"Apple Tablet is a Train Wreck"

[guitarist]

GeneL wrote:
My friend is 70 and very much involved in making a living by freelancing on the fly with businesses that he finds along the way. From what I can tell, he presents a few ideas and does some “promotional ideas in sketches and goes on from there with designs for both inside and outside the stores or restaurants.

My feeling is that he could do some exciting things on the spot with a tablet i.e. do a rough sketch and add color and text that would look far more finished than he can do with just a pad...

A tablet could be a really great tool for his method of drumming up business, so I hope that Apple does bring one to the marketplace.

Gene, a tablet will be fun, but illustrators won't use it in the way you envision. We're quite happy with pencils and pens and brushes. When Apple gives us a pad, we'll play games on it, and watch videos.

As an editorial illustrator, surrounded by tech-loving, mac-loving illustrators, cartoonists, art directors, I can say that we have embraced computers, the internet, and work in all kinds of publishing, presenting ideas to clients, sketching, preparing samples, and none of us use a tablet for anything. We use a mouse!

I know one very successful illustrator (for the Nieman Marcus, and the New Yorker, book and CD covers) who used a Wacom tablet for a while, about a year or two, liked it okay. But that was a long time ago. Like the rest of us, he's happy with a mouse. I'm sure there are some quirky illustrator types, or colorists, or fashion designers, or heck, somebody out there that regularly uses a Wacom tablet for something, but they're rare compared to us mouse users.

Even when Apple gives us a media pad, we'll use it primarily to entertain ourselves, games, movies, etc.. And continue drawing using traditional media, and our studio computers, for our illustration work.

I think your friend can do the most exciting ideas with pencil and paper, a traditional drawing pad, and markers! The tools he's using for sketching and presentations have not been improved, they're perfect already!