Deep Paint

So, I downloaded a program called "Deep Paint", which is free. Although I understand there's a pricey version also available.

I've never really played with a paint program that emulates "real" media. I don't own Photoshop, or Paint Shop, or any of those: I use strictly GIMP and the now-venerable Open Canvas 1.1. (Unfortunately, GIMP tends to crash every five minutes nowadays.)

I don't know how "good" Deep Paint is, not having anything to compare it to, but I do know that realistic media adds a bit of respectability to even the most humble linework:


(Your mechanic, the inventor of your ship).

Then I got to their "wet media: ink" brush. Whee! It's marvellously responsive and whippy. It took me just a few fun moments to make the following, which I colored as an excuse after the fact. It's a color schema test, obviously!

The lineart isn't awesome, but it was fun and fast and done without sketching or erasing. The color was also done without erasing, as is obvious.


(Your funder and you).

Unfortunately, Deep Paint understands the words "background" and "transparency", but not when put together. So I can't really use it for game graphics without a lot of GIMP-wrangling.

It does have brush-specific swappable "pressure nibs", which is good. It also has a "palette" function, which is something I've wanted for a long time. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to do any anti-aliasing, so everything has to be drawn REALLY BIG and then shrunk down, or the lines end up looking really ugly. Both images shown here were shrunk about 30%.

I'm going to try to release an engine test on Monday for people to download.