Photoshop is highly customizable but Krita has superior perspective rulers (photoshop has none) and I prefer the line correction over what photoshop implemented lately.
Photoshop has billions of brushes, filters and people got decades of experience with it already which tends to be worth more than some of Krita's features.
Not just that but photoshop users already have shortcuts or ways to overcome said limitations.
Check out FireAlpaca which I also enjoy for its perspective rulers and its free as well. http://firealpaca.com/
FireAlpaca!
Pros: free, easy to use, lightweight
Cons: maybe not as advanced as other programs
Here's an album of some manga colorings I've done. (manga spoilers obviously, dunno why you would click an album of manga colorings while not expecting manga spoilers lmfao)
If you want to practice digitally there are tools like this to help making exact lines, there's a free drawing program called Fire Alpaca with that function built into the brushes.
Thanks :)
This is all on the computer (I use FireAlpaca and an Intuos4), I do my sketching on one layer in some obnoxious colour then reduce the opacity on that to ink above it on another layer. The rest is pretty standard layers below the outline for shading etc.
The handy thing about FireAlpaca are the guides you can setup to make drawing all those parallel or perspective lines easier (This tutorial shows how)
I would suggest studying expressions before trying to change them. What were you going for? Because he looks very shocked and scared, but if you were going for that, that's okay. :p
The hands look like they're simply not coloured in because of the lack of shadow, so don't forget that if clothing is above it, it's likely to cast even a little bit of a shadow. Also, I'd suggest adding more contrast to your shading, it has really dull tones to it. Try reading up on colour theory :)
Lastly, what program are you using? It looks a little like MS Paint honestly, and there are way better free programs out there that you can use. If you're interested I'd suggest trying out FireAlpaca. You could also try GIMP, but I wouldn't personally recommend it. Doesn't hurt to try it out though~
I have to chuckle a little when I hear you're drawing in Flash. It's really not a drawing program at all, not in how it was designed at least - you can do much better for yourself by drawing in something a lot more stable and meant for artists :)
Photoshop is the one I use the most often, and there are ways to obtain it (ahem) if you can't afford a licensed copy. As a professional it's my go-to art program, but if you can't get your hands on it there are some other good alternatives.
I have a lot of friends who are fans of or exclusively use PaintTool Sai, which is a free drawing program that allows you a lot of control. I find it a little less intuitive to use, but that's because I learned Photoshop first ;)
I've also heard good things about Gimp (free!) and FireAlpaca (free!) if you find Sai isn't to your liking.
But the bottom line is - your program shouldn't be crashing so often that you have to save between brushstrokes! That's terribly inefficient. Try one of the above and see how it fits you :)
obligatory random notes:
Could be a compatibility issue, since CS2 isn't officially supported by Abode anymore. I heard FireAlpaca is pretty good for making art, though.
Also Adobe Creative Cloud is free for some students, depending on whether or not your school has made an agreement with Adobe, so I'd look into that too.
I'm grabbing all the helpful tutorials I know right now and sorting them by type. I'll send them over when I'm all done.
Did you download Firealpaca yet?
Also do you have a graphics tablet to draw on Masturb? I forget who has and doesn't have that on MLAS1.
I'd like to recommend http://firealpaca.com/
It seems to be a mix between SAI and photoshop, simplified. It even has a stabilizer that works even with the mouse. It responds well to tablets, launches fast, and most of all its completely free.
It also... -Has an Animation Mode (OnionSkin mode) using the layers as frames
-Reference Window
-Advanced Brush settings and editing
-New Filters such as “Invert”, “Extracting Lines”, “Cloud”, and “Sand”
-More snap tools, including a 3D perspective function.
I intend to use it myself.
Yeah, I think that's marker?
Neither her mom nor I are artistically inclined, but we've always tried to support her with materials. She gravitates to digital (mostly using FireAlpaca I think?), and we bought her some Copic markers which are apparently magical, and she's really into those right now.
