen to jitter which is a very common problem with tyhese projects, (there are a few old Dell models that apperentley dont cause any jitter) Thats why LED screens are the best for these since they dont have inverters or lamps. (the LCD driver board that you have to unbent usually causes interfearence).
Generally, the thinner the screen the better because a stylus, which is nearly at the max of its height all the time because the screen is 9-10mm thick will have bad accuracy and proboly jittering
Its also reccomended to use a monitor with external power supply to keep it away from the screen altho those are getting lesscommon every year. Altho My setup, has a built in power supply and its not causing any jittering or problems other than the suspicion that i didnt ground the screen, the monitor board and the shield underneath, But thats just my stupidity and luck (sometimes both) and we will get to that later.
Just so i dont forget to mention it, they did say grounding your screen is important.... Oh well my device works so far and very well too.
Once you got the neseseary parts like an intuos /other graphics pad and a monitor or 2 the rest is just a bunch of testing sessions, making shielding reducing electromagnetic radiation from your components breaking monitors etc.
Some people make their DIY cintiqs out of laptop screens either attaching the whole laptop to the setup making it a portable cintiq (the say shield the laptiop well when you do so) Or they buy these universal LCD inverters and LVDS to DVI/VGA kits thatpretty much turn them isto desktop-compatible screens. laptop monitors are good because they are very thin, and sometimes, finding neceseary parts for a setup with a laptop screen can become a real pain
(i really need some universal LVDS adapters for my other thing i am building and they are impossible to find aside from inside some monitors and those are all differents and they make them Unstandard making sure i cant use any other LVDS compatible screens even tho LVDS is supposed to be a universal standard interface for flatpanels, And they used to be, as i often remember testing different screens on different laptops and desktops (sometime the LCD inverter was a tricky thing but even wiothout the backlighting its usually enought to see the faint image on the screen to know it works. and then later suddely since about 2008 screensstarted not working with certain monitors despite the same LVDS.
Anyway i was considering the most insane ideas, of enrolling an institute not far from where i live and take uop Electronics major (despite my absolute lack of any knowledge of electronics) So i can learn enough electroncs to make myself my own LVDS badapters i can use rather than constantly take chances with other random ones.
BTW a pic of my cintiq during the testing stages
So after 2 weeks of scanning the forum, i absorbed enough info to build myself a Cintiq! I decided that an intuos 4/5 XL would be the best option because they are comfortably big enough for most small-medium desktop monitors and there would be a big coice of types of monitors i can use for this project. I dont like ordering thing from the internet so i went to one of the few major electronic "megamalls" in the city, where i could proboly find one in a computer shop. I found several Intuos L variations and an intuos 3 XL with an outdated stylus fior only 1000 lvls of pressure . Wanting to start the project badly, i settled for Intuos 4L and accepted to get it working with one of my laptops.
That was a big mistake on my part.
Fasting forward, i already broke 1 monitor i bought at an electronics store that was open 24-7 (I WISH THEY HAD MORE OF THESE)
I seriosly dont remember the details of the next few days everything was a blur, I somehow ended up spending a lot of money and now i have more 15.6 inch s screens than i know what to do with. The reason i regret buying an L instead of XL, i was pretty much limited to a 15.6 16:9 screens since for the size of the sensor the 1366x768 got the most pixels for the sensor. anything bigger and i would actually have less pixels in that area not to mention i will be forced to do crazy scaling and sustom resolution to get it to run well enough.
Eventually i somehow found a very rare screen thats not very popular because its a desktop version of a 15.6 screen running off same LED standard laptop LVDS (there is some other LED standard screen, it dosent look like LVDS, maybe its another kind of LVDS i dont even know why i bought it, i cant even use it for anything i am so dumb sometimes) Anyway, there were 2 of these 15.6 inch monitors an Acer and a Philips. Just what i need, they should have at least a neceseary LED LVDS to VGA board that i need to actually get turn on the screen without forcing a laptop intop the mix.
