Editing The Pen Addict 205/transcript (section)

== Woodcase Pencils ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All I can think about when I was doing this was like, thank God for woodcase pencils. Like seriously, that was the thought I had while I was doing this. Like you just pick it up and it writes, you might have to have a sharpener, but my God, this was so frustrating. Why anyone would ever want to go through this and have to have, even if it's working flawlessly, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You still have to carry the particular notebook. You have to make sure it's charged. This thing rent sucked battery, like no business. That was another thing. It would go from 60% to zero. And then I'd charge it again. And as soon as I plug it in, it'd be like at 40. I was like, oh, this thing is stupid.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh man.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's just lots of little things like that. So why anyone would want to go through this, even with the moleskin that works well, you have to carry so much crap just for this thing to work. And like in my case, it didn't, but if you have the moleskin, you just got to have like all these, there's lots more to think about. There's a lot more friction in getting your words on a page in this. I would rather just write however I want to write and whatever I want to write. And if I need it digitally, you know, scan, you know, take a picture, scan bot, whatever, and upload it into something I need. This was super frustrating. So, um, two thumbs down. If I had more thumbs, there'd be more thumbs down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What about this product slate by ISKN? I don't know if that's meant to be some funny pronunciation there. Yeah. This is like, this is looking to do this kind of thing, but without a lot of the issues you've had, right? In theory, that's what they're trying to do here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this, so we didn't know about this product. I didn't know about this product until someone tweeted, tweeted it to us and wanted our opinion on it. I pull up the page. I'm looking at it. And all this page is teaching me is that you put this ring around the pen and then you go. And then it goes in your app. That's not at all what this is. It took me like five minutes of reading this to understand that it's actually a tablet underneath the pad and the pen. It took me a while to realize that. Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I kind of got that. Maybe, maybe we saw, because there's a looping video. Maybe we just come in at different points of the video.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Well, I scrolled down. It says understanding the slate and three easy steps. Your pen. Oh, yeah. Because your pen, your notebook, from paper to your iPad. And there's a ring that's added onto the pen. It doesn't say, it doesn't say our slate, you know?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It says your pen, your notebook, but it's actually, what makes this different from a Wacom tablet? Just that you get to use your own pen as opposed to a Wacom and maybe it's more refined. This just, this looks like too much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's a couple of things for this. What I think is why this is interesting. So it has its own app, right? So that's all good. And you can put it into other, they have like an app for lots of different platforms, right? Mm-hmm. So you can draw that way. I do think though that the real benefit with this is that you use your own tools, right? So drawing on a Wacom is not the same as drawing with a pencil. Like it's just not the same. And a lot of people are able to kind of transfer those skills, but I don't know. Like I feel like you're still not getting to use the stuff that you love to use. You've got to use the Wacom pen, whether you like it or not. And quite frankly, the Wacom pen is nothing like any of the pens that I own. Sure. So I guess if you're someone who's like an illustrator, I can see there being a genuine benefit to this because it will replicate what you're able to produce with the stuff that you love to use. Mm-hmm. Like if it works, I mean, who knows? If it works, I mean, I would be interested in this if I was artistic in this way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Because otherwise, I guess the way to get it is just a super high-res scanner, right? Yeah. From your drawing. That's what artists would normally do as opposed to something like this. So I'd be interested to hear if anyone's ever used this, what the digital output's like directly from the slate.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So apparently using their application, which is called Imagink, it allows you to export PSDs and vectors. Okay. So in theory, if that all works, that sounds really cool to me. Yeah. Like if you were an illustrator, if you're an artist, I can see there being a genuine benefit for this. However, the slate itself is pretty small. So. Was it, is this A5 sized? Something like that. Yeah. Which I think. Maybe a little bigger. Maybe a little bigger. Yeah. That could be a bit of a problem. But other than that, I genuinely think that this is an interesting looking product for the person that needs it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. I'd be interested if anyone listens to this and has it, shoot us an email or a tweet or something, or if you've reviewed it or whatever. I just never heard of it before. It was sent and it was a Kickstarter project.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I was going to say, this looks like it was a Kickstarter project. And I was surprised that we didn't find out about it then, to be honest. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it did really well and was behind like everything else. I remember bouncing through the Kickstarter last week. But yeah, I mean, it seems pretty good. Our friend Lee Rubenstein from ArtSnacks wanted to make some comments about this, but he said not until we talked about it first. So we'll ask him now what his opinion of it is.