Product Review - Kayla Rig by Josh Sobel

As many of you are well aware, Animation is my life. One of the fun things about being an animator is getting to play with cool rigs. Recently I stumbled upon a rig by Josh Sobel called the Kayla rig. I got in contact with Josh and asked if I could do a review of the Kayla rig and he was gracious enough to provide me with a copy.

So before I get into the review, let me show you a quick animation I did with the rig.

Kayla Rig Review Final Animation from Josh Janousky on Vimeo.

If you couldn't tell, that clip was Michelle from Full House, one of the best shows from the 90s. Now lets get into what you get with this rig.

Josh has provided a few cool things with Kayla. First you get the rig herself, along with a male version of the rig called Kyle. You also get a file called poseLibrary, which has various facial and hand animation poses you can copy over into your own work. Personally when working with Kayla I never used the poses provided, but I have to say the variety of them was quite nice. You also get a few custom shelves with the rig that work as a character picker. Rather than create a visual GUI you are given a shelf that has every control as its own icon. This is nice because it allows you to access different parts of the rig while hiding the controls. Personally I prefer the GUI approach of a character picker, but it was really nice that Josh provided you with this shelf so you didn't have to make them yourself.

Meet Kayla!

And meet Kyle!

Now lets get into the rig itself. If you're a beginner, the rig could be a bit intimidating. Josh packed this thing to the brim with as many controls as possible! If you want to limit the amount of controls you see though, all you have to do is click the gear icon at the base of Kayla's feet and in the Channel box tun "Minor Controls" to OFF. This section is also where you can turn on and off the visibility of Kayla's glasses, hide parts of her body, change the hair style, and the coolest part of this rig, age Kayla. Basically with this control you are able to age Kayla anywhere from 6 years old up to 18 years old. Her default age is 12. In the animation I've included at the start of this review, I had Kayla at 6 years old.

Here is where you are able to access these options.

Now Josh has come up with an interesting system with his rig. Typically on most rigs, the controls are color coordinated. Red is left, blue is right, and yellow is anything in the middle. With Josh's system, he has it set up so Yellow is your primary controls, red is your secondary controls, and purple is used to tweak your shapes. I thought this was a cool idea, though it did take some time getting used to remember which color was which.

Kayla's color coded controls

Kayla also features a unique spine that I haven't seen before. Rather than including an IK or a FK spine like most rigs, he's created a spine that works in an anatomically correct way. This was actually pretty cool and a feature I would love to see in more rigs!

I'm going to link to a few videos from Josh's site that explain all of the features of the rig

Kayla Body Rig Walkthrough from Josh Sobel on Vimeo.

Kayla Facial Rig Walkthrough + Pose Demo from Josh Sobel on Vimeo.

Kayla's rig was a pleasure to use and once I have more time to really sit down and work on animation outside of my Animation Mentor work, I have some exciting stuff planned with her. Josh was also a pleasure to work with, answering all of my questions almost immediately. For only 12 dollars, you'd be foolish not to pick up this incredible rig.

In the end I would have to give the Kayla rig a 9.5/10. I knocked off .5 because of the fact that I would have preferred those extra controls to be hidden, and because I would have loved a GUI character picker, but honestly at this point I'm being picky.

If you wish to find out more about Kayla, or her creator, Josh you can find Josh at the following locations!

joshrigs.com/

joshrigs.com/#!kayla/c1eof

vimeo.com/117864541

facebook.com/joshsobelrigs

Thanks again to Josh Sobel for providing me with this rig!

Product Review - Surface Pro 3

I recently was given a Surface Pro 3 to try out, to see if it was a step up from your standard drawing tablet. During the course of the week I had the Surface, I did all of my drawing on it instead of my Huion (if you're interested in that review, it can be found here).

Let me begin with what you get in the Surface Box. You receive a power cord, a wireless pen, and the Surface itself. The Surface runs Windows 8 and does not come with a keyboard, however there is one sold separately. Out of the box I already ran into an issue. For some reason the Surface was already on! I'm not sure why this was the case as I was the first person to open the box, but I feel it should be mentioned. The next issue I ran into was with the pen, for some reason when I went to the bluetooth options on the Surface, it would detect the pen but not connect. The pen still worked, but seemed to lag a little bit. Later on I did get the pen to connect, but I still felt like it was slightly laggy.