First i bought a philips, tested out all the screens i had, Philips sucked, colors are all screwed up, the LCD driver boards on every screen caused so muxch interfearence that if my styls is even above the bottom of the screen it start to jump around andfuriosly click/rightclick everythuing its not even supposed to touch. All of those screens were pretty much the same standard LED 15.6 panels used in laptops and in this case, unpopular tiny desktop monitors.
I decided to yank a screen from my samsung laptop thich was ultra-slim AND had a very thin LCD driver board that happened to cause almost no interfearence. I thought i hit the jackpot here, there was 1 problem tho. there was a metal frame in the back of this monitor that did scre with the signal a bit and i thought ni should cut away some of the frame leavinng only the neceseary part closer to the edges so the screen can still hold together.
A number of things went wrong with this.
1- the frame was glued so tightly, i was forced to use a knife and exessive force to pry it away. This ended badly- i cracked the diffusor layer of the screen which is pretty much the reason the screen is so thin.
2I tried to carefully reassemble the layers around another diffusor layer i had from an older broken screen which kinda worked but the screen had some really werd pattern to it, I think because i maybe i mixed up the placment of some layers, or the diffusir layer was too fat and that was another problem as it didnt fit the frame of the thin screen i had.
3On top of everything, the slim screen, had an unstandard LED hookup which made it impossible for me to use the actual LCD layers to rplace one in a standard screen. The thinness of the screen didnt concern me its thefact that they case almost no interfeartence which made me want to use them, i ended up putting together the old samsung with a cracked diffusor. It still worked, just had a crack in the upper right, and the insides of the layers are just extremley dirty and coveren in my fingerprints (you can see them inside the screen when turned on, id take apic, but i only have my webcam active which takes crappy pics anyway,
The Hilarious outcome of this is every screen is too fat for my samsung, i have to put tap4e opn the edges of the screen case part to keep the screem from falling out.
With the money i already spent on this project i figures, hey6 whats $200 more? I decided to check out the only other 15.6 inch Acer desktop screen (philips didnt work with some screens and i favot Acer over philips anyway) and i was lucky enough to find an identical slim LED panel for which i was just 20 bucks short, I tried to Bargain the guy down to sell it to me for $125 vs $150 the best he said he could give it to me for is $140
(now i love this next part, works on almost everyone in places like this that sells parts), with a dissapointed expression, i started to leave the shop. the shop clerk, quickly asked a spaced out cashier behind his laptop if he thinks $125 is a reasonable price for it, the dude not even caring said something lie "sure whatever" They went after me with an LCD panel agreeing to give it for $125 good savings for such a panel around here)
Also i really neede to buy a new set of dremelbits and i somehow ended up buying an entire new Dremel with ma huge kit of all kinds of awesome crap that goes with it. (make that $300... I REGRET NOTHING YOU WILL SEE!)
As i predicted Acer worked with all the screens, because acer is like the "Good Guy Greg" of the computer industry. I spent the next day or so, playing around with methods of shielding the LCD driver board, and settled with 2 strips of 7x folded foil like material they usually use to shield the backs of laptop monitors. Its like foil, but really thick and heavy.
In the process of experimenting with shielding, i almost broke this screen several times, a few by almiost knocking over the setup off the table, i then shorted something in the LCD driver causing it to go out, luckily, no real damage dome aside from a near heart attack of this perfect screen that i already spent hours on making some pretty good shielding for it.
Then i started testing it and spent the whole day and knight attempting to set up a custom resolution that fits thesensor board pixel-perfectly. Basically, the screen is wider than the sensor, so i was trying to get a resolution that has black bars on the sides of the screen hiding the part of the screen thats supposed to be outside I went as far as almost breaking the screen again with software called "Powerstrip" which can infact kill LCD screens if you start playing around with refresh rates and stuff. My backlights started to glitch from this program before i decided it was enough.