She also uses FireAlpaca, which is free & you can see her using it here ^_^
Hi minikane, I tried all. Bought Clip Studio Paint in the end. It was called that, but the downloader was on the manga studio site, so yeah, they are that much the same :)
I like inking in all of these packages, but the G-pen in CSP is famously good for a reason. Also that has the most features and that's the closest to the Photoshop interface which I prefer. But all of these softwares evolved a lot over the years so none of them will disappoint you. Honestly they are all great! OpenCanvas lets you record your whole painting process, SAI has a great-great minimalistic interface and all of these programs (japanese) paint engines are far superior than of Photoshop's. So no wrong bet, just personal preference. Try all, choose one!
Also you can try free alternatives like http://medibangpaint.com/en/ or http://firealpaca.com/en
I still have to try medibang, but I already played with the gif-animation feature of Firealpaca. It's fun!
These two and OpenCanvas are somehow interconnected softwares, but in all honesty I don't understand why these genius Japanese scatter their features across multiple apps... But they now better for sure.
Hmm, well, you could always post on /r/animesketch and ask for criticism. People will probably be quite gentle anyway considering her age, but if they're too harsh you can relay it to her in a kinder way.
Generally we (/r/animesketch) don't allow "My xxx drew this picture!" posts, but since you're asking for help for your daughter it should be okay. :) I would say let her go and submit there herself, but we do sometimes have 'ecchi' submissions...
Great, Mark Crilley is good for beginners. His stuff is simple and easy to understand, and rooted in the anime style.
Personally, Photoshop isn't that great for art. It's not focused enough, although that's just my opinion.
If you get her a tablet get her a Intuos Pen & Touch :) They're a good price, and perfect for a beginner/hobbyist. I would recommend the medium size rather than small, as small is too tiny to work as a good drawing space.
GIMP is... not very user friendly. Try FireAlpaca, it's a free program that hasn't got too many bells and whistles but still works very well. And it gets updated all the time.
If she finds that too restrictive, Clip Studio Paint is a whole lot cheaper than Photoshop, has just as many features, and is IMo a lot better. It's made for anime/manga artists too!
There are many, many tutorials online that approach the topic of drawing, but some are better than others. DeviantART has the most tutorials that I know of, but you have to be careful because a lot of them aren't very well-written or they'll just flat-out be unusable. Try to stay away from tutorials that tell you "how to draw X" and lean more toward "how to APPROACH drawing X" or "how to avoid making X mistake."
Aside from that, learning to draw is mostly trial and error. You learn a lot from doing it, and studying how shapes and forms work IRL (along with studying the works of other artists to see how they approach solving certain problems) will help you get a better feel of how to construct your drawings.
If you're looking for cheap tools, I recommend just starting out on pencil and paper to practice getting that degree of control and understanding that you need. If you want to start doing digital art, I highly, highly recommend downloading FireAlpaca. It's a free drawing program that feels smooth as butter, and I actually like it more than Photoshop when it comes to stuff like Line control. I'd maybe stay away from buying a tablet until you know for certain that you'd like to pursue digital art, just because it's a fairly big purchase. It does make drawing on the computer much easier, though, so if you feel you'd use it enough to justify the purchase, go for it!
I don't have a scanner, so I take a picture of the sketch on my phone, mail it to myself, then redo the lines and color the whole thing in photoshop. You can save files as .png for transparency, while still keeping color integrity.
Firealpaca (http://firealpaca.com/en) is a nice free program that is good for painting. It takes a while to get used to the controls, but it's a bit like photoshop and paint tool sai's lovechild, and, again, free.
