Share your desk setup thread!

I always love these kinda threads, just to see how other people live and work.

I mainly use this for 2D animation and digital art.
My x230t is my Cintiq alternative for the time being, later on in maybe 6-12 months I plan to get a used Cintiq, probably a 2nd gen 21UX as I prefer the 4:3 ratio.
I have a Intuos 5 small on the bottom shelf behind the x230t, but I haven't used it for months as I prefer drawing on-screen too damn much.

I have the computer propped up on an adjustable stand which I picked up on eBay.

The Yu-Gi-Oh mat is from when I was in my early teens and used to play, I've now switched to Magic: The Gathering, but haven't played for a few months.

I've got my x230t hooked up to a Series 3 Ultrabase dock which I also picked up on eBay for $80, bargain (well, for Australia).
The main reason I got it was for better cable management.
I've got a 1TB drive coming in the mail to put into the DVD drive that the Ultrabase has.

The keyboard sits on what is my "elbow rest" which is an open drawer with a box of Derwent pencils and some foam so I can use my Nostromo more comfortably when digital painting or gaming (I mainly play older games as Intel HD 4000 has its limits).
Usually the keyboard sits on my lap.

I also have my mousepad hanging over a bit as the cutting mat underneath (I also do traditional drawing on this desk at times) scratches my wrist.

The male anatomy figure I got off a 3D Total kickstarter, you can pick one up here.

There's also 4TB of external HDD's strewn around the desk.

The black "shelves" on the left side of the desk I made myself from office-supply storage boxes.

Not the most "professional/mature" setup around for a 21 y.o, but hey, I like it.

This is the desk tidy for a change as I spent the last hour or two working on cable management, usually there's a lot more empty cups/mugs/beer bottles/pack of biscuits and a pile of sandwiches.

So what's your desk look like?

 

Nice. Here's mine: http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/tab...t902-cintiq-animation-station.html#post334686

Animator's Survival Kit! Adorns my shelf too, couldn't go without it.
I forgot you did 2D animation. Do you animate for TV production, web or as a hobby for now?

 

OK...I'll bite....

Here's mine this morning

 

Mine hasn't changed in a long while, but it's about to get a face-lift!

I finally gave into the tinker's urge and bought a bunch of parts on-line to attempt my own DIY Cintiq build. If all goes well, I'll be sporting a 4:3, 15" 1600x1200 screen, driven by some Core i5 power.

(Basically, I gave up on anybody manufacturing the device I actually want or listening to the artist community, and decided to go ahead and make the damned thing myself.)

Budget is $900, and includes all the parts including a refurb Dell Latitude with 8Gb RAM and a 120 Gb SSD, shipping, taxes and extraneous bits and pieces. -Like a metal saw attachment for my drill.

When all is said and done, the finished result ought to look not too dissimilar when compared with my current work space, just cleaner and prettier since I'm able to build on my past experience and avoid little mistakes along the way. I'm going to go with a completely glass covered surface this time with wood finish beneath and a minimized tech appearance. And a potted plant to my left.

Anybody interested in seeing my progress can check out the thread I started in the "Builds" section of the Bongofish forums:

Mark Oakley's "Wooden Artique"

 

Top of desk:
My Surface Pro 1 is on the right opened to OneNote to act as my "note pad", and my Dell Venue 8 pro is propped up under the monitor. The monitor on the left is a 30" U series Dell IPS display at 2560x1600 and on the right is an also a Dell U series IPS at 24" and 1080p.

Under the desk:
The monitors are connect to my windows work station on the left which has a quad core i7 Ivy Bridge, 16 GB of ram, and a 256GB SSD. To the right is my monster headless Linux server with a 6 core Sandy Bridge Xeon, 64 GB of memory, 512 GB SSD, 26 TB raid array, and at Tesla K20 compute GPU (doesn't have a video output port, it is only for computations).