My ati drivers had a pretty good tool that could do things with the aspect ratio which might have been what i needed if only the screen wasnt based on an outdated VGA which made that option unavaliable to this screen because it thinks, the 15.6 inch LED monitor is actually some old CRT monitor.
BTW can someone explain me the logic of still using, what is in my opinion outdated standard such as VGA?, I understand that most graphics cards these days dont even have VGA. My ancient Geforce 6800 Ultra from like 2005 has only DVI
What is it about VGA that every monitor manufacturer still uses it?
Anyway after almost 2 days of unsucessfull experimentation with custom resolutions and aspect ratios, either way i tried it, there would always be at least slight scewing of the image here and there with all the custom resolutionsI just ended up calibrating it manually instead, and just deal with a small section to the right- visible but not being avaliable to the stylus,As long as be careful to not get anything stuck in that part of the screen, I guess i would have tio settle for what i have. I proboly wouldnt be having this problem if got an intuos 4XL instead. Btw for me callibration was especially annoying since its usually straight forward if your monitor is bigger than the sensor, just calibrate the screen to leave an area that uses only the sensor. or if the screen is smaller than the sensor, you can calibrate the sensor down to thwe size of your screen
My 15.6 inch was both bigger and smaller!, bigger horizonntally and slightly smaller vertically. My brain hates it whenever the ponter was inconsistent to the stylus, i had to think for 2 minutes really hard and get the feel of how the screen and tablet intract before i decide if i should calibrate the monitor or the sensor (and which part), often derping and realizing i calibrated the wrong spot.
Finally BEST PART EVER OF THE BUILDING PROCESS which almost killed the entire project.
I would like to thank Acer Corporation in adcvance for giving me a chance to quickly fix what could have destroyed this project even at my ridiculous level of stupidity i displayed.
Basically, i do a lot of stupid things with computery stuff motivated by my laziness, ignorANCE, THE "I WONDER WHAT HAPPENES IF I DO THIS" behavior, General lack of knowledge of whatever i am jumpin into headfirst ajnd thirillseeking. Like some people get thrills from dangerous stunts like jumping off buildings
I get my thrills from working with expensive comouter thing in a cramped, cluttered, and hazardous (mosltly for the computer equipment) conditions. I had my setup dangerously stacked and powered on the table in front of the almost finished DIY cintiq. I was exited to finish and i think this was after i gave up on custom resolution and started getting the basic feel for the confusing calibration scheme i had and trying to decide how to place the screen to make things easier for me.
Actually, i was trying to do something even more stupid, I was gonna plug in the monitor front button panel(it was unplugged at the time) so i could quickly change the default monitopr settings. I was truing to do that while it was running with a pluged in tablet and scree near an exposed 90W PSU (btw I was zapped by this exposed PSU earlier that day, and looking back, i cant really tell which one hurt more the LCD inverter or a monitor powe supply? I think LCD inverter hurt more if i remember correctley i couldnt even move my arm away from it for 2 seconds and it left 2 small burndots. This PSU also left me a burn dot.
while i carefullu lifted up thye LVDS board to get a cleat view of the ZIF slot for the front button panel, i didnt see that the grounded LVDS cable covered in a metalic cloth like thing that ws conductive came too close to the PSU and shorted something out with a loud pop that caused me to drop the setup where it shorted something else 2 more times before i ripped the plug from the wall along with all my other computers that were present.
In conclusion, the power supply was shot and i had no idea about the state of the LVDS board thinking that its possible it was shorted out somewhere. Bweing so close to the final prduct, i seriopsly started to panic, I immediatley tried to think of any quick alternative solution, I tried the philips setup which is pretty much the same exept Philips, completley screwed with the screen,, like ui saw the patterns of the opicture in pieces all over the screen some reprting and all of it wrong color basically really screwed up and it had such an effect on this particular screen only. some screens got different color from the philips setup. Also therwe wetre no PSU voltages written anywhere not on the PSU not on the LVDS either, Since its a built in Psu, they dont have to write the voltages.
