Krita-A free, open source, digital drawing software

 

Where to Download: https://krita.org/en/

Price: Free /w optional extra brushes ranging from $5-$20

License:GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3

Supported art: 2D static/animationg

 

 Review: Krita is a free and open-source program that I have used for years , it's versatile and offers a wide range of options for most art styles. The base program offers around 100 brushes that will work for pretty much any style you're going for, from paint to pixel art you can do it all. You are not limited to the brushes that come default with the program as you can customize your own using the brush designer or even go online and find a brush set you like. 

    For the artists you'll enjoy the easy plug and play for your art pads with simple to use settings to make sure you're able to draw how you want to. There are brush stabilizers that each brush can be set individually for how much assistance you need, I prefer the weighted as it smooths out some of my jitters while not slowing down the brush too much. 

    Animation is simple enough and is designed similarly to more specialized programs, the easy on and off onion lines is always useful, if you don't know what that means it's where the program will show you the previous frame and next frame of animation in whatever color you choose so you can adjust as you need for the frame. 

    While I'm far from a great artist I made sure that before I did this review I made something to show off, at the top you can see the PC Foundry's new logo, Metal being poured into a cast C, thought it was a little on the nose but I like it. 

    Only complaint I have with krita is that the file sizes will be a bit larger for the project than most other programs. What I mean by this is a major project I had that had close to 100 layers was around 2GB, if I had made it in something like Paint tool SAI it would have came in under 1 GB. So if space is an issue it might be a good idea to consider another program if you're doing huge projects. 

Overall Score: 8/10

Reason: The file size issue lost the program points, while that isn't always a huge issue it can become a major problem if you are making an animations with a lot of layers and frames. Other than that there aren't many better drawing programs that are both free and open source.