Best Tools and Supplies for Digital Clipart Creators
What actually matters when choosing a tablet, scanner, printer or storage setup for making clipart — written as criteria, not a ranked list.
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Clip It & Zip It
There is no single best anything here, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not watched two people with identical gear produce completely different work. What follows is what to look for, so you can judge a specific product against your own situation.
Drawing tablets
The first real decision is screen or no screen. A screenless tablet is cheaper and takes a week or two to get used to; a display tablet feels natural immediately and costs several times more. Neither makes your lines better.
After that: active drawing area (bigger is more comfortable, less portable), pressure sensitivity (any modern tablet has more than enough), and tilt support if you paint rather than draw.
Styluses
Battery-free is the feature worth caring about — a pen you never charge is a pen that always works. Beyond that, check nib availability before you buy, because nibs wear out and an unobtainable nib retires the pen.
Scanners
Only relevant if you draw or paint on paper, and then it matters a great deal. Look for a flatbed (not a sheet feeder, which will not take watercolour paper), at least 600 dpi optical resolution, and a lid that lifts far enough for a sketchbook. Optical resolution is the real number; interpolated resolution is marketing.
Printers
You need a printer to check that a printable actually prints, not to fulfil orders. Any reasonable colour inkjet answers the question “does this look right on paper”. If you do sell physical prints, that is a different purchase with different criteria, and pigment ink and paper handling start to matter.
Storage and backup
An external drive plus a synced cloud folder covers almost everyone. Size it for your masters, which are far larger than your exports — layered files grow fast. The important property is that the two copies are not in the same place.
What to upgrade first
- Backup, if you do not have one. Nothing else matters if you lose the work.
- A tablet you enjoy using, because the one you avoid is worth nothing.
- More storage, once masters start filling your drive.
- A scanner, but only if you work on paper.
- Everything else, later, when a specific job demands it.