I started to wish i could understand electronics better so i could at least find a solution, like tying the LVDS to an ATX psu or something. I started looking trough my junk in hope of finding something that i8 can use.
I have discovered all 7 neceseary peces of a destroyed VAIO thats scattered all over my apartment, Putting the 7 pieces of it togerter guaraneed a basic display of workability,(like at least a POST beep) luckily there was even a high res 15.4 inch screen too but something was dead, by that point i didnt care, , its too farfetched anyway to get this up and running to make a Cintiq outof. (the 7 vaio pieces were orignally in a ;laptop that was run over by a truck i think and ythe harddrive somehow survived, when they asked me to save their data.
Anyway i was gonna tryone last thing after which i would move to plan B which involves me going over to the 24 hour electronics store to buy the smallest LED monitor they sold (they had a refurbished LED one for ike $30 bucks 18 i9nch i think) and basically pray that they either used this standard on notebook LVDS interface or at least had some standard that would be supported by something that i have possibly a similar powersupply that would work with my setup. Basically plan B didnt give any promises.
I decided i should use my multimiter to see if i can make somthing out of stuff. I couldnt get any stable reading on anything, on any setting. either possibly the battry was close to dead, or i am just really bad at this. . the only readings i got were fast jumping numbers sometimes and all other settinhgs showed either 1.1 or 0.1 or 0.0 one of which was always in the reading of something. Then again, i sriosly had no idea at all on what i should look for or what setting i ashould try, and i think i tried most of them wsoewhere that got me pretty much nowhere.
I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW TO USE THE MULTIMETER! Why do i even have this!? Maybe so i can pretend iknow this stuff
The multimeter ended up helping in an obscure unexpected way. I plugged in the dead power supply and assembles the whole setup inscludiong the screen. and started poking the mutimiter again all over the place boldly believing the magic if the multimeter which to my convern was its ability to poke at circuts withiout shorting anything(at least not being able to damage any electronics. then, i toced the fuze near the3 PSU socket, (it didnt ;look like any fuze i know of, instead of a glass tube it was white glass-like tube with something inside,more glass i think, i dont know but this is the moment where acer taught me a valuable life lesson.When i toched the fuse all ofa sudden,. the Screen lit up showing that its working which forced me to realise that i actually know aboout the co0ncept of a fuse which made me happy because i realized, that the powersupply is actually ok only if i replaced the fuze.
That day Acer saved my idiot butt from another failed DIY project by being nice enough to bothetr installing a fuze which iam guessing most companies wouldnt bother since if it fries, people will buy another one from them. I looked at the philips poweer supply, and tere was no fuse on it anywhere.after 5 minutes of dugging trough boxes of ald circutry which i dont know the purpose of most, looking for a fuze, i contemplated how i used to hate Acer for making cheap laptops. Back then ui dint realize acers certain charm and slowly over the years, i grew to respect Acer a lot more. its like like a teenager driving his 1970s sportscar that breaks all the time and around the age of 20 finally gives up trading it for a honda. Its like this for myself and all the gaming laptops i went trough. as far as i know my acer is the most stable laptop i had and will ever have even tho, i
.
After owning an acer laptop myself and fixing severasl other acer laptops (taking apart an acer is fairly pleasant experience and putting it together is pretty straight forwards compared to many other laptopls) And Now acer saved my Cintiqe DIY tablet from my own stupidity which didnt even end here asd i was in a hurry to finishthis project i started to think if i wouldfnt find a fuse soon, ill just short the contact where the fuse should be. But this time i would carefully reSsemble the monitor circutry inside of its original case to prevent any incidents. I ended up finding 2 fuzes but couldnt remove the originasl fuse which i think was soldered in there. My impatience forced me to break the fuse duscovering that they are somehow attached soilid and after 15 minutes i ended up ripping out the nests sticking a wire though the holes and tying each wire to 1 end of the fuze while keeping it all in place with ducttape!