The Surface Pro 3 Box

The Included Pen (note while it does have two hotkeys on the front, I was unable to map them to any Photoshop shortcuts)

The device itself was quite nice. It wasn't super heavy and the adjustable stand on the back was a nice feature. I also liked the power cord as it was similar to my Macbook cord, where it worked no matter what way you plugged it in. The device had a nice finish and the screen was quite clear.

The Surface front

The back of the Surface

The kickstand

The two programs I installed on the Surface were Adobe Photoshop CC and Mudbox 2015, however, I was only able to test Photoshop as for some reason Mudbox never opened. I was really disappointed by this, as I had hoped to try some sculpting on the Surface. With Photoshop, I tried to work without using a keyboard, as I didn't have the accessory. I found this incredibly frustrating as it slowed down my workflow immensely. Eventually I caved and plugged in an USB keyboard into the single USB port on the Surface, which sped up the process, but also made the device less portable.

Once I began to draw with the Surface, I was pleasantly surprised at the pressure sensitivity. It was nowhere as good as my Intuos tablet, but it was much better than I expected. I did have to press fairly hard for the device to work, so it made faint line work a bit difficult. I was able to do some decent sketching with the device, but overall I found that it took me longer to draw things as a result of the pressure issue.

An example of the pen pressure

All in all, the Surface pro is a nice tablet for general use I used it for some basic web browsing, and played some music off of it and had no issues. When it came to using this as a digital sketchbook however, I found the device was severely lacking. No matter what I did, I just couldn't seem to find a decent way to use this over using my Intuos or Huion. I enjoyed the tablet as a tablet, but I don't think I could recommend it to someone as an alternative to a traditional drawing tablet. As a tablet I would give it an 8/10, but as a drawing tablet I'd have to give it a 5/10.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

 ~Josh

Product Review - Mischief

Recently I was provided a copy of this fantastic painting program called Mischief. What makes Mischief unique, amongst painting programs is the fact that it is a vector painting program. What that means is that you can scale your image as large or as small as you want and you will never lose quality. It also has an "infinite canvas" so you can literally paint as much as you want and never have to worry about size. In the Digital Media world, if you are doing any sort of graphic design work, you typically will use a vector program like Adobe Illustrator. The downside of Illustrator, as opposed to a program like Photoshop, which is NOT a vector program, is that you don't have as much freedom when it comes to the organic qualities of a painting program. This is where Mischief comes in. It combines that incredible painting capabilities of a program like Photoshop, while allowing you to do vector work like Illustrator. As someone who dislikes using Illustrator, but needs to do vector work, this was a godsend.

The Mischief user interface

Up until now the only program I've used to paint is Photoshop, so I was excited to give this a try. The layout is pretty simple, with your layers, tools, and brushes all on the right side of the screen. Mischief comes preloaded with a few different digital pens, pencils, markers, highlighter, etc. Below your drawing tools, there is a section called paper, which allows you to choose form a variety of paper textures. This is really cool as it allows you to replicate the feel of working in a traditional medium! For the pens you are also able to control the size and opacity of the pen, along with the color. For the paper, you can control the strength of the texture along with the color. What's interesting about both of these sections is you can save up to 6 different color presets. So if you have certain colors you use all the time, this is a great way to keep them organized. Unfortunately it looks like you are limited to only 6 colors. Additionally if you know the specific Hex key for your color, there is no way to select that specific color, which is a bit of a let down.

The various paper textures included with the program

Now anyone who knows me knows that when I learn a new program I like to learn all of the hotkeys. Mischief has gone ahead and under the help menu included a nifty little list of all of the programs hotkeys. I was very glad to see this as it made learning to use the program a lot easier! I was also very pleased to see that there were actions already programmed in to flip your layers and you canvas, which is a feature I use quite often! The only shortcut I couldn't seem to find was a shortcut to clear the entire canvas. There is a command to do that under the "Edit" menu, but for some reason there isn't a shortcut. I would have liked to see that included, so perhaps in a future update that can be implemented. One thing that was really nice to see though as a Photoshop user, is that the majority of the hotkeys are the same as those in Photoshop, which made switching between the programs very simple!

List of all of the shortcuts in Mischief

Now when I opened up the program for the first time, I was a bit confused as I'm used to seeing my brushes when I use them, so I can know what the size is. For some reason the default setting in Mischief is to just use your cursor icon. Now there is a way to fix that, if you go to your preferences, found in the Edit menu, you can change it from the cursor to the pen cursor. There are also options for using a crosshair or nothing at all, but I prefer the pen. In my opinion, I would've made the pen the default, as I feel that's what most people would be accustomed to. One little glitch I have found with the pen cursor is that when you swap from your brush to your eraser, the size of the icon doesn't change. You have to hit your bracket key to make the change. This can be a pain if you are using a large eraser and a small pen, as you might get confused.

