Pictures of your battle stations!

almost bought a cintiq but an iPad, Procreate app and a Wacom stylus gives me 95% of what I need.

@rwenderlich Awesome. I probably live like an hour away from you :smile:

@rwenderlich Oh, interesting. I wonder how she finds it? I hated the (small) delay/lag when drawing, as well as the imprecise angle (the Cintiq glass being a bit thick).
But I guess it depends on the work, it won’t be problematic for my photographic needs or assets creation, but when drawing manga (in Paint Tool SAI for ex), you need very responsive and precise strokes, especially for hair drawing.

Nice to hear you’re a fellow anime fan, you should do some events in Japan some time, we have a nice and big community here (and most companies would let you use their offices for events, you’ll see the craziest anime/manga battlestations ever :stuck_out_tongue:)

@einharch I LOVE the Cintiq. For me, the best part is that I can do my preliminary sketching right on the screen - my previous process was:

  1. Sketch in my sketchbook
  2. Take a photo on my phone of the sketch, wait for it to sync to Aperture
  3. Export the photo and bring it into Illustrator
  4. Begin working overtop the locked sketch photo

Now, my process is:

  1. Sketch with the pencil on a 50% opacity layer set to Multiply.
  2. Lock the layer and begin working on a layer underneath it.

Also, I love that unlike sketching in a notebook, you can copy parts of sketches, group them, and transform them (scaling, nudging over a few pixels, etc). Note that my “sketching” is fast and dirty, the default pencil tool, just to get the ideas and shapes out. Certainly nothing you’d want to show anyone!

The delay isn’t enough to bother me, probably because I don’t do a lot of anime-style brush strokes. Usually I sketch, then the final art is created with the pen tool. The real benefits to me are:

  1. Sketching right in my Illustrator document saves me a ton of time.
  2. Working right on the screen (even with the Pen Tool, which is 90% of my work) is SO MUCH FUN. I used to use a Wacom Intuos tablet, which was great, but there is still a disconnect between your eye and your hand.
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My desk:

@vwenderlich Is your guy’s slack room private? Or is it open for everyone publicly to join

Such a pretty set up! :slight_smile: I see you have a wrist cushion. Does it really make typing more comfortable? Thanks a bunch!

Catie and I are currently working in the same bedroom office; we’d like to move somewhere ASAP so we have more room in two offices again. Until then, this table on cinder blocks is actually a decent standing desk.

3-screen setup during challenges for the video tutorials:

  1. Code on MacBook Pro.
  2. Interface builder on bigger external monitor (will be upgrading that old Scepter when Apple releases a Thunderbolt 3 display)
  3. Challenge PDF on iPad Pro

The stuff you see covered is canvas everywhere is semirigid fiberglass, acoustic treatment which helps the room sound good.

Here is mine, on the opposite side of the room. Note the comfy reading nook in the back!
I recently sold my Cintiq, but I only had the 12" one. I couldn’t justify keeping it once I had the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil. It looks like @vwenderlich has a big Cintiq, which I would have had more reservations about getting rid of.

And here’s an overview of the whole situation. I’m not very good at the pano photos yet


I really like the coffee warmer. Immediate ‘why didn’t I think of that’ reaction.

And I would have finished that application, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids.

@lcarmer yes it really does help - if I don’t have it, my wrists start to hurt a lot.

@prenez yes! coffee warmer is so necessary!

This is where the MTJC podcast comes from!

Got enough laptops there? ;]

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The one on the far left is “Carol”. We use that to record the call separately, because Skype is so unreliable.

Also my iPad Pro is missing from the shot. ;]

Here’s our legacy device testing library.

Whoa nice - that is the true definition of legacy, LOL :]

Ha, 8-track! Not even I am old enough to have one of those.

Hmmm one keyboard for both systems.

Hey my workstation just got nicer - I was the only bidder on a Humanscale M2 monitor arm! These are normally stupidly expensive but they’re really nicely made.


I love a desk with nothing on it.