Don’t want to dish out money for a wacom?
1.2K Sound like a kneecapping?
Duo Dynamic Digital Pen
120$
Turn your laptop or monitor into a digital pen board!
Utilizing infrared and sonar technology as well as a simulated pressure system based upon quick flicks of the wrist.
I’ve gotten this peen and have been enjoying it immensely! Whether in photoshop, mudbox, or Zbrush, its proven its worth to me!
If your a starving artist, designer, or tech junkie, check this piece of Korean Tech out!
that is awesome…gonna get me one of the bad boys cheers for the heads up! 
Try holding your hand like that against a screen and draw for 2 minutes. Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait…
<insert 2 minute pause>
See… you’re arm is tired. That’s why these will never catch on.
interesting point…but surely u can rest your hand…it against the screen without messing up the orientation…?
I’m an old guy. Eons ago I scrimped and saved for a light pen to go with my Atari 400. After finally saving up enough for a $100 light pen, I waited 4 weeks for delivery.
No matter how hard I tried, I found I could not use it for more than a minute at a time. It was hopelessly impracticable. It ended up in the pile of unused gadgets. I don’t see any substantial difference between that light pen from 1983 and this one that would alleviate the fatigue problem. I could be wrong but I’d suggest waiting for the reviews before plunking down cash.
There is a really wacom tablets rest on a table.
My laptop can lay flat, and if that doesn’t work, I’ve a desktop monitor that I simply removed the stand from, sits nice and flat on my table, and I doodle away!
Come on folks were designers, a little McGuyvering goes a long way! :3
Now this looks exciting.
How well does it handle pressure sensitivity?
it uses a virtual sensitivity. Rather then pen pressure, it uses the speed of your strokes.
For me, its how I did calligraphy, so I’m used to doing strokes while painting and such.
Dumb.
Ah, thats what i thought. Well, it did sound too good to be true. Ultimately if it did have pressure sensitivity, who would need a Cintiq?
Kenlem is right. Most people don’t think about the amount of strength you need to hold you arm up like that while concentrating and applying pressure.
I own a Wacom Intuos 3 A5 wide for some time now and can only say that not having my hand where I draw is an incredible relief, because you don’t block your sight with your hand, don’t smudge your work on paper or your screen and you can have your arm resting on the table in a relaxed position, which must also be a lot healthier.
If you are serious about sketching on the computer, get a tablet, I know several pros and none of them is using a cintiq or a pen like that.
It needs some time to get used to it, but after that, you never want to go back.
Agreed. In fact, if someone does not want to use it just as a neat gadget, i dont see why would he want to hold it like that in the first place. All the people with cintiq i know have it tilted at an angle or just lying flat, so i imagine the same should be true here assuming it is to be used like cintiq.
… which leads me to another advantage of not drawing on the screen: The best viewing angle you can have while drawing is 90 degrees to the surface, because only then the upper edge of the surface and the lower one are at the same distance to you.
Having paper (or a screen) lying flat in front of you distorts the surface dimensions. I was once doing a life-drawing with huge sized paper lying flat in front of me, with the result, that the legs where way to short, because they seemed longer as they where closer to my eyes.
Same would happen if you would tilt a big screen too much.
Tablet: Best of both worlds, perfect viewing angle and relaxed drawing pose.
I really don’t wanna ruin the party here, I can just full-heartedly recommend tablets, they are awesome and way cheaper then those cintiqs. Throwing them away after 2 years getting the newest model won’t hurt that much…
If you don’t mind doing a bit of hacking, I’d recommend picking up a Toshiba Tecra M7 from ebay and installing Mac OS X on the thing.
The hardware is fairly inexpensive ($500-$600) and it works pretty well once it’s up and running. Inside the Tecra M7 is a wacom serial digitizer, which happens to work extremely well with TabletMagic, a third-party serial driver for older Wacom devices.
It does take a bit of work to get things running at first, but it’s an impressive system once it’s working.
The system can be used in both tablet (display folded over the keys) and laptop configurations, but can also be used in an upright manner similar to the Wacom Cintiq by pointing the display backwards, tipping the display back to around 75 degrees and then adding a prop behind the display for added support.
I’ve been using one for about 3 months myself, and I’m pretty hooked on it.
Actually, simply having the immediate feedback is a godsend and i cant think of any single disadvantage that would beat it. Of all the wacom-enabled artists i know, those who dont have a cintiq wish they had one.
At first i thought youre only commenting about the method for holding the pen, but now i must admit im rather surprised, its the first time i see someone saying something bad about cintiq other than the price.