One SUPER cool feature that Mischief has is what it refers to as a "See-Thru Window." This turns Mischief transparent so you can see whatever you have open behind the program! This is amazing because if you need to trace something or want to have reference on hand, it turns the program into a light table. I LOVE this feature, and think that it's absolutely brilliant! You can also change the opacity of this feature to suit your needs. 

The See-Thru Window in action!

Mischief will allow you to export your entire visible canvas or specific sections of the canvas as either PSDs, JPEGs, or PNGs. You can also import JPEGs directly into the program. Overall I was very happy with Mischief! There were a few minor things that would be nice to have. Perhaps having more brushes, or the ability to add brushes. Also having a dedicated hotkey to clear the canvas would be nice as well. Other than that, I would highly recommend this product! I tested it out on PC but there is a Mac version as well. I also used my Wacom Intuos for this review, not my GT-190, so I will update this review once I'm able to test it with that. You can purchase Mischief at their site for $65. I would give this product an 8.5/10

Here are links to Mischief's site and their social media sites.

Website - http://www.madewithmischief.com

facebook - https://www.facebook.com/madewithmischief

twitter - https://twitter.com/GetMischief

tumblr - http://madewithmischief.tumblr.com/

As always thanks for stopping by and enjoy!

~Josh

Product Review - Huion GT-190, an Affordable Cintiq Alternative!

Ever since I got into digital art, I have wanted a graphics tablet where you could draw on the screen. Initially the only tablet that met that criteria that I was aware of was the Wacom Cintiq. The Wacom Cintiq is a fantastic product, however it is quite pricey, with the most inexpensive one being around $1000. Unfortunately that was a bit out of price range so I began looking into an inexpensive Cintiq alternative. That's when I discovered the GT-190 by a Chinese company called Huion. Huion, like Wacom, makes drawing tablets of multiple types and sizes, however at a fraction of the cost. After doing some research into the company, I found that the GT-190 was exactly what I was looking for. I got in contact with the company through their facebook page and within a little over a week the GT-190 was at my door. I have to say that even before the tablet arrived I was quite impressed with the company as they were very fast at responding to all of my messages and were extremely helpful when answering questions. With that being said onto the review!

I own both a PC and a Mac, however for this review I only had access to my Mac at the time. I will post an updated review when I'm able to use this with my PC, however I feel that the experience will be very similar to that on the Mac. When the package arrived, it included the following: the GT-190 with adjustable stand, the tablet pen, a USB charger for the pen, a pen stand, a USB to USB cable, a VGA cable, and a power cord. Now despite the fact that it included a VGA cable the GT-190 has a DVI port as well, which is what I chose to use instead. I purchased a DVI to HDMI cable to use and have had no problems with it whatsoever.

The GT-190 hooked up to my MacBook Air

Now before I give my thoughts on everything, let me provide you with a few stats about the tablet. The GT-190 is a 19 inch monitor. It has five buttons on the front; Menu, down, up, Auto, and power, which are used to calibrate the monitor. The resolution is 1440x900, which is the same resolution as a 2011 MacBook pro, so the quality is crystal clear. It has four ports in the back, USB, VGA, DVI, and a power port. It also has an adjustable stand attached to the back which allows you to angle the GT-190 at various angles. This can also be removed so that you could attach the tablet to a stand or a monitor arm (something I plan to do in the future). The tablet works with both PC and Mac. However at the moment only the PC has drivers specifically for the GT-190. When speaking with Huion they told me which Mac driver to install instead. As this driver was not intended for the GT-190, I'm not exactly sure how much it differs from that on the PC, however I can say that I have had zero issues with it on my Mac. The only thing I've noticed is that there isn't a section to calibrate the tablet with the pen as I suspect there is one on the PC, though as I've mentioned I haven't had any issues with this driver. When speaking with Huion I was told that in order to use the GT-190 I would have to uninstall my Wacom drivers to use it, now I'm not sure if this is the same case with the PC but I have both Wacom and Huion drivers on my Mac and have had zero issues whatsoever. I'm able to use both tablets with no problem at all, which is a HUGE plus in my opinion.

The driver you are going to want to install if you are using a Mac.

