Hello!
I recently got a new laptop computer, and it has a foldable screen so it can work like a touchscreen tablet mainly so I could do art with a stylus without buying a drawing tablet or doing art with my finger on my iPad mini.
On my iPad, I used an app called ibisPaint (and it's SUPER awesome, I love it to bits) but unfortunately, they don't have a version for Windows, and so now I have to make a dreaded software swap.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions? Ones that are good? (Also I'm broke af so I don't have the money to pay for 50$ art software I use for a hobby.)
ooh! ooh! my time has come!!!
finally my useless information is no longer useless
do you use windows or mac? are you looking for something super basic or more professional? and last but not least, do you prefer digital looking tools, a traditional art feel, or a nice mix of both?
I’ve tried just about every free art software under the sun so I should be able to find something :D
I'd suggest Medibang. It's free and pretty user friendly. I have a friend who uses it for commissions.
@ Cocoa-Nut
I thought I said in the original post that I used windows. I kinda want a mix of basic and professional, and I'm not sure what digital tools and all that feel like, so I don't know about that.
@ becfromthedead
That's what I have right now on my pc. I feel like I'm just saying this way too early, but I can't really bring myself to get used to it. Nearly all the time I'm kind of like "I can't find this cool feature that I could do on ibisPaint."
Maybe I need to watch a tutorial, but I feel like an application is good if I can kind of figure things out on my own.
I also just want to kind of explore around as well, so there's that.
I think the site has tutorials? I got used to it pretty quickly, but it was also my first real art program and I had a friend who was able to help me get started.
(oof i missed that)
Alright, I'll go over my personal favorites:
Autodesk Sketchbook: I'd personally recommend this one first, it's got a really great mixture of simplicity and power which i really appreciate. It's easy to pick up, it's got plenty of variety, you can even animate with it, and there's no limit with what art styles you can use since it's got tools for it all. overall pretty great
Krita: by far the most professional of the bunch, this is the one I use for everything. It's got amazing brush variety, a whole lot of customization, and so many features among so many different things that i still don't know what they all do and I've been using it almost constantly for three years. Really great if you want photoshop-level complexity, but has quite the learning curve and is really unnecessary for beginners or those with more cartoon art styles. amazing program, might not be your thing
MediBang/FireAlpaca: two separate programs that are almost exactly the same, the only difference is MB has more brushes and a dark interface, while FA has a bright white interface and decent animation capabilities. I think these are probably the most similar to IbisPaint, although I personally can't make myself like them. Not enough features for me and the blending is awful, i don't know how people use it, it feels so artificial my eyes want to bleed. my best friend swears by it though and she's super talented so i guess it all comes down to preference
@ becfromthedead - I might look into some tutorials later if I really feel like it (I really don't but it's not like I have anything important to do, haha.)
@ Cocoa-Nut - I think I've used Autodesk now that I look it up. It was the only art app available on our ipads back in high school. I remember not really liking it that much, but that's because it had tons of restrictions. I might revisit it and take it for a spin on my pc.
I looked up krita and watched this recommended video of all the stuff about it (the guy had a SUPER thick accent, so I could only pick up bits and pieces of what he was explaining) and I feel like that might be my best option, but I don't know until I give it a try.
I have a question (for both of you): I know that I like to do most of my drawings on paper (and I just generally have more control over what I'm drawing) but I use this function where you can turn a photo or a picture you took into a layer in a digital drawing file. Do you know if any of the apps you recommended can do that? (It's not the make-or-break tool here, but it'd be super useful to have for me.)
I’m pretty sure you can upload any photo as a layer in all three programs, if that’s what you’re meaning
If you mean scanning the photo and only uploading the black outlines, no clue. I think the app for Sketchbook could do that, and Krita has a feature where you can turn white in a picture to transparent, leaving only the sketch. Apart from that I can’t really help much.
Yes, you can add a drawing as a layer in medians. However, you do need to make sure that the file dimensions and the drawing dimensions more or less match up so it fits on the file.
@ Cocoa Nut - That feature where it makes the white transparent seems pretty nice. I may look into that when the time comes around.
@ becfromthedead - Okay, that's cool. In general, that's kind of what I was asking for.
Okay, so here's what I'm thinking – I'll download Krita tomorrow and kinda play around with it. It sounds like it has a lot of options, all without overwhelming me. I'm gonna watch some tutorials for Medibang to see how I can properly use it as well.