You should use FireAlpaca, it's free and gets the stuff you need done. I use it for drawing and making sprites (for fnf mods) and it works good. You may/will have to learn how to use this application, but it's pretty easy if you follow youtube tutorials.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html here is the link to the photoshop stuff, i have the 10 dolar month photo bundle
and here is the link to the fire alpaca app i mentioned http://firealpaca.com/en
As you can see people don't usually take too well to requests - You're in luck though, there are numerous free programs out there that will allow you to use Photoshop files (I'd reccomend FireAlpaca as a beginner) and in turn this pretty sweet ref sheet. It has a bunch of options, including a 'fit' option that'll give you abs.
You will likely need to change the blending mode of your layer to Multiply to have it show correctly, not just over top of the lineart - I made a quick video that shows how it works.
I used it to create my husky character, and it turned out pretty nice. Once you have that, it's a lot easier to hand an artist so they can draw you. Watch out for if FARR makes a return.
Fire Alpaca is free/ad-supported - http://firealpaca.com/en
It has a dot tool for pixel art. Not sure on palette control though, if that's something you need. I mostly use it for lineart and colour myself.
heres a link to the official page
i hope you get your problems resolved, maybe someone with a sp4 and working pen-pressure will read the thread later and can provide better help :)
Cheers, I used my fave FireAlpaca which has added onion skin mode to help animating small things. Here's a small tutorial and description of the new feature
Hmmm. What program did you do this with? You did just fine btw, but it looks like what you used might have limited you by not having a layer tool. You can try Fire Alpaca, It's a painting program that's alot like Paint tool Sai but it's free and updated a little more frequently. Learning how to use layers can help you keep your colors from leaking into your linework by keeping the linework separate and above the colors.
If you want some tips to get you on your way to shading and off of tracing, just PM me anytime. I'm not very far along myself, but I'll be happy to help in anyway I can.
[](/partydance-slide-r)
yo here's paint tool sai, an art program similar to photoshop, but a bit less advanced there's also firealpaca, and gimp! they're all good programs, you just have to figure out which you like more. Good luck!
FireAlpaca is a pretty decent painting program which is free. http://firealpaca.com/en
You'll also need some kind of drawing tablet. No one paints without one. If you're starting out, you should probably just get a Wacom Bamboo. For the most part, you don't need specialty brush presets. Just go with a normal round brush while changing size, flow and opacity settings. Paint stuff in black and white while playing with different settings to see how each changes your stroke.
As far as theory goes, the principles are the same whether you're using a tablet or you're using oils. You do an underpainting with a midtone, you sketch out your shapes, use a darker color to block out your shadow shapes, lighter color to block out highlights and refine refine refine. You work from general blocks of color to moderately broad strokes, then tiny specific marks. Many artists have different processes so find what works for you. It's a sweeping generalization but that's how it's done. Here's an excellent process video of one method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvLaykDP34k
Many people say do traditional art first to learn but my suggestion is to do whatever you think will KEEP you drawing. If you're having more fun with ctrl+z, then keep doing it.
If you want to get a decent (and free) graphic software, I recommend Gimp. It's way better than very limited MS Paint, although the navigation may seem a bit tricky at first. You can also try FireAlpaca that is said to be a mix of PaintTool Sai and Photoshop, also for free.
But if there's just no way you can make it yourself, I'd be happy to help you! Just tell me what you want it to look like, and I will draw it.
I myself adore FireAlpaca to bits. It's lightweight and free. There aren't a lot of brush options by default, but you can add some yourself. Plus, the creators are constantly updating it and adding more features.
There's also Pixlr if you don't want to download anything.
It honestly doesn't matter what you use! Good art can be made with anything, it's just up to you to decide what you're comfortable with and work best with!
I personally use Paint Tool SAI, but there's plenty of other programs out there! FireAlpaca is free, and I've heard good things about it. There's also Photoshop, of course, and you could even use MS Paint! I've seen lots of great work done there, despite its bad reputation. You could check out GIMP and Paint.Net, too.