JUST KIDDING i USED ELECTRICAL TAPE i learned the hard way the hazards of ducttape and often discover things i broke in the past realising that i broke them with ducttape lol
The reason i am making a big deal out of acer is because i want to find a reason to say good things about them and because this powersupply could be very rare and uniqe only to thik type of a laptop screen as anything starting at 18.5, LED run off standard old style LVDS, altho i might be mistaken, Bacically if this was fried for good, it would be hard to get back up to this stage again.
then i quickly reassembled everything inside the intuous the screen is thin enough to to fit inside the tablet with a cut out useless plastic from the top to make way for the screen, add extra layer of shielding to the bottom since i will havea powersupply underneath it against all reccomendation. I reassembled the monitor circutry iside the acer monitor back half and for the lack iof better ideas, used ducttape to attach it to the the bottom as the octures above show
I calibreated the screen by analyzing each pixel the stylus draws for 2 hours and to my surprize it calibrated really well. Maybe thats what Wacom charges you 3000 for with their Cintiq. the problem with mine is, i need to calibrate it every time i hook it up to a new system, but i dont really mind This one is definatley stationary. I want to attemt another build 0n an intuos 4/5 XL as to avoid dealing with laptop screens again. Still this was a great experience which I think was worth it despite some failures.
Other positive outcomes is now have good experience working with LED screens which i wanted to get around to for a long time now. I also have exess of spare 15.6 flatpanels. There is no such thing as too many LED display panels, the few broken sctreens i have could possibly be recycled for working LED strips, layers etc. ieven heard of a hack where you remove ove of the layers in a laptop making it impossible to see the screen but if you cut out glasses out of that layer and look trough tyhem, you will be the only6 one who coulf see whats on the screen... i could try something like this
THE COST: Cost of parts that went onto a working pseudo cintiq i have right now is around $800 I believe thats cheaper than $1000 12 inch cintiq which considering its charecteristics compared to an intuos 4L (i cant comment on the screen of the 12 inch i dont know.) I think what i built is cheaper and better.
The real amount of money i spent on this project during the development and testing of different screens and monitors, not including my own parts already had which i dopnated to the cause,l (like the flat screen from my Samsung among others) i ended up spending close to $1300. At least i know what kind of laptop screensan Intuos pwerfers
In the process of building i also discovered that my old netbook i thought broke a long time ago actually still works. This gives me an idea of rebuilding this netbook to a more functional state with a working OS and using asmall intuos or a medium bamboo with the netbook screen to make a fun sized mini Cintiq (lik,e the eePC that was turned into one when i discovered the possiblity of a cheaper diy alternative to a cintiq.
Lastly i was pleasently surprised with a purchase od a dremel kit that i used to cut out the screen hole in the intuos case. I always sucked at using a dremel couldnt cut a streaight line with a disk tool for life. i was trying to modify the samsung back metal frame with my last cutting bit before i went to buy more dremel-buts along with a new slim LED. This is what my work looked like
i accepted the fact that i am very bad at using it look at thet awful cut, btw, one side of the frame took about 15 minuts to cut trough with my awesome skills.
I ended up buying this american dremel kit mostly because if a huge collection of drill bits among other stuff i didnt even bother to pay atention to at the time. Turns out this american dremel featured along rubbery flexible drillbit extention, which was blew away by how easy it is to hold almost as thin as an intuos stylus and for the first time i realized that i never sucked at using a dremel, i just had a really crappy dremel that was hard to hold was heavy AND HAD BAD QUALITY DRILLBIT.
my old http://i.imgur.com/azDdT.pngerman dremel (i was raised and conditioned to think German tools and german anything is the best quality you can get)10-15 frustrating minutes to cut off a strip of thi9ng aluminum leaving uneven jagged edges
This dremel easily cut off a straight line of 30 cm in less than a minute! Its definatley the more ergoniomic drillbit extention allowing you persision control over it.