It all honestly depends on how I feel, but we'll just have to see which one I decide to go with.
(I was actually thinking about getting into animation a while back, so I might check out Sketchbook too, but that's not really the main focus. I'll check it out anyway and see what it can do.)
Good luck! It's really a matter of finding what works best for you, honestly.
Thanks!
I'll do it later today when I have less things to do. But I'll let you guys know what I think of each of them! (And if it turns out I don't like Krita or Autodesk when I give them a whirl, I'll stick with Medibang. But we'll all have to see.)
So I downloaded them and tried them out for a bit!
I truthfully played around with Krita more than Autodesk, so I'll say what I like about Krita first.
There are brush options for nearly everything! Lots of brushes means good things are gonna happen. But there's not too many, and you can test them out before you draw on the canvas, too, which is nice. The color wheel and triangle are pretty cool, especially the sliders underneath to change saturation, light, and all that goodness. I messed around with some of the settings and stuff, (I figured out how to import a picture! Woo!) but one thing that I couldn't find was the pressure sensitivity – sure there was pressure for opaqueness, but not really for the width (so if I draw a line quickly, it will be thicker where I started and get thinner and thinner until the end.) I don't know if that's a thing, or if I'm just stupid and there's no such thing as what I described, but I think Medibang has something like that. I'm not sure.
Honestly, there's a lot more in Krita than what meets the eye on the interface, I'll say. A lot of stuff is tucked in the top tabs and stuff like that, and I don't know what something means until I click on it. But hey, that's what exploring's for, right? I might do more fiddling later, but those were my first impressions. Kinda.
Hi. I can't really give much advice since I really only have experience with Krita but I wanted to mention that there's nothing to change the width like you're describing as far as I know. I've been using Krita for years and could never do that until I got a tablet with pressure sensitivity, so if you just use a stylus you won't have that option unfortunately. Though even without that there's some great features like FX brushes for glow and shading effects if you're interested in that, as well as a workspace option to create animations.
Thanks!
I didn't know Krita could do animations until I poked around on the interface a little bit.
But now that I do a little more stuff around the software, I'm thinking that maybe the only good thing I'm picking up on is the amount of brushes that are already there, compared to Medibang at least. Everything else seems a bit tough to navigate still.
I'll still give it more time, but then again, I don't want to spend days or weeks still trying to figure things out. By all means, I don't want to cut it short, but maybe it's not for me. Yet idk.
Hey, I have some experience with these programs so I'll try to give u some advice. I used to use medibang a lot and I know at first it doesn't look like there's a lot of brushes but there's a lot available to download. I personally do prefer medibang because it has a pretty simple interface but a lot of features. It does take some getting used to though but there's a lot of tutorials available on their website and on youtube. If you want something a bit more professional, Krita might be your best option. I haven't used it much but from what I've heard, it's quite similar to Photoshop. Lastly, Autodesk is decent. I'd recommend it for beginners since it has a super simple lay out. It also has a lot of brushes which is pretty useful. I used to use it a lot on my phone. Idk, personally it's my least favorite but I've seen some amazing work made on it. It all comes down to preference and what works for you.
Thank you!
After thinking about it for a while, I might just stick with Medibang after all – I'm more familiar with it than the others (only because it's what I first downloaded when I got my new computer.) Krita's interface is nice, but it does get confusing when you get too deep into settings and all the dropdown menus and stuff like that. And half the time, I don't know what they mean by certain things until I click on it and I realize "that's not what I wanted."
Autodesk is nice, it does have a lot of brushes, but I don't really like the interface and how the canvas fits the whole screen (making parts of the canvas hide under the top bar and underneath windows of the color wheel and the layers and stuff like that.)
I mean, I'll keep fluffing around with it, but so far I'm leaning towards keeping what I have.
Probably Sketchbook by Autodesk, it's free, it's got plenty of stuff and for people who don't know how to draw like me it's very user friendly.
Thanks!
Wasn't there a certain software that could also make animations as well? I thought I read that somewhere, but I can't recall because I have the memory of wet bread.
I mentioned Krita having a workspace option to create animations. It can also render it as GIFs or just give you the individual frames to slap into a video editor. I've seen some use Fire Alpaca for animating as well, though that program gave me a hard time when I tried to use it a few years back.
Ok that's cool. I'll try it out… soon. I'm not in an "art" mood right now, but I'll try it eventually.
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