Of course, theres absolutely nothing wrong with using paper and pencil. I have a lot of respect for traditional artists. No undo, no layers, no resize tools....its amazing what some artists can do! Traditional isnt limited to pencils, either. You could use markers, pencils, paints...theres all kinds of stuff to use! Try out what you can, and see what you like! It's entirely up to you!
"Professional" art isn't in the program, its in the artist and their preferences!
Interesting choice of character :p It's quite nice, I like how you did her hair. c:
If you're looking for critique, I think you really could do with working on your anatomy a lot, problem areas include the torso, hips, shoulders, arm, neck, and face. Also your colouring is a little bit flat, although I understand it's hard to colour 'properly' in Paint.
I dunno if you'd be interested but if you're using Paint simply cause you lack a better program, FireAlpaca is free and about 100x better. :) It's pretty much perfect for art.
Also, finally, you should come post in /r/animesketch :D
http://firealpaca.com/en/topics/What+is+Clipping%3F.
If you want a clean pairing you can you use clipping.
I've downloaded this app on different computers in the past. When I tried installing it on this one, it prompted my with this message. I know there is a way for me to get past the malware warning, I'm just wondering if I should. Here is the link to the website I got it from: http://firealpaca.com/
Good meme!
(Both Paint.NET and FireAlpaca are free, and can do a lot of the things photoshop can do. Take your memery to the next level, and rock on!)
I use an Intuos4 small whenever I get the itch to doodle. It's an older model that's in between the cheap beginner stuff and more expensive models. Depending on the size you get, it'll run you about 90-200 USD on Amazon and it comes with a nice selection of software. Whatever you end up choosing, I do suggest going for one with a specified 2048 levels of pen pressure; I went from a tablet with half that and found the higher number to feel way more precise and natural.
Speaking of which, to add some more programs to check out: MyPaint and FireAlpaca. Both are free. :)
Personally I use photoshop and FireAplaca. I have used ms paint but I wouldnt really reccomend it.
Photoshop Free Trail Link: https://creative.adobe.com/products/download/photoshop?promoid=61PM825Y&mv=other
Fire Alpaca Link: http://firealpaca.com
FireAlpaca is wonderful! If you don't mind an advertisement right when you open the program, anyways. It's free, it's safe, and it's light! Works on Windows and Mac OS link!
For this painting I used Firealpaca, Which is to sai what gimp is to photoshop (only way easier to use)
in terms of brushes this entire piece was made using three, a hard round brush, an airbrush, and a watercolor brush. All three of them are defaults, and are pretty darn good if you ask me.
And about being beginner, Im pretty sure I clicked both begginer and intermediate when saying my skill level, Because thats where I am. while I understand many of the principals of lighting shadow, color, etc, I dont have the ability to use them the way an expert might (like an intermediate), and I cant apply them to many things an intermediate artist could, namely background (much like a beginner).
Im glad you like it regardless! [](/sp)[](/flutternice)
Both good, also try out http://firealpaca.com/en
firealpaca is awesome,
livebrush had potential (not sure about the tablet support but for freehand mouse drawing--it's smoothness tweeking makes even the most unsteady hand appear to crank out a beautiful fluid line. Only drawback is it uses adobe air/macromedia shockwave)
PaintTool SAI is also quit good.
Despite the ridiculous name, I am really partial to FireAlpaca. It's free and has a good number of brushes, tools, and features you may not find in other free applications.
I use FireAlpaca, it's a nice free program that's kinda like photoshop but not quite as complex. Also, if you wanna get into digital art, I'd definitely recommend picking up a drawing tablet if you don't already have one; Wacom has some pretty good ones.
As for your second question, do you mean like the classes? Cause I don't think I've played any games with the specific people I drew these for. To answer your question, I tend to get dominated by pretty much anyone who's really good at the game, regardless of what class they play.
I'd recommend FireAlpaca. It's free and has many useful basic tools. It's simpler than programs like Photoshop, but that helps keep new artists from getting overwhelmed by all the tools and not knowing what to use.
Thank you!
