​Expresii is coming to Tokyo later this month! We'll demo at Wacom Connected Ink 2018 and SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018. Come see our latest development and chat with our developer!  Stay tuned for details~ 

👉Register  free for Connected Ink here.
👉Get a free Visitor Pass (includes Exhibition where we'll be demo'ing) for SIGGRAPH ASIA by registering now.

Special thanks to Wacom for treating us as good partner. Previously, we participated in Connected Ink 2016 Shanghai:​

We also express our graitude to   CGVisual.com for inviting us to demo again at SIGGRAPH ASIA.   Check out our previous reports on   SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 & SIGGRAPH ASIA 2013!

We can't wait to see you again in Tokyo!   ヽ(´ω｀○)ﾉ.+ﾟ*｡:ﾟ+​

We will now (v.2018-09-16) gradually rolling out high-DPI support that some of you are asking for (by giving bad review). Here, I'd like to say that High-DPI support not a simple easy-peasy toggle of a switch (if it were, Adobe would have had high-DPI Photoshop early on). We do rely on others' UI framework. When such framework doesn't work as expected, we need to look for workaround.   Not all software developers are as big as Adobe where you can have a   whole arm of developers to work on it.  So, please be more understanding and don't give the lowest review score in MS App Store simply because we don't have high-DPI support earlier.   Without high-DPI, Expresii is still functional and gives you the world's most organic digital watercolor.   Like  some of the users say, Expresii deserves the credit.  So, please leave a balanced review  if you are to leave one.

FYI, my 2017 Surface Pro with Iris 640 dropped from 100+  to 60-80 FPS switching to high-DPI, depending on the zoom level. So, depending on your GPU, using high-DPI support may or may not be your better choice.  FYI, we just got a user reporting that he's very happy with high-DPI on his Surface Studio that still gives 90-150 FPS after the switch.

​You can always switch back to System scaling instead  of high-DPI via   System Override.  You right-click on Expresii's icon, and then choose Property>Compatibility>Settings>Change high DPI settings and choose 'System (Enhanced)':

You 

Using 'System Enhanced', some of the UI text gets proper scaling.  You can check out the rendering differences:

So, if you find painting is too slow, we recommend using 'System Enhanced' so that it's not slowed down and that you still get some of the texts scaled sharp.

The high-DPI support is not perfect yet. We'll keep working on it. 

One of the reasons why traditional artists    don't like digital painting is that digital artwork only exists in cyber space. They prefer something they can hold in their hands.  To address this, we can simply print the artwork on real pieces of paper.

A decade ago, printing on  Eastern art paper was not easy because  of the paper thinness  causing jams.   Nowadays, it is much easily given those designed-for-printer-use Xuan paper packs in size  A4 or A3 or even in rolls available from taobao.com  (sorry, site in Chinese).   There are also Japanese paper designed for printing too (like Awagami). Looking at their website, it seems their papers are thicker than the art  paper we normally use for Eastern art, and thus pigments won't soaking into the paper all the way through like in real calligraphy works.

十年前用宣紙打印很麻煩的，因為紙太薄送紙容易弄皺。但現在淘寶有專門用來打印的宣紙，A4、A3，甚至長卷均有出售，雖然還是會皺，但廢品率已經改善很多。日本也有為打印而設的和紙，還未試，但感覺如果紙太厚則沒通透感，會像普通打在紙表面的 印刷品，而非像真的書法作品那麼墨滲透紙纖維的 藝術品。

Here we use Xuan paper packs (really cheap at  <2USD a pack of 100 sheets) bought  from Taobao.  

For an authentic feel, we use Ink Jet printers instead of laser, because the paper absorbs the ink just like in real artworks. ​ If you use laser,  the pigment stays on top of the paper, giving an ordinary 'printout' feel. Here we use very low-cost printers with only 4 pigments. If you have more expensive printers using more pigments in different tones, the result should be finer.

See the process and more results:

Casual viewers probably won't notice those are prints.  This is especially true when  the work is   purely black like in normal Eastern calligraphy. 

For those who can't access Youtube, see if you can watch the same video hosted in this site:
如果您是大陸的，可能Youtube 看不到，所以我也試下在本站放上面那個視頻，看看您們看不看到，留言告訴我情況啊：

Veikk sent us  an S640 pen tablet for testing. We did some quick doodle and  calligraphy with the low-cost (currently $26 on Amazon ; $28 on Gearbest) pen tablet:

The S640 is light-weight and portable. It is the thinnest I've ever tried.  At first I wished the S640 comes with some shortcut buttons, but now paring it with a   bluetooth keyboard   I don't really need them on the tablet itself.

