Exploring Pixel vs. Paper with Wacom’s MobileStudio Pro, the Bentley of Drawing Tablets

Last October at New York City Comic Con, I hosted a panel with five professional cartoonists. At one point, we tripped on the topic of process, and specifically what tools they used. All but one (Hippopotamister/Teen Boat creator John Green, for those curious) used a Cintiq, a screen that records pen movements as pixels. The four artists told the same story: illustrating pages takes time, and time is money. Scanning art from paper was an extra step that took more time. Using tablets and screens was a pragmatic alternative, and whatever may be sacrificed, if anything, wasn’t enough to warrant the extra effort.
Anecdotally, it’s hard to think that the vast majority of cartoonists and professional illustrators aren’t switching to digital tools, if they didn’t already years ago. But certain populations still hold fast to their watercolors and lead—especially in independent comics. In an interview with Simon Hanselmann, the creator of Megahex, he stated that “computers never touch my pages. What you see on the page in the book is what the page looks like in real life…Michael DeForge is one of the very few people who works digitally whose work I can stand. It just seems like cheating to me. It’s too easy, too fast. I like sweating over and onto my pages. I like the physical object of the page. I like the danger. If I make a mistake on the page, it’s very difficult to fix.”
That same convention, I began to chat with the folks at Wacom, a company that holds a tight grasp on the market of tablets and peripherals for illustrators. Their newest marquee tool was the MobileStudio Pro, a $2,000-to-$3,000 slab of computing horsepower overlaid with a touchscreen. It’s a computer on its own that can house an array of software, but operates solely via touch either through a sophisticated pen or unsophisticated finger (a keyboard peripheral is also available). The “pen computer” promises the crux of technology-aided drawing, and more—it includes a camera for 3D rendering. It asks the question whether illustration needs to be evaluated under the lens of pencil and paper. If we transported an Egyptian scribe from 200 BCE and presented them with a no. 2 and a notebook, would they complain that the paper lacked the fibrous grooves of papyrus? In parallel, should we expect the ice-skate glide of a modern tablet to simulate the tactility of lead on paper?
The 16” MobileStudio Pro and box contents from Paste’s review copy
We decided to explore this question through a review copy of a 16” MobileStudio Pro. Two comics pros were kind enough to weigh in; nobody knows the subtleties of process more than people who draw everyday for their livelihood. Carver: A Paris Story cartoonist Chris Hunt has years of experience with a Cintiq, while Lauren McCallister is new to the tablet world. They both included illustrations rendered on the unit.
A few thoughts on Paste’s end (via Sean, a professional photographer who dabbles in design and owns an Intuos touch tablet): this thing is damn powerful. It has 512 GB of space, 16 GB of RAM and a 2560 × 1440 display. The pen, which doesn’t require a battery, can simulate 8,192 levels of pressure. Along with an Intel Core i7 processor, its specs aren’t dissimilar from the most powerful MacBook Pro available. The real question comes from what creating a hybrid computer/touchscreen of this magnitude might leave out, and the answer is hot keys from a keyboard. The model attempts to compensate with eight programmable buttons located on the side of the unit, along with a multi-purpose wheel. If there’s one criticism, it’s that this solution still feels inelegant; the programming used to map functions to the buttons isn’t context sensitive. Using two buttons for forward and back (selected from a list) will work on browsers, but it won’t, say, translate to a similar function like undo and redo in Photoshop.
The more a user dives into the MobileStudio Pro, the more they’ll work out any rough corners, but being able to quickly and intuitively navigate a program without slogging through menus is a key hurdle. The irony is that Apple already provided a solution to this quandary with their context sensitive Touch Bar—shortcuts change depending on the program selected. The hardware could certainly handle the load of this feature and it will also open up some screen real estate, and I’d rather trust your programmers to handle it than resort to third party options.
And as many have pointed out, why, oh why, are there no carrying cases or (in-stock) stands designed for the MobileStudio Pro, either from Wacom or third party? People are posting videos about clever substitutions, but with marketing copy that touts “designed to give you the freedom to create anywhere,” having a way to safely transport a $3,000 touchscreen computer isn’t too much to ask. It’s a gorgeous, sophisticated piece of machinery that meets the overwhelming majority of its expectations. We just want to treat it right.
Chris Hunt, Cartoonist of Carver: A Paris Story
Upon completing my first full-length graphic novel last year, Carver: A Paris Story, I felt that I had reached that point of mastery with the brush where I could begin to take a serious look at digital. I had begun to see artists whom I greatly admired make the switch—namely, Becky Cloonan—and I saw that it was at least possible to translate what I had learned to a new tool. Over the past year I have incorporated not only Wacom’s 13-inch Cintiq into my workflow, but also the 9-inch iPad Pro.