First, some tough-talk about Cintiqs. The last generation of Cintiqs based on Intuos 3 tech had some significant issues with display quality. They used cheap TN panels. They looked muddy and washed out. An anti-glare coating on the back of the plastic screens worsened an already low contrast ratio and robbed the colors of what little vibrancy they had. The newer Cintiqs, like the 24HD, have IPS panels similar to the Apple Cinema Displays. Others have said the display quality is a vast improvement over the last-gen models. That said, the new 24HD has a lower PPI than even my older 20WSX, so I’m healthily skeptical.

There’s cursor parallax caused by the gap between the drawing surface and the LCD screen and lag no matter which generation of Cintiq you buy. If you expect where the tip of your stylus meets your screen to be where a line will be drawn, you’re going to be disappointed. An old Nintendo DS has a truer 1:1 ratio of pen input to line result. You’re going to be watching a cursor trail behind your pen, you’re going to be less accurate than if you were drawing with analog materials because of parallax, and you’ll be several thousand dollars poorer in the process. In many ways, drawing with an Intuos tablet was a more satisfying experience. The cognitive disonnance of drawing down on the tablet while looking up at a monitor shielded you from the flaws and limitations inherent to Wacom’s digitizer technology. You notice input lag less when a cursor isn’t chasing after your pen in front of you. The Cintiq brings that flaw into sharp relief. Your pen tip is just pulling the cursor along, trailing like a fat kid chasing an ice cream truck.

I’d be less harsh on the Cintiqs if Wacom weren’t demanding such a hefty price for what amounts to little more than an Intuos digitizer with a cheap LCD slapped atop. I didn’t want to spend $3200 on the 24HD after having spent $2500 on the 20WSX only to be disappointed by the value again. I felt I should at least look into other options when buying a new tablet monitor for a second machine.

There are a few overseas manufacturers. Bosto makes tablet monitors, but few have bought them stateside and even fewer offered their thoughts on the experience. Ordering direct from China seems the only option for purchase and shipping drastically increases the cost, making the risk to reward higher than I’d feel comfortable.

Yiynova offers several different displays and sizes. These tablet monitors are available on Amazon via their U.S. distributor, The Panda City.

The Yiynova 10.1“ DP10 has a battery-driven pen with 1024 levels of pressure, an LED backlit 10.1” display, and uses only two USB ports for operation for $299.

The barrier of entry was low enough that I ordered it out of intellectual curiosity if nothing else. It arrived a few days later.

The drivers supplied with the DP10 were out of date. A bit of research showed that Waltop makes the tablet digitizer and that DisplayLink provides the tech for the USB powered display. I downloaded the newest drivers but had some issues with OS X Lion. The DP10 only worked in Mirror Mode and lacked the calibration button that the driver settings should have offered. Panda City says others have gotten the display running fine in Lion and that it may be an issue specific to my MacPro, but I was unable to verify those claims.

In Windows, everything ran fine. The LED-backlit display quality was superior to the TFT display of the Cintiq 20WSX and Cintiq 12WX. The USB only conncection was super portable and convenient, and, were I pairing it with a laptop, a better alternative than a Cintiq which requires a USB, DVI, and separate power source for operation. I did experience some viewing angle annoyances, but the low price of $299 softened the hard edges.

The issues I was having in Lion made the display less useable for me, so I contacted Panda City and asked if I could exchange the DP10 towards their 19″ monitor, the MSP19. They complied, even offering to send me the MSP19 before the DP10 had arrived back.

Even if the MSP19 had to be run as a single monitor, it was large enough to be a primary display whereas the 10.1″ as an only display felt restrictive.

The 19″ MSP19 arrived and was much lighter than my Cintiq. I was surprised with the quality of the fit and finish. The build quality got my hopes up.

The MSP19’s LED backlit display was a welcome relief after the soupy, muddy TN panel of the Cintiq in brightness and clarity, with a slightly worse viewing angle, but the good news ended there. It had significant issues in OSX. Drawing straight lines proved difficult. There was large cursor jitter. The pen dropped connection after a few minutes requiring the system to be rebooted. The color temperature of the monitor wavered between warm and cool, flickering at random intervals.

Panda City’s support offered to send me a second MSP19 while I held on to the first. If I didn’t like either, they would ship them both back at no charge. If the Yiynova displays weren’t meeting my expectations, Panda City was exceeding them. They were helpful and kind throughout the process.

The replacement monitor arrived. The pen stopped dropping its connection. The color flickering disappeared. The jittery cursor remained. Browsing Waltop’s digitizer support site and searching on the topic lead me to believe OSX was a secondary concern for the company. OSX and the Yiynova didn’t want to cooperate and I was getting tired with trying to force them to cohabitate.

I’d been planning on putting together a Windows box for a few 3D apps with no Mac equivalent, so I gave the MSP19 a shot on Win7x64.

Performance was night and day, though still not fantastic. There was still jitter, but nothing like when it was used in OSX. At one third the price of my Cintiq, with a better display and lighter form factor, I’ve decided to keep the MSP19 for use on my second machine.

I can’t recommend it for OSX users just yet, but, if you’re running Windows and are looking for a cheap tablet monitor, the Yiynova is a competitive, if somewhat flawed, alternative. I’m glad Yiynova is in the space. Lack of competition breeds complacency, stalling innovation. And the value proposition on Cintiqs is way out of whack.

Before the video, however, come the pretty pictures!

Now for the good stuff!

Electric Zombie Tee Creation from Ray Frenden on Vimeo.

As usual, your feedback is really appreciated!

Every Thursday (work schedule willing), I intend to post a new design to Threadless. It might be a critique, it might be a completed design, but something is getting posted there, period.

Here’s a video of the creation of the first entry for Threadless Thursday, Crow No!

Crow No! from Ray Frenden on Vimeo.

Here’s a WIP image. I’m still working on the coloring phase.

This was a bit of a spur of the moment decision, so I hope to post the completed image tomorrow. And, well, a new completed image every Thursday.

I find listening to myself talk on tape embarrassing. Hopefully there are a few tidbits of interest between the awkward pauses and lame jokes. Let me know what you think!

Special thanks to Matt, Jer, Dick and Jim for their feedback.

In a shameless attempt to ingratiate myself to the Threadless community at large, I started a blog post over there where I offered to draw as many members as zombies as humanly possible. I thought I was going to have more time than I ended up with on Saturday, but I still managed to get a few done and will continue to poke away at the ever expanding list whenever I feel like practicing likenesses.

One such likeness was of, I assume, a member’s kid. I took a video of the ~15 minute process and am posting it as a screencast. Unlike my previous efforts, I’m actually yammering on like a total asshat throughout the ordeal in real time. It was pretty distracting to talk and draw. Drawing is usually a very solitary experience for me. Let me know if it’s quasi-informative, annoying, helpful, or any combination of the above.

I would rather have posted part two to my Zombie Hand tutorial, but my PC ate the recording when its hard drive took a crap a few weeks back. Le sigh. To make up for it, in addition to this more put-together video, I have a few new ones, sans sound or anything fancy, on my YouTube account.

Download podcast.

 Download video.

The audio isn’t the best, but I think it’s not bad considering I was using the built-in mic on my iMac. Expect the production values to be better in the future. This was a fun experiment and I’ll definitely be doing it pretty regularly. If there is anything you want me to specifically address, let me know!

I’d suggest downloading the file rather than attempting to stream it. She’s a bit big at around 65mb, but is high res and a great video quality:

I’ll replace this generic, placeholder download image with an iTunes subscription logo as soon as I get that setup.