Hi, I’m Serena, the character artist for Trip the Ark Fantastic.
This week for open source game appreciation month I’d like to write a bit about the tool we use for making the art of our game – Krita. It’s an open source program for painting which can be used in various ways – from portraits to comics to game art. It’s compatible with most graphics tablets and is easy to set up.
Prior to this project, I haven’t really worked with Krita, and learning it was really no problem. The interface is very easy to learn – which makes it great for beginner artists and animators but also those already working in the industry, since it uses similar UI features as other professional tools.
Krita deliberately focuses on digital art, so it does not have a varied palette of photography tools as PS for example, but it’s for the best – it gives artists what they need most without cluttering the software with unnecessary features – just a professional tool for digital art.
Personally, I’m in love with the right click pop-up palette which makes my workflow faster and easier and the brush customization option which is really simple to understand even without any knowledge in the area.
Here you can see an early speed paint of an art piece I made in Krita, the portrait of king Leonard the Wise, father of King Lav:
It’s impressive what independent developers can put together. By building this program and contributing to its code, those developers are giving an opportunity for everyone (regardless of any political or economical constraints) to learn digital art using a full version of professional software – for free.
If you have the opportunity to support Krita, it’s basically the right thing to do, making the whole medium of digital art way more accessible, as well as supporting independent developers who can truly use every penny to make this software better.
Also worth mentioning is that we’re not only end users but also proud sponsors of the Krita Foundation. Are you an aspiring artist? Try it out, it’s free!