Using technology to preserve tradition, and using imagination to make time flow: The boundless territory of Huawei Tablets.

The new technology cycle is approaching. How can everyone be given the opportunity to create freely?

Painting, as one of the seven major arts in the world, is one of the oldest forms of human expression of thoughts and emotions. As early as the primitive society, even before the concept of painting existed, humans had already begun to search for pigments in nature, using wooden sticks or stones to draw rough and simple patterns on cave walls to show the ideas in their minds.

From the Lascaux cave paintings in France, which are more than 17,000 years old, to the murals in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves in China, which have endured for thousands of years, these ancient works that have withstood the test of time still exude the magic of the art of painting in a certain sense. This magic can even transcend cycles, from the traditional brush, ink, paper, and inkstone to the drawing software in the information age.

When digital painting becomes a reality, The technological progress brings not only the innovation of creative media and means, but also the further popularization of the art of painting. It should be pointed out that in this era where everyone can draw what they imagine, a painting tool that can help the public lower the creative threshold has become the call of the times.

Now, this call has been answered.

On September 26, the 2024 Born to Draw Digital Creation Contest, jointly created by Huawei, the China Film Art Association, the China Animation Association, and eight prestigious art academies in China, officially kicked off. As a painting stage for all to create, the Born to Draw Digital Creation Contest takes "Painting Nature Together" as its theme, encouraging everyone to pick up a Huawei tablet and jointly depict the beautiful and diverse nature and explore the unlimited possibilities of art.

When everyone picks up the creative tablet in their hands to become the "artist" of the new era, how can the art of painting continue to radiate new vitality in the technological leap of the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch?

Redefining the "Creative Tablet" to Allow Everyone to Enjoy the Fun of Creation

What should a creative tablet that allows everyone to experience the joy of painting look like?

Compared to software vendors or Internet companies that simply provide drawing software, Huawei, as a technology company, has the hardware capabilities to conduct collaborative innovation in the software and hardware aspects of the tablet for the entire creative process, thereby bringing a better painting experience to every creator.

Therefore, The Huawei MatePad Pro, as a technological tool, provides the painting capabilities for artists, illustrators, and even beginners, not limited to a single level of hardware or software.

If we start from the software level, the most worthy of mention is Huawei's newly self-developed tablet painting software - Born to Draw App. As a professional drawing software, the Born to Draw App is supported by the Fangtian Painting Engine 2.0 and the HarmonyOS system, allowing creators to obtain powerful painting performance and a professional and realistic painting experience.

Take cross-application color picking as an example. The traditional color picking mode still requires importing images into the drawing software, which is not only cumbersome but also faces the problem of color difference between different devices. Users with multiple Hongmeng devices can use the stylus to obtain a real and consistent color effect between mobile phones, PCs, and tablets.

This consistency in the color picking experience is due to the Hongmeng operating system, which is an all-scenario operating system for different terminal devices. In this era of the Internet of Everything, whether it is a photo in the album or an image on a web page, users can obtain the colors they want from any application other than the Born to Draw APP. Moreover, the Born to Draw APP also has a custom color card from the China Academy of Art, which can be quickly selected to achieve a perfect color matching.

In addition to helping creators obtain the desired colors, The Born to Draw App also provides 8K ultra-large canvases and numerous layers for creators.

It should be noted that a higher resolution represents a better display effect of the image, and the 8K resolution is 16 times that of the current mainstream high-definition TV resolution. While the current mainstream display is still stuck at the 4K stage, the 8K ultra-large canvas of the Born to Draw APP provides creators with a broader creative space. With the precision adaptive sampling technology carried by the Fangtian Painting Engine 2.0, creators can ensure the quality of the image presentation and the smoothness of the drawing operation when processing the details of the image.

Not only does it provide an ultra-high-definition canvas, but this freedom of creation is also supported by a larger number of layers. The importance of layers lies in that it can make the painting look more refined and professional. Because dividing an image into different layers can not only enhance the creator's control over the painting details but also avoid making extensive changes to other parts of the picture when making modifications.

And the Born to Draw APP breaks the higher layer limit under the same specification, supporting more than 500 layers of creation, solving the problem of the small number of layers in mainstream painting software by far exceeding Procreate by 15%. Whether it is an ink painting that emphasizes the gradation of colors or a hand-drawn illustration with complex line contours, creators can use different numbers of layers according to their creative needs.

The Huawei MatePad Pro, as a creative tablet, brings a painting experience that is not only free and professional but also emphasizes authenticity. In order to enable users to achieve a real and natural hand-drawn effect on the tablet, the Born to Draw APP also launched a nearly paper-like texture of the simulated canvas.

From gold silk fabric to silver silk fabric, from rice paper to rock color - the Huawei team traces history, only to revitalize the ancient form of painting with digital technology. For example, the gold silk fabric canvas comes from the silk painting with a history of more than 3,000 years, and this kind of painting on the undyed and unembroidered plain silk fabrics such as silk, spun silk, damask, gauze, and silk satin is more than 1,500 years earlier than paper painting and became an important tool for cultural exchange between China and foreign countries as early as the Silk Road period.

In fact, restoring the real texture of the silk painting is also a technical challenge. The Huawei R & D team needs to collaborate with industry painting masters to create paintings on different silk fabrics such as silk, spun silk, and gauze. Through repeated attempts, a large number of painting analyses, and texture layer extractions, the real silk painting effect can be presented under the adjustment and restoration of the algorithm. The canvas with a real texture like the flowing gold silk fabric provided by the Born to Draw APP also has a strong creative value for traditional arts such as Chinese painting.

