If you're broke, I've heard good things about a Monoprice Tablet (They're... ridiculously cheap). I'll be investing in one myself soon, so maybe I can get back to you with a personal opinion sometime in the future; rumor is, though, the digitizer they use trumps the Wacom's.

Some instruction for proper driver installation, though crass.

Some of them are a good half the price of the Wacom equivalents, so there's always that.

If you're broke, I've heard good things about a Monoprice Tablet (They're... ridiculously cheap).

now i need to first learn what actually is vector art and typical settings etc , i see all tutorials using programs like illustrator or gimp is photoshop not good for vector art?

Haha, gimp and photoshop are not vector programs, they are raster/pixel programs. Illustrator and Inkscape are vector programs. Inkscape is free, go download it. Once you try to use it you will see how different it is from something like photoshop (assuming you've used photoshop). Vector art has a different mindset than raster/pixel art because in vector art you are placing points and dragging anchors to define automated curves and fills. There are no pixels.

yes i sumbled across a copy of illustrator :D i like this and think i like using the mouse for the dragging the lines etc so going to stick with the mouse and practice :) one last thing and i guess this shouldnt matter because you can scale vector art but whats an usual size canvas to work on say a character sprite?

It depends how big the character is supposed to appear on the screen. Personally I make a square 210px by 210px; only a border, no fill. Then I can use that as one frame of animation, exporting it box and all as a transparent png. I can open a whole animation's worth of those in gimp (each is a layer), crop the image to 200 by 200 to get rid of the frame, and test what the animation looks like. But if you want to make something like an intro movie where the character is as big as the screen, it would make more sense to start with an area 1000px tall or so.

oh no i am making a game with the resolution 1600x900 (for now it will eventually have an fullscreen mode) so the character i am using at the moment is 125x125px so maybe use the same? for now i am tinkering with drawing trying to make what i want but using sprites from heli attack 3 for now :) if worst comes i can still use these sprites as its only for educational and a showpiece to show my uni what i know already but i would like to say "ye this is all my own artwork also" :)

If you are serious about art, I would strongly recommend a Wacom tablet. From my personal experience as a gamer and an artist who learned the hard way, I started doing art with the mouse because I am very efficient with the keyboard and mouse. As an audio editor, you're always keyboard shortcutting your way to victory. Plus, getting all those headshots growing up actually seemed to be paying off. I had heard that tablets were the key but I thought all the art nerds with their tablets were just being snobby as usual.

However, my progress became logarithmic after a while. The problem with getting used to the mouse for art is that eventually you will want to learn the tablet because it offers pressure and stroke angle. Eventually you will cave in and find that it is a much more expressive input. When you finally do that, its like having to learn all over again. I would compare it to learning to play an instrument again. Sure you may be familiar with music already (the software), but the instrument (the tablet) will be foreign.

God is this so true. I obtained one recently and it felt so nasty....I honestly felt like I was a cripple doing art and I could not fathom how anybody would do it. I have siince pushed it off till I can obtain the 4k one that I desire. I feel that when I get the new 24HD Touch it will be more like actual drawing as the screen will act as my paper. I have become very skilled with a mouse... but I do realize that the strokes I have to take with a mouse could be done in 1/3 of the time by a simple stroke with a tablet pen. So, good advice here.

If you are serious about art, I would strongly recommend a Wacom tablet. From my personal experience as a gamer and an artist who learned the hard way, I started doing art with the mouse because I am very efficient with the keyboard and mouse. As an audio editor, you're always keyboard shortcutting your way to victory. Plus, getting all those headshots growing up actually seemed to be paying off. I had heard that tablets were the key but I thought all the art nerds with their tablets were just being snobby as usual.

However, my progress became logarithmic after a while. The problem with getting used to the mouse for art is that eventually you will want to learn the tablet because it offers pressure and stroke angle. Eventually you will cave in and find that it is a much more expressive input. When you finally do that, its like having to learn all over again. I would compare it to learning to play an instrument again. Sure you may be familiar with music already (the software), but the instrument (the tablet) will be foreign.

God is this so true. I obtained one recently and it felt so nasty....I honestly felt like I was a cripple doing art and I could not fathom how anybody would do it. I have siince pushed it off till I can obtain the 4k one that I desire. I feel that when I get the new 24HD Touch it will be more like actual drawing as the screen will act as my paper. I have become very skilled with a mouse... but I do realize that the strokes I have to take with a mouse could be done in 1/3 of the time by a simple stroke with a tablet pen. So, good advice here.

A Cintiq may be closer to drawing on paper, but still takes some getting used to.

There's the thickness between your screen and pen tip that gives a feeling of disconnect, a certain lag between drawing and having it appear on screen.

Changing brush sizes but drawing with the same tool never felt quite right either, and the peripheral itself is bulky and you'll have to adjust yourself to it.

Getting the hand-eye coordination of painting down on the tablet in my lap while watching the screen took some practice, but I think I might prefer it to the Cintiq's I had access to in school.

If you are serious about art, I would strongly recommend a Wacom tablet. From my personal experience as a gamer and an artist who learned the hard way, I started doing art with the mouse because I am very efficient with the keyboard and mouse. As an audio editor, you're always keyboard shortcutting your way to victory. Plus, getting all those headshots growing up actually seemed to be paying off. I had heard that tablets were the key but I thought all the art nerds with their tablets were just being snobby as usual.

However, my progress became logarithmic after a while. The problem with getting used to the mouse for art is that eventually you will want to learn the tablet because it offers pressure and stroke angle. Eventually you will cave in and find that it is a much more expressive input. When you finally do that, its like having to learn all over again. I would compare it to learning to play an instrument again. Sure you may be familiar with music already (the software), but the instrument (the tablet) will be foreign.

God is this so true. I obtained one recently and it felt so nasty....I honestly felt like I was a cripple doing art and I could not fathom how anybody would do it. I have siince pushed it off till I can obtain the 4k one that I desire. I feel that when I get the new 24HD Touch it will be more like actual drawing as the screen will act as my paper. I have become very skilled with a mouse... but I do realize that the strokes I have to take with a mouse could be done in 1/3 of the time by a simple stroke with a tablet pen. So, good advice here.

A Cintiq may be closer to drawing on paper, but still takes some getting used to.

There's the thickness between your screen and pen tip that gives a feeling of disconnect, a certain lag between drawing and having it appear on screen.

Changing brush sizes but drawing with the same tool never felt quite right either, and the peripheral itself is bulky and you'll have to adjust yourself to it.

Getting the hand-eye coordination of painting down on the tablet in my lap while watching the screen took some practice, but I think I might prefer it to the Cintiq's I had access to in school.

Very interesting to hear. I have the bamboo and I honestly hated having to scale it. I saw it to be the most annoying process in the world. Looking up at the screen while I try to draw on paper seemed like alien crap ( although i did it with a mouse so i dont know why it felt so different to me ). I dont know... i guess I will see when I finally get my 24HD touch :P