For software, I used a combination of Photoshop CS2 and FireAlpaca, which is free. (I highly, highly recommend it-- it's awesome!) For hardware, I used a Wacom Intuos Pro.
If you're looking to transition from paper to digital media, I'd recommend picking up a scanner before you jump into getting a tablet. Tablets are kind of pricey, whereas scanners can be used for applications other than art. I used mine for drawing on paper, then importing the paper drawing into Photoshop to color before I got my tablet.
I recommend free programs like Fire alpaca or pixlr. The good thing about Pixlr, is that you can use it where ever you want because it's a web based program. So you go to the site, copy paste the url of the base and start doing it!
If you are more of traditional artist, I would draw what I wanted, and take a picture and put that on top of the sprite to trace it. (Of course resize as necessary )
You can change the skin color and the eyes using the paint bucket tool. Let me know if you have any troubles! I think it's best to have your character in a visual medium as well as a back-story! it's adds so much!
well, You can still use paint! (Though it's makes it harder to make, since paint don't support layers, so like lets say you want to erase just the hair, you end up erasing part of the arm)
I recommend Fire alpaca for it. Same as paint just now you can split up parts so you don't erase over the face accidentally.
But if you use paint, I recommend using a base so that you can easily change the skin/eye color with the paint bucket tool. Then just draw the hair and clothes on top of it and you're done! (You'll have to look around that website for more character's bases, I only linked Aoi, but look at that person's gallery!)
As far as free software goes, I've heard some people like FireAlpaca. From what I understand, it's similar to Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI.
I personally prefer SAI; the license to use it costs around $50, but it does have a 31 day trial period.
If you need something free, I'd suggest FireAlpaca! It's pretty powerful and simple to use, I had a go at it a while ago and had no problems. Personally I use Paint Tool SAI but it's not as useful for comics per se, Photoshop is almost always the best but the basics of drawing can be done in most programs now.
For "Graphics - 2D" you have Krita listed as Vector, but vector operations are it's weakest functions. It's primarily a raster drawing/painting tool and should probably split into its own category. Fire Alpaca and MyPaint are two more free programs that could share a category for that sort of thing.
Yep, I will definitely recommend FireAlpaca as well. It has a great line stabilizing feature to prevent jittery lines, very useful whether you're using a mouse or a tablet. Its interface is simple and its functionality is basically the same as Photoshop Elements, which I stopped using in favor of FireAlpaca.
If you want a graphics tablet, I'd say to avoid Wacom.
The tablet I use is a Huion 580 with the program FireAlpaca. I got my tablet for around $50, and absolutely love it. The Huion deviantArt page is also always happy to help.
Here's the Amazon page for the H580, which has programmable buttons.
Here's FireAlpaca, which isn't animation software but still really good.
And a logo I made for my Youtube channel using my tablet and the program.
Also, for animation, I'd say to go with Toon Boom. Lines come out cleaner-looking than Flash and it has less of a tendency to crash.
Is there any other drawing program that you could test it with? I know that gimp has some weird issues with pressure sensitivity. If you don't have on, FireAlpaca is free and decent.
Another thing to try would be to install Wacom's table drivers. I know it's not a Wacom tablet, but sometimes just having the drivers installed can trick programs into behaving correctly. I have to do this to get pressure sensitivity to work in Adobe Illustrator even though I use a Monoprice tablet.
Just get some sort of art program with layers -- http://firealpaca.com/ is free and has layers, and then you can just draw ontop of those.
As an animation student a lot of my schoolwork is just taking a character and tracing the 3D shapes ontop of them, and then taking a blank paper and rebuilding those shapes without tracing, so I know the feeling.
I would very much recommend FireAlpaca. It's a simple but effective program that gets the job done, but isn't filled with fluff that will never be used. There are only a few brushes, but there are brush packs out there in case your brother ever wanted to add any. Here is a tutorial as well. I wish him the best of luck!