The Surface acts as my "note pad" and also my "desktop replacement" out of the office. For most of my other "tablet tasks" I tend to use the much smaller V8P. The windows work station is what I use the majority of the time for web browsing, writing papers/presentations, and any desktop task that is better suited for windows than Linux. It is also my RDP server. The Linux server is sitting on a 1 Gb internet connection and is accessed remotely from my windows desktop or my tablets via NX (an internet tolerant wrapper for SSH with X forwarding). The server is my pride and joy and is what allows me to go the thin, light, cold, and quiet route with my tablet selections (my RDP server helps with this to a lesser degree).

This is all used to do science (and post on TPCR, keep up to date on my teams =P)! I read a lot of papers, write papers/presentations/proposals, do analytical calculations and brainstorming on my Surface, and I do a whole load of programming, number crunching and plotting.

 

@Mesosphere: I love that tall screen on the Right for long documents.

People talk about using screens like that all the time, but to be honest, this is the first time I've ever actually seen one implemented.

 

That setup is a work of art =)

 

Yea, it comes in handy. The one catch is you have to go IPS to do it. If you don't, it is hard to look at in portrait because of the view angle issues.

 

@Stoneseeker:
I've also got an array of other animation/art books that adorn the shelf behind the desk, that book is a godsend.
I was recommended it by my lecturer first day studying, I swear I used it nearly every day during my course - Diploma of Interactive Digitial Media and Advanced Diploma of Screen and Media.
Currently debating to go further to get by degree which is an additional 1.5 years instead of 3 due to prior learning, or to go to a dedicated animation college in NZ for a year or just go down the self-taught route.
Not too keen on crippling amounts of Hecs debt. Thoughts? How is the industry when it comes to qualifications?

I currently mainly do some poster design for some local shops and also do some web design for a mate (he programs it, I make it look pretty).
I did a small animation job on a 2D App recently, but the client cancelled the contract a week before finalisation for various reasons... I haven't really done much work for the past 4 months though as I was a bit bummed about how that job ended so abruptly; to the point of having to sign over and delete my copies of 4 months of work which I can't even use in a portfolio/reel.
So right now I'm mainly doing personal projects for 2D to try and start building a solid folio/reel.
I plan on sticking the year out with some crappy hospitality job to support myself and doing this until I can get some consistent work in the industry.

Currently trying to do more realism in animation, I want to one day make an animation that look like it was painted the whole way through.
Also wanting to do some matte painting and matchmoving for live action as I've done a fair bit in the past and right now I find it a bit quicker to learn than 2D.
I plan to do that as my main job and do 2D as a hobby until I feel I can actually start making a living off of it.

So right now I'm pretty much a multimedia prostitute.

@jnjroach:
Nice setup, man.
What kind of work do you do?

@thatcomicsguy:
Thanks for the link, mate.
I'll be following your build closely, I was immediately interested when you told me about it in a PM a few weeks back.
I think 15" is the sweet spot really, not too large, not too small; so if it works out for you I'm sure I'll follow with something similar.
I've been contemplating a DIY Cintiq for a while but the shipping costs and taxes to purchase the parts in Australia come pretty close to the cost of a used 21UX with no real guarantee of me to get it working or not breaking something in the building process.

@Mesosphere:
Beast setup!
Ah man, I'd love to get one of the Dell IPS monitors, mainly for colour checking.
We had them at my uni when I studied, best monitors I've ever used!
I plan on either building a small desktop or get a Dell workstation laptop sometime this year as I plan to do a lot more video editing.

What field of science do you work in?

An older photo from a similar thread in a different forum.
I made the drawing board a few years ago but it was too small for any comfortable use on the desk.

Sorry for the babble and wall of text, folks.

 

Thanks!!! I call it home

I'm a Learning Architect - I design/implement Technical and Sales focused Learning Solutions for Technology Companies, mainly for their Channel Partners. I have a background in Datacenter/Private Cloud Architecture and Enterprise Desktop Deployments.