What Creative Things Do You Do with Your Surface?

Microsoft seem to be targetting creative types more with this product, so I wondered what creative things do you do with yours? Create music? Art? Something else I hadnt considered? Or do you have a second computer that you use and use this more as a casual machine?

I'd love to hear your stories about how you make use of your device as a creative tool (with examples would be even better) in the hope that it will inspire me to do more with mine.

I have all these plans to start drawing again, making beats and basic tunes etc. but fear I'll end up doing what I have done in the past and always leave it in a todo list rather than taking the bull by the horns and just doing it...

I dabbled in digital art with my Note 8 but felt I needed programmes with more functionality and a machine with more power to do it properly.

I also love the idea of a mobile DAW, but I haven't dabbled with that since I left university. I think I was on Cubase 3 or 4 and Reason 2.5 back then. A quick search and it seems that there have been plenty of new software to come out since I last took an interest in the industry. Dont even know if my old sound card will have drivers available (Tascam US-122), let alone my keyboards etc. Will be fun getting it all out of the loft again, along with my guitars and Shure mics though. Cant afford new fully fledged DAW software so if anyone can recomend something more casual budget friendly I'd be greatful. FL Studio Groove? I dont want to overwhelm myself straight away, just fancy something simple I can play around with but with enough scope that I could make a full song (but no need for mastering tools etc).

 

Well I use mine for school heavily. All my textbooks are in my OneNote, chem and math on OneNote are a dream!

Not super creative person, but my buddy is a leatherworker and wants to make a custom glove strap for me for work, so I am drawing up plans for him. Anyone know of a good program for that kind of thing? Right now just using OneNote, but something more suited to drawing plans would be great.

 

I use mine for simple art.
I draw with paint using the pen, then edit the pictures
with After effects. Pictures like these are fun and simple to make, and don't require
that much skill, as I have none.

 

Art
Still swaying towards a combination of Clip Studio Paint and ArtRage 4 for my drawin needs. At $50 each it covers my in depth comic style drawing as well as my easy to use on the go needs. Still not sure on ArtRage's palm rejection though as I've read it both ways in terms of there being issues or not. Sketchbook Pro 7 is also in my shortlist still but being a little more expensive i've relegated it to a may be for now as I think ArtRage looks to have a slightly more on the go friendly user interface. Black Ink looks interesting as an alternative though, the node based brush customisation looks fantastic but I'm not it has much interms of other features.

Music
I figured I'd give FL Studio Groove a go. At $12 it wont break the bank and I'm sure it will be good for a small touch screen device. For more indepth but still in budget options I'm leaning towards Cakewalk Music Creator 6 touch (£40) due to it being designed for touch screen devices. I can also get it on steam so should hopefully be able to install it on all my machines in future with out licence issues. Also on the short list are Reaper 4, FL Studio Fruity Edition, MuLab, Renoise, Tracktion, and Energy XT.

Photos
I'm going to stick with Lightroom, I know it well and have no issues with it. I dont have any desire to do editing further than it can do. After effects (and the rest of the Adobe suite for that matter) is a bit much to cover what would be a very limited need for me.

I have another week before pay day to research further. Then I'll start to dip my toes in the water.

 

3d max and Corel run nice, sp2

 

just school work and business...pdf writing, one note notetaking and the like

 

Depends on what you mean by "creative things"!!! As for me, I am writing my two contracted books on it/ them!!!