This is basically Wacoms fault - they sat on their patents basically only producing expensive high end devices, preventing others from providing high volume basic but cheap devices. This was the most apparent in the LCD tablet are where until recently was just the high end Wacom made Cintiq that was insanely expensive and nothing else.
I believe that we lost at least one generation of digital artists due to this - not everyone can be productive by a non-LCD tablet and even those have been overpriced.
Thankfully with the main Wacom tablet patents finally gone, the situation seems to be finally recovering, with many new, mostly Chinese, LCD tablet makers and a lot of people using high end Android and Apple tablets for drawing (which are still much much cheaper than what Wacom used to want for a simple LCD tablet display or for what it sells its bulky mobile studio devices these days).
But to this day, we can still see the technical dept caused by Wacom blocking a whole area of HID devices for ~20 years - drivers for non Wacom LCD drawing displays are still a mess and there is a lack of quality drawing software, especially on Android.
So good to se Krita helping to address at least one of these issues. :)
Wacom has been making cheap tablets for ages, I started with a $100 Graphire back around 2000, the specs and name for the low end tablet has changed but you can still get a tablet with a small working area for about US$100. You can get last year’s entry-level tablet for even less; if you have any kind of art friend connections you could probably find one for the cost of shipping.
There has been no lack of cheap non-screen drawing tablets, and I really think that there’s nothing even resembling a whole generation of digital artists who done exist because of the lack of screen tablets. There’s a FUCKTON of pro artists out there who were enabled by a cheap drawing tablet and a pirated copy of (insert art program here).
There have been cheap tablets around for years, many of those work fine. I remember having a Kurta tablet in the late 90s that cost like $60 or so.
For me the gating factor was Linux support: along that axis, there was Wacom (which had it), and everybody else (which didn't). These days, even though the kernel and X drivers are called "wacom", they support all manner of budget tablets under a variety of brand names (though you will want to check to see if a particular model is supported, and how well).
LCD tablets are nice (albeit for a while it was cheaper to simply buy a tablet-based notebook computer than a Cintiq of equivalent size) -- but not having one doesn't prevent you from being proficient at digital art. Using a regular tablet is a great way to get started; the extra precision offered by an integrated LCD display extends your reach and productivity, it doesn't gate being able to produce at all.
From my experience using a non screen tablet makes the learning curve much steeper while a screen tablet feels much more natural due to people being used to seeing what they are drawing from writing and drawing on paper.
I have seen this one some festivals where they set up a couple Wacom LCD tablet devices for people to draw on - there was a lot of interest and basically everyone was able to start drawing in a couple minutes. Seeing what you are drawing on the screen and not in front of you basically throws all the muscle memory people have from paper drawing and writing out of the window.
I believe that we lost at least one generation of digital artists due to this - not everyone can be productive by a non-LCD tablet and even those have been overpriced.
Thankfully with the main Wacom tablet patents finally gone, the situation seems to be finally recovering, with many new, mostly Chinese, LCD tablet makers and a lot of people using high end Android and Apple tablets for drawing (which are still much much cheaper than what Wacom used to want for a simple LCD tablet display or for what it sells its bulky mobile studio devices these days).
But to this day, we can still see the technical dept caused by Wacom blocking a whole area of HID devices for ~20 years - drivers for non Wacom LCD drawing displays are still a mess and there is a lack of quality drawing software, especially on Android.
So good to se Krita helping to address at least one of these issues. :)