How did you first find out about open source communities? What is your opinion about them? At times I do miss the tactile messiness of getting your hands dirty with a traditional medium, but I am always drawn to the seemingly limitlessness of working digitally. I have been aware of open source for a long time now- since the birth of popular programs such as Gimp and Blender. I love the openness of ideas, and how easy it is for users like me to play a role in shaping the development. I love being able to be on the “bleeding edge” of technology through testing and playing with early builds. And above all, I love that it is FREE! Over the years I have come in to contact with many people wanting to get started in digital art and animation, and many have always used cost of entry as an excuse, but nowadays that excuse is simply not valid. Programs such as Krita and Blender are at such a high quality that in some ways they can even trump their commercial competitors.
The accessibility of such programs allows for a much larger and faster growth of talent within the industry. Have you worked for any FOSS project or contributed in some way? I am a big proponent of open source development. I have always played around with many open source programs, but have done very little other than provide feedback and do some bug testing. How did you find out about Krita?Ī very talented Youtube artist named Sycra posted a short video review about Krita. I was shocked that I hadn’t heard of it sooner. His channel is definitely worth checking out:
But to my surprise, the more I played with Krita, the more I fell in love with all sorts of unexpected features- especially the pop-up palette! What do you love about Krita? I immediately was drawn in by the familiar interface and the brush smoothing options- somewhat of a mixture of Photoshop and Sai. Krita has an extremely powerful and versatile brush engine. Something that is far superior to Photoshop’s (in my opinion). Dynamic brushes, wet brushes, tone brushes and more are very fun to use and lead to all sorts of interesting effects. I also love navigating the canvas in Krita. The OpenGL integration (even on my sub-par tablet graphics card) makes navigation very fluid and the Pop-up palette is the absolute most indispensable tool I didn’t know I needed! Photoshop could learn a lot from the Pop-up palette.