mouse?

I guess it's a matter of getting used to things. I still find myself clumsy with the laser mouse, because I was used to the old mechanical one.

I love my IBM optical mouse. It's contoured and fits my hand perfectly and just glides. Plus, I can't live without a scroll wheel anymore.

I definitely prefer the tablet. I was forced to get used to it because I was suffering from the early stages of RSI or carpal tunnel, and the mouse was killing me (even a proper sized one, I was pinching too much). Now I use it for almost everything. And it's really helped.

One of the hardest things to get used to was the lack of the scroll wheel. I'm with Phacker, I love the scroll wheel, too. Fotunately, I just got an Intuos 3 that has the scroll bar on the side. Pretty handy. Not quite the same as the wheel but better than nothing.

Animated Ape's suggestion of putting it all in a line is great.

Some tips for getting used to it:
1. Use it for everything. Normal system stuff, web browsing, etc. You'll just get more proficient with it.
2. Try scanning in some artwork and tracing it. It'll help your hand eye co-ordination with it.
3. Do some basic pen exercises. Drawing circles, straight lines, boxes, etc. Start simple. Pretend you're just learning to draw again... you basically are. Try sketching some perspective boxes, doodling your favorite characters. It can work very much like sketching with a pencil, so use layers and refine your drawing as you go. Don't aim for perfect, aim for better and better.

Before long you'll be getting nice smooth flowing lines with some neat brush like effects (pressure rocks!).

Good luck! :)

I am no pro but you should think about Wacom tablet. Interesting subject matter, you must have been to west Texas. :D

I use the mouse, have a tablet but never could get used to it. With Flash Gabe the thing is to zoom in and work on a small area at a time, from time to time zoom out and look at how everything is fitting together.

I use the mouse, have a tablet but never could get used to it. With Flash Gabe the thing is to zoom in and work on a small area at a time, from time to time zoom out and look at how everything is fitting together.

I am have a tough time with my tablet too, but I am focusing on tracing pencile images. It is my guess that I will get use to drawing with the tablet and not look at the tablet as I draw, much like typing.

It sounds funny, but I could never look while I'm drawing. You just have to work at getting sensitive to how the mark under you gets relayed to the image in front of you. Once you've got that, inside an hour I did doodles and things that, if printed out in a way that retained the look and feel of the original materials (colored pencil, pen, something), you could not tell I had done on the comp or on paper. It was exactly the way I draw.

I've actually been drawing in Illustrator with a wacom tablet, and then importing it into Flash. Illustrator is made for drawing, and, to me, is a lot easier than drawing in Flash.

We use Wacom Intous' here, and there are a few animators who have the Cintques. I tried it, but didn't like it too much. It took me a while to get used to the wacom at first, but now that I'm comfortable with it, I love it. The thing I found helped me was to line the wacom, keyboard and monitor up all in a straight line. That way when you move your stylus up your cursor moves up. I'm one of the only people I know that has it set up like this. everyone else has the wacom off to the side of their keyboard. This makes no sence to me since now when you move your stylus to the right or left, your cursor goes up. But hey, what ever you're used to I guess. Also using a tablet and stylus seems to not give you carpel tunnel syndrom like using a mouse tends to do.

Aloha,
the Ape