Drawing and painting are the focus of SketchBook Pro 2, the latest upgrade aimed primarily at tablet PC users, however, graphics tablet users will find the program equally useful. © 2004 Alias Systems Corp.

Introduction
SketchBook Pro 2 is the latest upgrade of the sketching and painting software from Alias, the developer behind Maya. SketchBook Pro 2 is aimed primarily at tablet PC users, however, graphics tablet users will find the program equally useful. The software distinguishes itself from other graphics software by focusing on drawing and painting. Users won’t find excessive menus, image filters or complicated interface elements. SketchBook Pro 2 can be learned in a matter of minutes, just by playing around. Most of the interface is icon driven, with just three drop down menus.

The SketchBook Pro 2 user interface is updated but not wholly different from the previous release. Gesture based selections are still the order of the day and a pleasant way to interact with software. Alias has gone as far as patenting their style of gesture-based menus for which they use the term Marking Menus. Ever since I embraced mouse gestures in Firefox, my browser of choice, I’ve longed for a similar feature in the graphics software I spend the bulk of my time with. Within SketchBook Pro 2, the idea is executed quite simply and elegantly; the user moves the mouse to a small icon located unobtrusively onscreen and gestures in one of several directions in order to choose a new tool, brush, color or other option. That’s it, no need to pull down menus, click through dialog boxes or manually enter a value. At first glance, it may seem this is just a replacement for standard menus, but the real power of this gesture-based interface comes once the user knows the location of their favorite tools so well that the selection becomes natural and intuitive.

A limited set of tools but enough to create some serious artwork. Brushes are selected via gestures.

Working in SketchBook Pro 2 is a pleasure because you remain in a creative frame of mind. Choosing tools visually also speeds things up. I find that I’m able to draw or paint fluidly, without the stop/start sensation I so often experience with Photoshop. This isn’t to say the software is without depth. Users are able to delve into deeper settings if they so choose, but the software is skewed toward doing the creative side of the work. The layers palette is fairly standard, except for how you name a layer. Most likely Alias decided to make layer names small images for one reason — Tablet PC users. Having them bring up an onscreen keyboard would be cumbersome and interruptive. As great as the image based layer names are for Tablet PC users, I feel they are even greater for desktop PC users. There’s something warm and inviting about the layer name being in my own hand, and this extends to just about all the UI elements. It feels good and more importantly, creative.

The tools themselves are quite good, although it’s one of the areas I am eager to see Alias push even further.

Users may select from Pencil, Chisel Top Pen, Airbrush, Ballpoint Pen, Marker or Airbrush, as well as an Eraser. This is a fairly limited set of tools but enough to create some serious artwork. My hope is that Alias will introduce more natural paint effects, something akin to the excellent toolset in Painter. Each of the drawing and painting tools offers appropriate settings, but does not bog the user down with an overwhelming amount of data. Most of the tools are limited to opacity and one other option, such as slant or hardness. The tools perform quite well, emulating the real world tool for which they are named. My favorites are the pencil, paintbrush and smear tools. I find that I can produce most of my images using these three tools alone. The smear is especially essential for those faux oil digital paintings that are all the rage these days in the concept art community. Changing tool settings on the fly is even easier in version 2 with the new floating Resize Brush tool. This is a small reticule that floats onscreen. The user simply taps down and drags left or right to decrease or increase their brush size. A similar floating tool allows the user to both zoom in and out from an image as well as drag the image left or right.