Comic Artists, What Art Program Do You Use, And Why?

[honeyandcreambutter]

That might be because you're grabbing the object instead of the layer! You'd wanna use the red one to grab what's on the layer

CSP is very much like a manual car to me. You need to adjust the settings by yourself and most of the time, you have to figure it out yourself by looking it up. For example, you can set spacebar to rotate/zoom in/out on CSP but you'll need to fiddle around with the preferences and do some manual button to setting thing yourself. Whereas I think Sketchbook sets it up for you automatically for convenience sake.

[Puck]

I just tried to draw a simple circle and none of the option in that button (move layer, grid, tone pattern) did anything with the circle

[Puck]

I figured it out, thank you, but that´s very much against my workflow because I want to move it and then transform it right away and that is 3 steps more than in Sketchbook. Then the transform tool short cut suddenly doesn´t work and I first have to open a menu to transform it. But I´ll try to set the program up in a way I can use it better. Everything seems to be overcomplicated in CSP

[honeyandcreambutter]

Yea admittedly it is a little more work than usual! I have both Procreate and CSP and as much as I love CSP, I agree that Procreate is a lot less complicated. The only higher difficulty program is probably Photoshop and everything else is just so much easier to navigate.

But, to each his own I guess! I started with CSP so I'm a lot more comfortable with the tools. It's probably just a matter of which program you're more familiar with ^^

[AmeGINGA]

I began by drawing my panels by hand, which I scanned, cleaned on Photofiltre. Then I discovered Photoshop which I used for a while, and for over a year I have been using Clip Studio Paint. I decided on it, because I find the tool really complete, the little extra compared to Photoshop is that it is really made for artists, with direct access to textures, backgrounds, frames, 3D objects.

[ninjashira]

I feel like Clip Studio is reeeeaaaally close to being a total Photoshop replacement for illustration. There are a few little things I still prefer to do in Photoshop, but if Clip Studio could 1) handle CMYK, 2) have ruler measurements in inches, and 3) beef up their text tool, then I would probably exclusively use Clip for creating my comics.

[Missapogee]

I use medibang for everything. I know it technically has "comic maker" features like panel materials and bubbles but i like doing everything by hand. particularly because my style is lineless and more painterly-oriented.

I've also been using medibang for like 6 years and I'm bad at learning new programs

[MeltingCORE]

Heya! I use Clip Studio Paint for all my art stuff. I used to use Paint Tool Sai and MS Paint but CSP has stolen my heart! The features rock!

Like you, I also start with sketches I then color over. I show my process in many of my speedpaints/speeddraws!

vvv This one is older but shows what I did in Paint Tool Sai!

[Shanny8]

I have CSP on my iPad...I dont mind the $4.49 a month- I just gotta get used to working on an iPad.

[Shanny8]

CSP is great for lettering if you, like me, don't want to spend a ton of money on Illustrator

There's also Affinity Designer. It's closer to Illustrator than a lot of other programs(even better than CSP in lettering) and it's only a one time payment of $50...sometimes they will have a sale; I got it back in April for $25.

[honeyandcreambutter]

4.99 isn't bad imo but I'm on 7.99 cause I have Pro once I went Pro I couldn't go back to Ex

[Shanny8]

I have EX on my laptop, but I figured I didnt need it as badly on my iPad. Besides I can always transfer art back & forth between my laptop and iPad with Dropbox.

[Llyrel]

Ah, yes, Affinity is one of the softwares in my wishlist, actually! I got the trial last month, but didn't get to experiment much with it... then came the time to renew my Photoshop subscription and although $50 for Affinity is pretty cheap, I didn't feel like spending all of that money all at once D: but! I'm definitely going to buy it one of these days... the vector illustration options looks definitely interesting and better than any other Illustrator alternative I tried so far!

[Schwarze_Neko]

I use medibang paint pro (it's free). I like it because it has an option to put panel material in the page and I can cut it however I want. The speech bubbles are also there and it's pretty similar to photoshop so I like it a lot ^^

[JoshRaid]

I use medibang because it's what my brother uses.

[nauko]

So like every person who started drawing with a tablet in the early 2000s, I have my roots in photoshop when it comes to digital art. I had that program before I even had a tablet and was just messing around with a mouse. But when paint tool sai came out, it quickly became my main program for everything. I just liked how simple it was, I was struggling with translating my traditional art skills to digital form and the structure of SAI made it more comfortable because it didn't feel like a huge jump in tools or process---you put color on page and mix and blend or paint over with another color easy-peasy. I used PS to edit my final piece tho, but man Photoshop is heavy on my system and expensive af so fuck 'em lol.

Paint tool Sai is still my main for all things related to illustrated painted pieces. But when it comes to comic making, everything but thumbnails is in CSP EX. CSP for me was kind of like catalyst for comic-making. I hate wasting money, you know, so when I decided to buy the Pro version at full price I made sure to use it for the first short comic I managed to finish XD;;
It was the same when I decided to upgrade to EX. Thinking about the money i spent helped motivate me more to be actively using the program lol. I mean I always wanted to try drawing comics but the buy definitely solidified my resolve.

Anyways, I think it was worth it. I like how specific it is to this trade and all the cool assets and features it has. I was worried about sketching in it because I'm very particular about my draft brushes---basically I just really like and am used to SAI's normal soft brush. I use that for everything haha. But CSP has a similar brush literally titled "SAI brush" I downloaded from assets, so I'm solid lol

[RosesnWater]

Yahhhh! Finally someone said sketchbook! I was beginning to worry I was the only one- though I haven’t seen any Krita yet -^^’

[TheDWrek83]

Ha and then there were two.

I use the iPad Pro version as well but it isn't quite exaaaaactly like the desktop version unfortunately.

[Puck]

True that, "it´s probably just a matter of which program you´re more familiar with"
The weird thing is that photoshop is very easy for me to use, but that´s because I been
using programs which are similiar since the 80s like deluxe paint. I find Photoshop very
logical

[RosesnWater]

Yah, agrees, desktop is WAY better, but upside is I personally think the one for the phone is pretty good! (I get a lot of drawing done when I’m working ^^’)