Until this tablet, the only tablets I had used previously were a Wacom Graphire and my Wacom Intuos 5, so I hadn't had any previous experience using other tablet monitors. As a result of this I can't compare this to a Cintiq as I have not used one, so I can only compare it to a normal drawing tablet. Anyone who has used a drawing tablet will tell you that one of the things that takes the longest to get used to is the disconnect. By that I mean you'll be drawing on the tablet while looking at the screen, so you aren't watching your hand draw as you would traditionally with pencil and paper. Since the GT-190 is both a tablet AND a monitor, you can see exactly what you are drawing as you draw it. Now from what I understand, all tablets like the GT-190, including the Cintiq's, have something called parallax. Essentially, it's where the position of an object appears to differ when viewed from a different position. In this case I'm referring to the cursor and the tablet pen. Since there is a layer of glass between you and the screen, that means there is going to be a little bit of a difference. Be that as it may, it's not hugely noticeable with the GT-190. The cursor is pretty much exactly where you place your pen and there is virtually no lag. I have to saw I was pretty impressed as I know other similar tablets have a big problem with this. Additionally my lines were very smooth with no jitter outside that of my own hand.

While right out of the box the images on the GT-190 look amazing, you will have to adjust the settings a bit. Initially I used the default settings and found that my work had a slight purple tint to it. However after going into the custom settings, I was able to get my screens to look pretty much identical. The menu system was fairly easy to use, and once I made those adjustments, everything looked fine. Now I will admit that the GT-190 does have some viewing angle issues, but for me at least, none of these were angles I normally am looking at. I could only really see this being an issue if you were working on a piece and had people around you all trying to look. What's nice about the GT-190 is that since it has an adjustable stand, you can change the angle to suit your needs.

This is what the adjustable stand on the back looks like

Now let's talk about the pen. The pen is very similar to my Intuos 5 pen, as you can see from the pictures below, the main differences being that A) it does not have an eraser,  B) you will have to charge the pen, and C) you don't have a tilt option with the pen. Now Huion does offer a pen that takes AAA batteries for around $17 if you're worried about constantly charging your pen, but I have to say since you can still use the pen while its plugged in to charge, I don't really see the need to buy the battery pen. Is it an inconvenience that the pen needs to be charged? Yes, but is it a huge issue?  Not at all. On the subject of the eraser, I know this a point of debate amongst digital artists. Some prefer not to use the eraser as it speeds up their workflow whereas others prefer to use the eraser as it feels more natural to them. I fall into that second camp, so I was a bit bummed to find out that the pen did not come with an eraser. However once I started to use pen, I found that it wasn't as big of a deal as I thought. Given the option to have an eraser, I will always choose it, but now I know that I can survive without one. On the subject of the pen having a tilt feature, I NEVER have used that when my Intuos so that was not an issue for me whatsoever. Like the Wacom pen, the GT-190's pen comes with a stand. At first glance the two stands are VERY similar. Both are black and a similar shape, both open up to reveal extra nibs and a nib removal tool, but thats where the similarities end. The Wacom's stand is a bit heavier, contains more nibs, and has hole in the top to place your pen. The Huion's stand is lighter, contains less nibs, and you lay the pen horizontally across the top. Both stands though work great at getting the job done, which when it comes down to it all, is to store your nibs and hold your pen.

The Huion Pen (top) compared to the Wacom Pen (bottom)

The two pens in their stands (Huion Left, Wacom Right)

A close up of the pen stands (Huion Left, Wacom Right)

The stands opened to reveal the extra nibs (Huion Left, Wacom Right)

The USB Charging cable for the Huion pen

This is what the pen looks like plugged into the cable.

Another difference between the GT-190 and the Cintiq are programmable buttons. The GT-190 has no programmable buttons whatsoever. With my Intuos 5, I take full advantage of my programmable buttons, so I admit I was a bit disappointed to see that the GT-190 did not have any. However as anyone who knows me can vouch, I'm very hotkey oriented when it comes to the programs I use, knowing all of the keyboard shortcuts, so that just means I have to use my keyboard a bit more than I would with my Intuos. For those of you who might be in a similar position as me, here are some Photoshop hotkeys I find myself using the most to replace the fact that I no longer have that touch ring that I have on my Intuos. By holding down the "Z" key, you are able to zoom in and out of your image by moving the pen around. By holding down "control" "alt" "shift" and moving your pen left to right you are able to alter the size of your brush, and by moving it up and down you can change the hardness. By using these two hotkeys in my workflow, I'm able to use my GT-190 just as fast as my Intuos 5.

