Thoughts on Sai? Or could you recommend something else for artwork?

[PhoenixX92]

I got to messing around with Sai when the gf moved in, and I had never used it before so I just wanted to see what it was like. It seems pretty robust, but it's quite confusing to someone like me who uses PS CS2 for everything(got it from an old art teacher back in school when they were upgrading to CS3.)
I'm terrible at art, even my stick figures look deformed, so I just use it for simple touch ups and very low-level editing/recoloring.

Basically a roll call for artists on the forums, what programs do you all use?
Reason I'm asking is because I have Win10, and CS2 does /NOT/ work well with it. All of its overlays and all of that stuff bugs out and goes under the program itself and into the background... So I'd like to have a discussion about art programs!

 

[HexMozart88]

Both PS and SAI for me. SAI for anime, PS for editing and animation and stuff. SAI is actually a bit easier to learn than PS in my opinion, less tools but more efficient. 

 

[Archeia]

Sai is fantastic and Photoshop CC. Clip Studio is good too. You can also try Krita!

 

[PhoenixX92]

Both PS and SAI for me. SAI for anime, PS for editing and animation and stuff. SAI is actually a bit easier to learn than PS in my opinion, less tools but more efficient. 

PS to me, is for simply touch-ups to personal photos when it's necessary and making .gif's, so animation for me, too.

Sai is fantastic and Photoshop CC. Clip Studio is good too. You can also try Krita!

Never heard of "Clip Studio" or "Krita"


Thoughts on paint.net? I checked out Krita(just the site, not really downloaded and tried it out yet) and it's free, but how's it stack up?

 

[Amysaurus]

As of right now, I use Clip Studio EX for both drawing and pixel art. For quite a while I was using Photoshop CC for pixel art, but I didn't see a point in having both, considering what I use them for. Both are great if you can afford them.


Paint.net is fine from what I remember, but I also haven't used it for almost 7 years. I'm sure it has changed pretty significantly since then. I used that and MS Paint pretty heavily when I was first learning to sprite, and I had very few complaints. 

 

[PhoenixX92]

As of right now, I use Clip Studio EX for both drawing and pixel art. For quite a while I was using Photoshop CC for pixel art, but I didn't see a point in having both, considering what I use them for. Both are great if you can afford them.


Paint.net is fine from what I remember, but I also haven't used it for almost 7 years. I'm sure it has changed pretty significantly since then. I used that and MS Paint pretty heavily when I was first learning to sprite, and I had very few complaints. 

I'd really like to learn how to do pixel art. I have serious nostalgia seeing pixel art.
Probably because I grew up in the pixel-era of video gaming... But whatever.

What are the features you use Clip Studio for, exactly? This is the second response mentioning it, so I'm curious now.

 

[Amysaurus]

Mmm... There's something about the way the drawing tools handle that really works for me. It's the closest a program has gotten me to feeling like I'm actually working with a pen and paper while I'm on a computer. I can easily get clean lines, and it's pretty simple to import custom tools and color palettes for whatever I want to do. I'm fairly certain that most drawing programs have those functions, so I can't say that it's something special about Clip Studio.


You can also do some animation, and work with 3D models a bit (for posing/drawing references, and texturing to a degree). There's a pretty large library of reference models that come with the program, though I haven't looked at it enough to really say if that's a selling point. 

 

[mlogan]

I've moved this thread to Useful Development Tools. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[jupitersdaughter]

I used to use Sai but then I got Clip Tool Studio and never went back 

 

[psipumpkin]

Krita is my go-to art program. It's free, it has some pretty slick tools and preset brushes, and something particularly handy for rpg maker users, it has a tiling feature which makes it super easy to make seamless tiles. Highly recommended.

 

[gendfleur]

i LOVE sai, i use mostly sai for actual art (& my fiance, who's a Real Artist(tm) does too), but firealpaca is a good freesource version thats a little easier to get the hang of. also, as much as i ABHOR gimp, i will readily endorse it for certain things that sai does really poorly, like pixel recoloring (gimp has a "select by color" feature that sai doesn't and has a grid feature that sai doesn't)