Yes, we haven’t done this in a while… but our inbox and chat are swamped with questions on the subject, so this article was very much needed.
it’s a simple list of art apps, but we know you love those 😀
Enough with the intro, here it is, a list of twelve art apps you may want to check out.
ArtRage is an art program for beginners and professionals. With its minimal interface, it’s easy to keep the essential tools at hand without stealing space from the canvas. Panels can be moved around and tools can be customised. We all know how important it is for digital artists to be able to modify brushes!
Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; essential tools from professional apps available; available for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac
Cons: it may get sluggish with big files and when using big brushes, but performances also depend on the running machine; limited selection of editing tools if compared to Photoshop – ArtRage is more of a painting program rather than an editing one.
Paid
ArtRage Lite is a different version at a cheaper price, mostly for beginners, but also for professionals if they need the essential.
Now free, Sketchbook is the famous app created by Autodesk for various platforms.
Pros: clean, friendly interface; easy to use; professional features
Cons: lack of official tutorials; doesn’t offer as many tools as other apps (it’s down to the essential); paid subscription in Adobe style for multiple licenses
Free and paid
Black Ink is a powerful little program few actually know, but there’s a reason: this isn’t your classing drawing app. What’s cool about it is the vast selection of special brushes, completely non-realistic, and definitely able to boost your creativity.
Pros: vast selection of customisable brushes; excellent performance
Cons: not very easy to use; non-intuitive interface
Paid
This is probably the most complete software for painting, drawing and animation. It was originally known as Manga Studio, but with its updates and addition of features, it became Clip Studio Paint.
This doesn’t say much about the quality of the features themselves considering the affordable price (if you haven’t used the app yet, that is), but among graphic apps, this one is the top seller.
Pros: professional features for illustrators; layout tools for comic/manga artists; 3D reference models; customisable tools; various sales with special prices
Cons: the interface may not appear intuitive at first; the program may lag (again, performance also depends on the running machine)
Paid
GIMP is the famous open source image editor originally created for GNU/Linux and available for OS X and Windows.
Best known as Photoshop’s main competition, this is a manipulation program for both beginners and professionals who love design.
It offers many professional features, making the program a powerful tool.
Pros: professional editing tools; supports different formats; supported by different platforms; active community
Cons: in spite of the simple design, many options are hidden and it takes time to discover all the features; slow startup
Free
Krita is an open source painting app created by artists for artists.
Pros: easy to use; intuitive interface; great brush workflow; brush stabilizer; customisable brushes; general good performance; very enthusiastic, although small, community
Cons: it may be slow or even crash depending on the running computer and the app’s version; very few editing tools compared to Photoshop
Free
MediBang Paint is a free and light app for drawing and painting, perfect for manga and comic creation.
Pros: vast selection of brushes; cloud sharing; friendly, minimal interface (non-desktop app); also available for iPad, iPhone and Android
Cons: requires an account to use all features; non-intuitive interface (desktop version)
Free
Mischief is a sketching app with essential tools, useful for brainstorming and ideation.
Pros: infinite drawing canvas; friendly interface; easy to use; cheap pro version
Cons: few updates; offers only the essential (but that’s the point); no editing/adjustment tools
Free and paid
Corel’s jewel, Painter is the most famous software that offers digital tools able to give a traditional feel to brushes and canvas.
Pros: different selection of media; many professional features; PS-friendly
Cons: certain brushes may work slow; not easy to use at first; the software may crash (this is the most common report); pricey
Paid
Paintstorm Studio is a professional software for digital painting. It’s focused on the use of brushes and blending, which makes the software a little gem in the digital painting field.
Pros: good brush workflow; brush stabilizer; “close gap” feature; customisable interface and tools; professional features; affordable price
With the very sensitive Apple Pencil, Procreate is so easy to use that many artists chose the iPad over the most famous graphic tablets.
Pros: friendly interface; makes it easy to organise files; excellent brush workflow; customisable brushes; video recording; affordable price
Cons: hidden features; only available for iPad
Paid
SAI is a simple app for artists who want to focus on painting and drawing.
It’s well known for its good pressure support and its essential tools for manga artists, but SAI can be used by any kind of artist who wants to paint.
Pros: easy to use; friendly interface; light software; customisable brushes; tons of (non-official) tutorials
Cons: limited selection of tools, even basic ones; limited canvas sizes and uses; it might crash from intensive work, especially with big canvases and brushes; supports only RGB colour mode; lack of support
Paid
We hope you’ll find this list useful.
If you think there are other apps that should have made this list, don’t hesitate to let us know!
Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:
OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–
There’s a lot of really specific stuff in here, I design a lot of 1930s characters for my ask blog and with more chapters on the way for the game it belongs to I’m gonna be designing more, and this website is going to be an invaluable reference. I hope this can be useful to my other fellow artists as well! 🙂
Hi y’all! Folks wanted me to explain how I draw mouths, so here it is! Nothing super complicated, just a really quick and simple demonstration. Another quick note I’d like to add- I’ve always been taught that you should never learn to draw features outside of the face. For example – A lot of young artists will recognize that they need to practice drawing eyes, but then after hours/days/weeks of practicing they find themselves unable to work all this new drawing ability into an actual face. Same thing goes for mouths/noses/brows etc. Get the bulk of the work out of the way on the first attempt! Draw the whole lower half of the face!
The other day I came across this awesome program by accident
(I don’t even remember what I was actually searching for, but on the several
times I’ve looked for a program like this I’ve had no luck). It’s cool enough that I wanted to share it.
It’s called DesignDoll (website here) and it’s a program that lets you shape and pose a human figure pretty much however you want.
There’s a trial version with no expiration date that can be
downloaded for free, as well as the “pro license” version priced at $79.
I’ve only had the free version for two days so far, so I’m not an expert and I
haven’t figured out all of the features yet, but I’ve got the basics down. The
website’s tutorials are actually pretty helpful for the basics, as well.
Here’s the page for download, which has a list of the
features available in both versions.
There are three features the free version doesn’t have:
Can’t save OBJ files for export
Can’t download models and poses from Doll
Atelier (a sharing site for users; note that the site is in Japanese, though)
It can’t load saved files
The third one means that if you make a pose, save it, and
close the program, you can’t load that
pose/modified model later. You have to start with the default model. I
found that out when I tried to load a file from the day before (this is why
reading is important…). Whether saving your modifications (and downloading models and poses) is worth $80 is up to you.
But, the default
model is pretty nice and honestly if all you’re looking for is a basic pose reference
it should work fairly well as it is. Here’s what it looks like:
There’s a pose tag
that lets you drag each joint into place and rotate body parts. The torso and
waist can be twisted separately, and it seems like everything pretty much
follows the range of movement it would have on an actual human.
Even the entire shoulder area is actually movable along with the joint! See, like how the scapular area of the back raises with the arm:
The morphing tag
is one of the coolest features, in my opinion. It lets you pick and choose from
a library of pre-set forms for the head, chest, arms, legs, etc. It has some more realistic body shapes in addition to more anime-like ones. Don’t like the
options there? Mix a few to get what you want! Each option has a slider that
lets you blend as much or as little as you want into the design.
So you, too, can create beautiful things like kawaii
Muscle-chan!!
The scale tag
lets you mess with the proportions and connection points of different joints. This
feature combined with the morphing feature not only allows more body shape
variations, but it also means that you can do things like make a more digitigrade
model if you want. (The feet only have an ankle joint, but for regular human poses that’s all that you really need, so whatever.)
Or you can make a weird chubby alien-like thing with giant
hands and balloon tiddies if that’s more your thing.
The ability to pose
hands to the extent it allows is far more than I could have hoped for from
a free program. Seriously, you can change the position of each finger joint individually, as well as how spread out the fingers are from each other. Each crease on the diagram below is a point of movement, and the circles are for spread between fingers.
And to make it a bit more convenient, there’s a library of pre-set hand poses you can pick from as well, and then change the pose from that if you like.
In both versions, you can also import OBJ files from other places for the model to hold, like if you wanted to have them hold a sword or something.
Basically, this program is awesome and free and you should
totally check it out if you want a good program for creating pose references.
I just wanted to add a little more to this. If you have trouble figuring out how light sources work in your drawings this also allows you to choose where to have a light source.
That shaded ball on the left is your light source. You can see how moving the point changed the shadow cast.
Oh and all those other nifty looking things in that bottom bar there, yeah it’s what you think. You can change the model color to one of these presets or even customize your own palette.
Plus for all you lovely people who want something a little more simplified to use as a pose reference
You can turn your model into the classic wire frame.
Why reblog this? Because for more visual creators, this will be like the lumberjack discovering chainsaws. “Reblog to save lives” as the saying goes.
If you ever wanted to know how to properly do a 2d character turn, my friend max and I made a video showing you how to use the photoshop timeline to create a rotation of your characters. this can be applied to almost any type of character design. you can watch the full video here on our youtube page.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I’ve learned over the years in making turnarounds for both casual fun and full on animation productions. The video linked above is a really good introduction for people wanting to learn how to turn their characters in space for both reference purposes and for animation rigs too.
Thank you for making such a helpful guide! I love a good character turnaround.
Rambles & Rabble 