Thanks for the comments people. I appreciate this.
Hisko:
The washy look on the image you refered to was achieved with the FreeHandFill tool. I didn't use custom brushes at all. I just layered it on with low opacity shapes. I've recorded a quick tutorial on this and am trying to upload it to a video website. Once it's finished I'll embed it here.
As for the tablet, I'm definitely enjoying it as a tool, and mine has good specs too. But cannot beat the experience of sitting in front of 24" screen at a distance (good for back) and drawing on a A4 table. I got the tablet because I currently am away from my desktop computer and the intuos tablet (they will get here hopefully in a month time), and for drawing outside my working space. As for animating in it, it's mainly for sketchy stuff, and motion ideas. I don't want to animate on a 1280x768 as there will be too many tools on screen, and the use of keyboard is irreplaceable. TabletPC are after all not as rigid as the manufacturers claim them to be, so my desktop setup, in a sense, can take much more abuse.
The speed is ok, but nothing like having an internal RAID setup for you scratch. Here I'm using an external drive via eSATA, which is better than firewire, but still leaves you desiring more.
Pressure sensitivity is ok, at the most of its spectrum. But at the beginning of the press, i.e. when you are just caressing the glass, there's some dead area before the sensitivy engages and a mark is registered on the screen. Saying that, I'm still using the pen that came with the tablet so if I switch to one of the old Wacom pens this might improve.
Zig:
- most of the screen doesn't really heats up. There's one corner (the one close to the power switch) though that gets quite hot in high CPU times, which is slightly annoying but nice in winter
- I don't use gloves to draw. I don't like the smoothness of the hands against the glass. Maybe it's something you get used to, but in the meantime I prefer just to wipe the screen as needed (the glass is hard and scratch resistant). I don't get sweat, more like the oil from skin gets smeared on slowly.
- I have an 8 cell battery on my tablet, and once out of the socket it lasts for about 4-4.5 hours.