One feature I really do love about my Intuos 5 that the GT-190 does not have, is the ability to set your buttons to be different for each program you use. That way if you are going between a 3D program and a 2D program you can navigate them very easily. As the only programable buttons that the GT-190 has are on the pen, I had hoped to be able to set my front button as my "alt" key for programs like Photoshop, so that I can use it to quickly sample colors, and the middle mouse button for programs like Maya or Mudbox, so I can navigate in 3D. Unfortunately you can't do that with the GT-190, you can only set the buttons for the pen in general, not on a per program basis. Additionally you are limited to setting the two buttons as the following options: right click, left click, right double click, left double click, and no action, so you aren't able to set them as specific keys. Also I find it a bit odd that middle click is not an option, as it seems pretty standard. Perhaps in a future update Huion could address this by allowing users to program the pen to act as different keys, or at the very least have a middle click option.

I have to say, the experience I have had so far with my GT-190 has been a dream. The pressure sensitivity works well, the picture is crystal clear, it responds very nicely, and it does exactly what I had hoped it would. Already I can tell that my art will improve as I've been able to do some nice line-art with this tablet, something that I've always had an issue with on other tablets. Now for this review I only tested the tablet with Photoshop, as I have the other programs I would use, Mudbox, Sculptris, Nuke, Maya, etc, on my PC, so I can't vouch for how it works with those programs, but I'm not too worried at all. When I do use this with my PC I will post an update covering that, the ability to have both sets of drivers, any differences the official drivers might have, and using the GT-190 with a multiple monitor setup.

I could not be happier with this tablet, Huion has done a great job making a product that is an EXCELLENT alternative to the more expensive Cintiq. To be honest, and again this is coming from someone who has never used a Cinitiq, I feel like that for the cost of a Cintiq, you are essentially paying for the name, the programable hotkeys, and a more customizable interface. However when it comes down to performance, I don't really think there would be much of a difference. The GT-190, at the time of this review, costs $655.99 which is a great price for anyone who wants to get a professional level drawing tablet. I love my GT-190 and have a feeling that I would enjoy some of the other options that Huion has available.

Here are my final thoughts for Huion. In a future update it would be nice to have programable buttons and a eraser on the pen, though as I stated in my review thats not a deal breaker. It would also be nice if it came with a DVI cable instead of a VGA cable, and maybe if they replaced the VGA port with an HDMI one. One thing I definitely would suggest though is adding a middle mouse click option in the tablet settings for the pen. This is something I think is very important. Additionally it would nice to be able to set the pen buttons, and if they're added the programable buttons on the tablet, on a per program basis, and have the ability to set them to specific keys as well. Other than that, I would have to say that the GT-190 is killer piece of technology.

Oh one thing I forgot to mention is that when using the GT-190 I utilized two piece of equipment that was not provided by Huion. The first were a pair of Gunnars, the second being a DIY Smudgeguard. Since when using this tablet your face is right next to a screen, I would suggest using Gunnars, which are specially made glasses for both gamers and digital artists. Essentially what they do is cause your eyes to strain less while looking at a screen for prolonged periods of time and help prevent damage to your eyes. A Smudgeguard is a special glove that prevents smudging on your screen and allows you to glide across the surface. Now when I got my GT-190, the woman who makes Smudgeguards did not have any available, so I ended up making my own. I purchased these gloves from Amazon and cut off the thumb, pointer, and middle fingers. While it might not look as professional as a Smudgeguard, it still looks good and it works exactly the same. I used the tablet with and without the glove, and I much prefer the experience with the glove.

My DIY Smudgeguard

I would like to thanks Huion for providing me with the GT-190, for having FANTASTIC customer support, and for making an AMAZING tablet. I know that this will be something that I will be using for years in both my professional and personal work. I would give this tablet a 9.5/10

A sketch using the GT-190 

Some line-art with the GT-190. If you compare this to my previous line-art you can see a huge improvement.

Adding in the color.

The final, finished piece. These are actually my Animation professors as the three Fairies from Sleeping Beauty!

You can find out more about Huion at the following links:

http://www.huiontablet.com/
https://www.facebook.com/huion
https://twitter.com/HuionTab
http://huiontablet.tumblr.com/

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

~Josh

After chatting with Huion, they wanted me to let everyone know that the GT-190 is even cheaper if you get it directly from their site, TMart, or DX. The prices are fantastic so there really isn't any excuse not to purchase one!