Wow. I can't see anyone doing that, given the dollar amount attached to it.

Try it out for a few hours in the store. They didn't let me take it home. LOL

I think if the heat was going to make it break down it would have done by now. 3 years  of it being on almost all the time. I use it as my main monitor. A fan wont make a lot of difference I dont think. The heat is coming from inside. I just dont know why since the power pack is external. There must a hard working chip with a heatsink in it somewhere.

I spent 300 USD on a custom made flight case. Its right at the limit for hand luggage but they let me carry it on and off of planes. Its too heavy to have on your lap  or move around easily and too delicate to risk it (hence the flight case). It gets hot pretty quick, around 30 minutes I'd say. Mine has been reliable up to now. I know nothing about refurbished ones.  The pen nibs last about 4 months with constant use but are cheap enough to replace. Unfortunately I cant get them here since they wont deliver and am trying to find a solution to that. The five I have are now very worn and wont last much longer. It swings around if you want it to has useful function buttons (programmable on each side and zoom sliders on the back). the new ones have more features to I think. All in all well thought out but still very expensive considering its not a Tablet PC but just a tablet screen.

I wouldn't like to be without mine, I've had it about 3 years now. I have the 20 version which they don't make anymore. The only issue is I have to use it  fairly upright because it gets hot. I've read in forums that it does not get too hot. This is not true. If I have it at 20 to 30 degrees angle , bearing in mind I use it for around 12 to 14 hours a day, it gets hot enough to burn my hand. Having it at 60 to 70 degrees the heat stays at the top of the monitor so so long as my hand is in the lower 2 thirds of the monitor its bearable. When I got this there was a Japanese alternative for less than half the price but the monitor was only capable of displaying thousands of colours (I always thought that was a graphics card issue) so perhaps it was a mis print. Anyway I have'nt seen any alternatives recently other than self builds.
If you can afford one its worth the cash I think. I save a fortune in paper pencils and materials. Even my sketching I do on the cintiq. The down side is you never have originals to sell.

Just found this interview. Its old but I think it shows he  actually enjoys doing comic work.
http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/showthread.php?1871-An-Interview-with-Joe-Madureira

Whats Joe's problem. Does he  just work too slow?

I have mixed feelings about this. Over the years I've had a lot of artwork stolen and kind of got used to it. Nobody ever made a lot of money from it though and I didn't hold the final artwork so had no control anyway. These days thanks to digital I can keep hold of the artwork and supply digital copies so I guess its a bit easier to protect.  These days I just figure if people want to take it and claim it as their own there is not much I can do about it. But they will be in trouble if they get a commission from it since how can they do anything original in my style? They will have to contact me to do it for them or  loose the commission. Maybe they take deposits and never deliver, but in the end hopefully they will get tracked down.
If somebody takes a piece of mine and it makes them a lot of fame and  cash that's great, because I can sue them and get the cash.

As for plagiarism it all depends on how its done and what the intent is.  What Nick Simmons did was all a bit of a mistake. I get the impression he really liked bleach and  let it influence him too much. Now as A kid when i was learning I did the same thing with my personal art. I copied a lot of stuff. I don't know a lot about it butt seems like he did the same thing but coz his Dad is rich he got his "practice" published. In reality he just wasn't ready. I feel a little sorry for him for not owning up before it was published and making changes. Ow he's probably messed up his credibility for ever. At least with fanatical manga fans who will never forget and remind everybody when ever he does anything new.

I use reference a for most of my work though I do tend to use photo reference but there is no harm in using reference from any source as long as you are not exactly reproducing the original. However where is the line drawn? With Nick Simmons some stuff is clearly copied and other stuff no more than referenced : http://bleachness.livejournal.com/446299.html


For the most part I take plagiarism as a compliment that does no real harm to me. Perhaps it even helps the plagiarizer's ego so that's a good thing  right?  Since they are so mentally deranged and  I assume unskilled that the only way they can make them selves feel good is by claiming they produced the work of some other. If its done for profit  we can expose and sue them.

That's all I can think of for now.