The S640 is very thin. See it for yourself:

I like the Huion H420 for being able to have its cable unplugged. But mine is not functioning after a year because of rusting metal  for the battery compartment. :(   The new Veikk S640  is battery-less so no worry for replacing battery and of course rusting metal is never an issue.  

Schools on a low budget should consider picking up such low-cost tablets for their digital art education. Digital calligraphy is big and we should further develop our tradition in the new era.

We were excited ever since the first Surface Book came out in 2015, since it gave the option for a discrete GPU.​ Now we have a chance to test with a Surface Book 2, thanks to Microsoft for providing the hardware for testing.

We are provided with the 13.5" model. Coming from the 12" Surface Pro, I like the bigger screen size.   The hardware feels really solid and clean. And of course, with an nvidia GTX 1050, we get very good performance, although it gets a bit hot and the fan would kick on. 

See the calligraphy process video in Youtube:

The recently released TabMate from Clip Studio  is a controller designed specifically for digital painting.  Long-time Expresii user Shuen Leung is very happy with the new controller. The following is a video walk-through for setting up the controller for use with Expresii:

The setup process is very similar to that of the Nintendo Joy-con. However, the TabMate gives constant left or up signals for the Left and Right Joysticks, so user would need to disable the Joystick readings or function assignment from inside Expresii.

Acknowledgement: we thanks Shuen Leung for lending us the controller and  providing feedback and suggestions using the TabMate. Let us know if you have any feedback in using similar controllers!  You can read more on the TabMate in this English review  by Scigor.

 Hong Kong-based artist Shuen Leung   tries out Microsoft Surface Studio and Surface Book 2:

Shuen does artwork in both traditional and digital media.  She specially likes Expresii for its ability to undo.   "Expresii 是可以undo 的 水墨!"     (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Check out her website and Facebook page for  works, art tips and more.

We recently added  native support for Microsoft Surface Dial.   The combination of   pen, touch and wheel gives you a new way to interact with Expresii.

Two custom menu items,   Rotate & Brush , are added specific for Expresii: 

When Expresii's main window is in focus, a press-and-hold on the Dial takes you to the above radial menu.  When Brush is selected, you can press the Dial to invoke our own Brush Control Menu, which has  four items, namely Brush Size, Loading, Wetness and Scratchiness:

For instance, you can use the Dial to adjust Brush Wetness while you stroke:

All of these controls, except brush size, can be adjusted as you stroke.  Yes,  as you stroke, instead of between strokes. Things  happen in real time.   You can rotate the paper with the Dial as you paint. By adjusting your pen tilt angle at the same time, thanks to the tilt-sensitivity of the pen, you can create  interesting patterns!    

When you enable gravity  in Expresii, your rotation actually  directs the ink flow. Expresii's advanced paint engine  give the most natural simulation of brush and ink hands down. You won't believe what your Surface device can do!

And of course the Dial is also handy for undo and redo. See it in action for yourself:

We had a lot of fun playing with   Expresii   &   the dial.   We hope you do too! ​As always, stay creative!    └(°ᴥ°)┘​

Lunar new year day was  16th of Feb, 2018.   We wish you all the best for the new year  of the dog!

Now it's being a tradition we play with the Chinese character for the year.  This year, we play with the character 狗, which means dog:

Recently, ambigram  is popular around East Asia, so we make one that reads dog and shows a dog 90-deg turned.  

​And notice how we use pen tilt to make organic marks.

Chinese characters give you so much room for imagination!  We can't stop playing with them!
​大家快來寫數位書法，漢字給你太多想像了！

Only Expresii gives you this level of expression with brush and ink! 

Soon after the Nintendo Switch was released in March 2017, digital artists have been using the controllers, called Joycons, as a hand-held controller for digital painting.  In contrast with all previous low-cost single-hand game controllers we tried before, the joycons ($80 a pair ) are equipped with gyroscopes, accelerometers and even IR motion camera.   ​

The joycons works on Windows even without installing a driver  but the analog thumb-stick only works as digital buttons.  Thanks to  this   Joycon driver for Windows   by Matthew Fosse, we can now also use the analog joystick (and maybe later the gyroscope too).

After installing vJoy and Joycon driver as instructed by the Joycon driver page, we are able to use Joycon for quick controls for Expresii. We had to connect the Left joycon instead of having left and right combined, since the mapping of the combined controls is different from what Expresii currently accepts. We tried  x360ce  to remap the controls but  we didn't figure out how yet. :)   Currently, Joycon driver outputs gyroscope data as rotational impulses rather than tilt angles so we can't really make use of the gyroscope  for brush tilt yet.   Anyway, here is a short video of using Joycon with Expresii:

We thank Mandy Ng of   Rooftop Animation    for providing the Joycons. ​