Hi, this serves as a post to gather **free** digital art programs. Feel free to suggest and add your own experiences in each program/apps below!
(All the programs/apps listed here are based on my personal experiences first. If more suggestions or reviews are added, this message will be removed.)
This one’s pretty simple to use and has a light performance. (Kinda similar to paint tool sai, although the brush blending hits different here.) To be honest, I would heavily recommend this as I’ve used it for years before using an iPad to draw.
If you look for a lot more options; such as more brushes, animating features, more filters, etc. And your PC can run most programs/games smoothly. I’d definitely suggest Krita!
If you noticed how I suggested FireAlpaca a lot, I’d suggest this one too! Although the features are more leaning towards comic making and syncing the files. If you’re looking for a program that you can use both on the phone and PC, I’d suggest this!
And we transition from PC programs to mobile apps, with Medibang paint! Although the layout hits different here, you can sync stuff from the PC version to your phone, and continue drawing there!
If you’d prefer more clean looking drawing apps, ibis Paint’s for you! The features may be simple, but there’s a hella lot of brushes, drawing materials, filters, etc. to choose from!
Final note: You can actually make visually pleasing art on any programs with the skills you’ve learned! These programs simply serve as tools to make your art process easier.
Hello I am krita user here to say, Krita is epic. I use it for all of my animation and art. Its gamer. Its tangler approved. Its only beaten by the holy lord ms paint.
General stuffffff
The bucket tool kind sucks, along with the selection tools. Theres a colourise mask that does colouring in well but if you’re animating its kinda ehhh.
I watched this fancy video about paint brush engines so heres a simplified version of it;
Sometimes when you use a fancy painting tool that auto blends and stuff, colour from another area will seep in without the brush actually touching it, krita doesn’t do that. Krita epic.
If you right click while using the brush you get this wheel thing that has a couple of brushes, the colour wheel with previously used colours and you can flip the canvas with it. (You can change the brushes in the wheel by changing the ‘tag’, tags are grous of brushes you can put togehter)
There are also workspaces and with each workspace you can save window layouts. Pretty cool ngl.
Kinda epic stuff
Krita also allows you to ‘colour in layers’. What I mean by that is you know that like thing that holds layers? those bars, you can make them different colours for ordering. Same for frames, I normally do yellow for keyframes, orange for breakdowns or whatevers and red for inbetweens. The animation portion is heavily hand-drawn focused and does not offer camera movements so I hope u lov static shots lol.
for more of the animation parts, the preset plate doesn’t come with brushes for some reason or a colour wheel.
eif u wont exckcamplss on what kreeta can do look at my posts that aren’t pixely because those are ms paint
Kreeta also has an anime squireel looking girl as a mascot COME ON U HAVE TO GET IT NOW.
ALSO KRITA HAS A SLIGHTLY DARK BLUE MODE AND ITS VERY COOL AND VERY EPIC.
Sketchbook is a really good app for beginners. Like any other stuff, it has a general brush and tools and a limited but useful feature. it won’t feel cluster fuck of tools that you don’t know which to use.
however, it’s good ended here. In the mobile version, it struggles to load a big canvas or too many layers. you can’t use a custom brush on mobile or ios (and no blur tools). You can’t export to any other file than PNG. On mobile the layers is cap to 30 and other many smaller problem.
Conclusion: while i still using this, it should only be used for beginners, small scale art, or as the name suggests for sketching. If possible you should move on to Clip studio, Procreate, or any other programs that offer more customization and more features to play with. I still use this however since it is simple to use.