pastorkeith wrote:
On a side note - should my high school sophomore who wants to be a cartoonist some day invest in one of those wacom thingys? He draws freehand fairly well.
pastorkeith
Cartoonist! Cool
This is definitely different from drawing on 'real paper' , but it's one more tool he could add to his bag of tricks!
Mine has a lot of pressure sensitivity, so you can draw with many shades of gray. The drawing surface is slightly rough, and does feel a lot like paper. But the drawing area is small-- a 4 inch by 6 inch area maps to the whole computer screen. There's different sizes available.
What I love about it is that you can do your project in layers. It would be like drawing on a series of transparent acetate sheets-- "OK I'll do the black and white lines on
this layer, the flat colors on
this layer, the shading on
this layer". That way if you mess something up you don't have to start over from scratch, you just re-do that layer.
Also you can make copies of the layer, in case you want to do something different with each one. In the 'real world' that would mean tracing it again.
If I had a highschooler who was interested in drawing, I would
definitely get one for him to experiment with. If he doesn't like it, I'm sure you could sell it to another kid who'd want to try it out.
Learning the software that comes with it is also a challenge, but I'm enjoying it. This sort of thing is supposed to be very good for middle-aged brains.
(What's left of them) 
