As an artist, I've always admired those who can work their magic on the computer with CG artwork. I've always been very traditional myself, preferring charcoals to any other medium. However, for Christmas my Mother bought me SmithMicro's Manga Studio EX4 and ImagineFX Manga tutorial book, which teaches digital painting techniques. While I've been itching to try them out, she also got me my Nikon Coolpix L810 and I've been experimenting with photography instead, feeling very nervous about trying my hand at CG work. I've dabbled in the past, but never really felt that I was equipped to work with it properly, so switched back to my traditional mediums that I'm very comfortable with.

Since starting my deviantART account, you can find me at ~FruitdropPhotography, I've felt inspired to take a try at my new program and try some tips from the book. However, I cannot for the life of me draw with a mouse, I need a pen in hand. So this is my dilemma: What sort of tablet do I look into purchasing? I know there are many brands, many styles, many sizes, but I'm truly at a loss as to where to begin my search or what would be most beneficial! I know I would prefer a larger area to work with, preferably at least the size of a sheet of paper because I like the ability to work in either small areas, or large areas. I don't like being limited to small areas alone. I would prefer something on the lower end of the price range, because this is new and I don't want to invest a great deal until I know for certain I will be able to keep with it and get the hang of it. Yet at the same time, I want a quality tablet and not something that is going to make me hate CG work and frustrate me to the point where I say forget it.

I look forward to hearing everyone's input, and I hope I will be able to find a tablet soon! I am very eager to try my hand at it and hopefully developing the skills to fully utilize it!

I am different than you in terms of, I started doing digital without tablet, with mouse. So I have certain habits that accumulate from that experience that brings over to my tablet usage. I am also a very detail person, I always use zoom to zoom into actual pixel size(or close enough) to make sure of clean lines.

When I scout for my tablet, I thought I would need a size similar to paper size. But it turns out that, I am only accustom to mouse area before this and took me a while to get use of the tablet. Imagine, you need to only move like 3 inches of the mouse from one end to the other end of the screen, and you are use to that ratio. IF you use larger tablet active area, it could be two times the length, you would feel the strangeness at the beginning. Logically speaking, the larger the active area, the more movement you need to make. and I feel tired to do big movement. I got a A5, but only utilize the center 4 x 4 inches area the most, because I position the canvas to various size to fit the stroke.
Advantage of digital is all those tools that is available. Like, layers, undo, and ZOOM. With the same size of tablet and stroke, I can produce different length when the canvas is zoom at 20% or 300%.

That being said. At the end, human can get use to nearly everything. With enough of use, you can get use to any size.

Points to consider.
1. How mobile you want it to be? Do you bring it to travel? then smaller the better.
2. Desk space. If you have a lot of space, you can have bigger one, if not small works fine.
3. There are few movements size. When you draw, do you mostly use finger movement, or wrist, or elbow or the arm? (elbow and arm are mostly artist drawing on biiiiiig canvas) If you are biiiiig movement type, you may consider bigger size, honestly, the only point I see about the advantage of buying a big tablet.
------^ Above are for non screen tablet^
Screen tablet, on the other hand is the most expensive type where the tablet it self IS the screen, can serve as a separate monitor. But it is expensive!!!
Same consideration. Have more points in the 3rd point though. About your movement size.

For me, I've used big to medium and small tablets pretty much for 10 years. There's not really much a difference in what's "good", it's usually just preference.

I've always used Wacom tablets, and I do enjoy using the bigger sizes but they are impractical when traveling. Especially school and living in dorms.

I have a Bamboo.. fun I think. Or creative. Blah, its the smaller one and it's useful. The only thing I don't like is having my hand barely fits on it, but I can deal. It does take more strokes to move it but I'm so used to it, it's nothing to me. Although it isnt like the Wacom Intuous, where it gets different nifty pen nibs, you can pretty much work the same thing as you gain experience with the tablet.