Daeda, that's quite charming. Nothing like getting screamed at from hyperspace! That's incidentally a very good first project for the intuos, get a feel for it by just painting. Expect about a week of regular use before you feel completely natural with it.
You may find that you still need a mouse for certain operations (I keep mine in the left hand position, and operate it lefty). For example, certain navigation controls in some 3D programs will cause your view to spin out of control if you use the tablet. Also, sensitive clicking-without-dragging stuff is easier to do with a mouse. You should be able to use the mouse and tablet together without making any control panell changes.
As far as the Cintiq goes, I do believe it could be a real improvement on control and sensitivity compared to other tablets. I've not yet used one but I worked with a group of other artists recently on a series of almost 500 online collaborations, done in mixed media but with heavy Photoshop use in most of them, including a lot of straightforward painting with the airbrush tool. One member in the group had a Cintiq, and his painting technique had a dimension to it that the rest of our work lacked. He raved about it, and delivered the work to prove it.
Even after using tablets for a decade and being very comfortable with them, I still don't like doing line drawings with them. There are just too many degrees of separation in the interface. With the Cintiq, one of these degrees of separation is eliminated so that you are essentially drawing directly on your file. That's pretty powerful. And I just paid off the IRS and can buy a tech toy. But I think a new Mac tower comes first before this clackety groaning old thing catches fire or seizes up.
From what I understand, Cintiqs are often on eBay in almost new condition.
Vodsel, that's really cool. Definitely a little sinister. Nice use of filters and texture, very tactile. You have more to show us?
