Clip Studio Paint
Clip Studio Paint is the primary competitor of Photoshop for an incredibly comprehensive digital drawing and painting software. In the EX version, it also in our go-to software for comics due to its incredible paneling and text features. Another huge plus is the EX version’s animation capabilities (of prime importance to all software recommended on this site).
Why we recommend this software:
We’ve been using Clip Studio Paint for years to review artwork, create digital paintings, and even to make beautiful animations. It’s a wonderful one-stop-shop of many of the creative heavy-lifting that any digital artist today should expect from their software. Personally, I’ve used it to make page layouts for comics, and I love it’s capabilities for this. It makes the process 1000% times easier than other digital drawing software that doesn’t consider the unique needs of comic artists.
Over the next few year, I hope to bringing more and more of my freelance work over to CSP. We highly recommend picking up the EX version over the PRO license!
We also really like the fact that desktop version of the software still allows you to purchase a perpetual license, which is incredibly important to us so that artists can own their software that they buy (increasingly rare among some of the other “industry-standard” software).
CSP, as it’s known, is one of the most popular apps among all of our students for its power and affordability. While we haven’t test the app’s animation capabilities fully, many of our students use it and achieve great results with it… and if it’s good enough for Olaf Storm, it’s good enough for anyone!
Vector lines in animation?! Incredible!
More from Olaf Storm!
Note: The tabs at the top help you decide which version you’d like to use
Operating system: Windows, Mac and there is an iPad version too.
Requirements: Compatible Drawing Tablet, otherwise listed on their website.