I was seriosly blown away by the cutting disk they had which dosent wear out. i used it to cut around 2 meters of aminiun (i didnt need to but it was just really fun to cut using it) This microdril is the most amazing tool i owned so far lead me on a path of self discovery and gave me plenty philosophical epiphonies to think about
Who thopught a good powertool can have such powerful psycological effects on a person.
I am waiting for a friend to come back from Belarus, I am very curious about what his reaction would be. He dosen like cintiqs very mucjh for some reason and he might get angry at me for ruining a perfecty good intuos.
Ive been drawing on it ever since i built it, here are some of the earlier drawings from yesturday
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Cz7Ni.png/img]
the first thing i tr4ied drawing using MS paint. as no other programs were on this computer since it stopped working a year ago and only yestrday i realised the epic legacy of my stupidity when i finally noticed the modified power supply wiring i made back then is covered in ducttape. I fi9xed the problem quickly by jumping out of the window of my apartment ... jk wouldnt not afte this awesome pseudo cintiq i managed to build. (Mi 24 is just fun to draw in my opinion.
tried at drawing my computer, i think i had too much fun with details not realizing that the proportions are a bit scrwed somewhere something just sortof not right about the shape but whatever, i dont mind redraing it as its fun to do
my frie3nds comuter case which i started adding my own twists to give it a more gothic feelintg. I never realized howcool that case looks untill i started to draw it.
another mi24 this one more fat and bubbly version i find fun to draw for some reason (i had another fat and bubbly mi 24 on paper somewhere)
i am now working on something i thout would be fun Its a set of smple instuctional illustrations that show the basic concept of buildinf a cintiq, ill post it here if i am done with it
sooo long post is long but it was one hell of a ride and an almost lifechanging experience since i never sucsessfully finished any prijects of this kind
i will leave you with a preview pic of a thing i might do- a childrens illustrated guide for building your own digital coloring book (a DIY Cintiq) out of daddys laptop! (i started playing with color on the cintiq, i was just reminded of doing these coloring books as a kid and this thing is even more fun to do color on so thats where the idea came from lol)
P.S. i was talking to my friend today about the diy cintiq and something occured to me.
The older 21" cintiqs are proboly CCFL which i suspect are pretty thick, unless there are some special CCFL super thin screens, i am also surprised that a $3000 cintiq has a mediocre quality screen. For such an expensive PROFESSIONAL art tablet i find that surprising. as far as Cintiqs Wacom has no competition and they pretty much allow themselvs to jack up $3000 for their cintiq.
This brings me to another company favored by graphics people Apple macbooks, as far as i know were popular with artists before hipsters decided that macbooks are hip and trendy. A friend of mine a photographer while hating macbooks, says good things about the monitor anyways. App0erentley macbook Pros have high quality IPS screens and so do ipads and other tablets that use apple-made screens in thir tablets. Also i have notices that apple xcan make their screens impressivley thin again macbook air, ipads as far as i know, have very thin IPS screens (possibly because they are small size)
My thoughts on this, is apple already has a pretty good stance at being serios competition to Wacom if they focus their energy on appealing more to the professional artists. What surprises me even more is ipads dont come with their own styluses and any drawing is like finger painting. Wacom makes styluses that somehow work with apples resistive tochscreens but i think it still dosent match the accuracy of a wacom ( btw idea intergreate some wacom tablet in an ipad or the other way around! whos up for it? eh?)
Apple can gain a lot if they stop focusing on little cool gimmics of their prodeucts that customers get hooked on for the trendy hip/cool factor rather than anythingthat can be seriosly considered useful to certain people. any thought in this anyone?
edit, note to self- get a layer of protectove glass for the screen just in case
dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