In addition to color picking, canvas, and layers, the painting software also needs the most important brush.

From the delicate pencil strokes like silk to the unrestrained oil painting texture, from the gentle and romantic watercolor bleeding to the simple and elegant ink painting mood, the brush, as a key tool to help painters master different painting styles, determines the expression of the creative style. And the Born to Draw APP with a professional brush engine also debuts the fluid brush, the suspended splashing brush, and the dual brush for the first time, currently with more than 150 rich brush settings.

Take the fluid brush as an example. Ink painting, as one of the core expression forms of traditional Chinese painting, uses water and ink as the main pigments, emphasizing vividness and freehand brushwork. With the fluid brush of the Born to Draw App, creators can adjust the amount of water and ink to create natural brushstrokes with different shades, dryness, and wettness, as well as the simulation bleeding effect of the pigment.

In the hardware aspect, the M-Pencil stylus equipped with the Huawei MatePad Pro has been updated to the third generation and is now the first stylus in the industry with over 10,000 levels of pressure sensitivity. Through a high-precision mechanical control algorithm to overcome the problem of precise force control, the Huawei M-Pencil stylus can more sensitively sense the hierarchical changes in the force applied by the user's finger to the pen, thereby achieving a faster ink output speed, more sensitive line changes, and a more crisp lifting and putting down of the pen.

This hardware capability runs through the entire creative process from writing to touching to viewing. In terms of screen display, the dual-layer OLED screen of the Huawei MatePad Pro, with the support of multiple nanometer-level process treatments and display optimization technologies, also achieves the effects of soft light eye protection and anti-glare. For users who create for a long time facing the tablet, the Huawei MatePad Pro provides a more comfortable creative experience.

It can be seen that From the free and real color picking to the ultra-large simulated canvas, and then to the flexible and natural brush, the Born to Draw APP, based on the hardware capabilities such as the screen and the M-Pencil stylus, creates a real and professional painting experience for global artists, creators, and even beginners.

More importantly, the Born to Draw APP is also an easy-to-use, useful, and freely accessible software. Whether it is to help users get started quickly with the built-in novice guidance or through a series of professional tutorials jointly launched by Huawei and the China Academy of Art, it is enough to lower the creative threshold of the art of painting and give everyone the opportunity to create freely.

A truly all-round creative tablet is born in the explosion of the joy of painting. 

When Technology and Art Resonate, Everyone Can Be an Artist

Why can Huawei launch a painting contest that everyone can participate in with a "creative tablet"?

Behind this, on the one hand, the excellent painting experience constructed by the Born to Draw APP has been recognized by users worldwide. As a newly self-developed APP by Huawei, since its release in May 2024, the Born to Draw has covered more than 30 countries and regions worldwide in just five months, with more than 1.38 million users.

On the other hand, there is also the rapidly growing user base of the Huawei MatePad Pro as an all-round creative tablet. According to the latest market data released by Canalys, Huawei's tablet sales exceeded 2.05 million units in the second quarter of 2024, with a market share of 26%, and a year-on-year growth rate of 66%.

It can be said that The ability advantages in both the software and hardware dimensions give Huawei tablets a large and still rapidly expanding terminal user scale, thereby forming the mass base for launching this all-round painting contest.

Looking at the current creative industry, whether it is to empower artists' creation with digital technology or to participate in the collision and even co-creation of art forms such as movies, music, and painting, there are always the figures of technology companies. In the field of painting, Huawei chooses to stand by the creators and help them become the trendsetters of digital painting.

According to the latest report given by the market research institution Canalys, in the second quarter of 2024 in the Chinese tablet market, Huawei surpassed Apple to rank first. Statistics show that in the mainland Chinese tablet market, Huawei and Apple are neck and neck, jointly occupying a 26% market share. However, in terms of annual growth rate, Huawei far exceeds Apple.

The change in the market pattern often comes from the change in the direction of industry innovation.

It can be said that the Huawei MatePad Pro equipped with the Born to Draw APP has laid a new future for the tablet industry: To realize the full-link empowerment of artistic creation with the accumulated software and hardware integration capabilities. By allowing digital creation to embrace everyone, it promotes the era of equality where "everyone can be an artist".

This also means that With the further accelerated construction of the digital world, Huawei has also promoted the era of humanistic innovation of global technology companies. For hardware manufacturers like Huawei with a large terminal user scale, how to make good use of the device anchor points in their hands to lead social and humanistic changes has become the next innovation proposition.

Currently, Huawei has taken the lead. As early as 2022, Huawei collaborated with three painters to use the tablet to draw the mythical beasts in "Shan Hai Jing" to reproduce the traditional Chinese colors.

This year, the post-90s illustrator Lu He was also invited by Huawei to "recreate" the "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains", which shows the ideal society in the Northern Song Dynasty. Under the brush of the post-90s illustrator Lu He, Those Northern Song Dynasty marketplaces that were not recorded in the "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" have received a new interpretation.

From the mythical beasts in "Shan Hai Jing" to the green mountains and blue waters in "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains", Chinese traditional culture can be reproduced and inherited in the new generation of media forms.

In the era of humanistic innovation, if injecting the beauty of humanity into cold technology is the sentiment that Jobs once had for Apple, then through the resonance of technology and art in the co-creation of the past and the present, Huawei tablets take the lead in allowing everyone to become the "artist" of the new era by having the opportunity to create freely.

This article is from the WeChat public account "36Kr", and 36Kr is authorized to publish it.