I use DAZ3d for a lot of things these days:
- For Traditional art, I use it to check perspective, layout and anatomy before I start the drawing stage. I keep the DAZ render by my easel as I am drawing to make sure everything stays fairly accurate.
- For The Shadow War, I do my layouts in DAZ, then print them as line drawings to put on the lightbox before I start inking and painting.
- For Warmage, I do the complete panel in DAZ, before exporting to the next tool.
For 2D graphics, I use GIMP. Free. No subscription. Has a boatload of plugins, filters, brushes, and scripts, and it will use PS plugins, scripts and brushes with no problems. What more do I need? I do all of my 2D stuff in GIMP, using an old Bamboo tablet, and I love it. For Warmage, all of the panels go into GIMP, and get adjusted, layered, and altered until I have the look I want. For other things, I will do sketches and such in GIMP as often as I use pencil and paper these days.
And for comics. Comic Life 3. There is nothing better.
It does perfect panels. You can pick the final IRL paper size, and all of your pages will conform. You can drag and drop balloons, captions, and panels from your script directly onto the page and play with them. When balloons are resized or reshaped, all of the words inside them adjust to the new layout while you are doing it. Kerning, border spacing, and word splits adjust on the fly. You can set up templates for each character regarding font, size, balloon customised features, and anything else you want.
The panels autocrop your pictures, and you can shape the panels anyway you like. I can assemble and letter a page in under 15 minutes, and that includes placing the panels, importing the art, and placing the balloons. CL3 even lets you edit your pictures in another programme, then updates the picture version within CL3 with a single push of a button. No importing required.
I have a copy of MS5, and while it has some cool features, all in one place, I would rather switch programmes to get all of the features I need, than not have them.
Eagle
(Not on the MS5 wagon)