scottpetrovic wrote:For helping with the application's UI, I am starting to email well-known concept artists and asking them for feedback on the application. It should be interesting to hear their thoughts and progress on it so far. I think everyone has good ideas, but getting feedback from more artists that do this 40 hours a week should create a good perspective.

I can suggest that, to be attractive to that kind of artists, Krita really needs to improve A LOT in its image editing performance.
Krita has a lot of great features, but the classic needings of concept artists (copy/paste, modify, deform, scale, levels and such filters) are very slow, at least on windows. To the point where they are not very useful in a production environment.

I have friends who finds Krita very interesting, but it can't compete yet with the likes of Photoshop in things that are not pure painting.

Sorry I misunderstood you Achibrucie! That happens all too often on the net and it's one reason I avoid threads like this, it can really damper your day. That said my Michelangelo post was more of an inspiration for all rather than targeted at you. Please just keep in mind, like myself, people have differing views on a subject and we need to understand that. "girly" was definitely not the best word to use, sorry about that people. But theirs no reason to swear about it, that's being hypocritical, that's bothering the mods and the atmosphere for people as well.

Like you guys have been saying, I thinks it's a great idea to have a contest and get people familiar. Deviant-art is an important place to be, but maybe we shouldn't limit ourselves there. If anyone is posting already, I recommend that they mention the contest, assuming were doing it of course! Maybe it could have a theme, that's what the c4dcafe does so look at them for reference, and it works well too. Although it limits peoples imagination, what it does do, is help people get started on the general idea. It's also cool to see what different things people come up with a theme, but that's just a thought I guess.

As far as Krita's limitations, that's definitely photography based tools, although plugins play a huge role as well, but obviously that's not happening in Krita, yet. I think a speed up in those tools would be great, I'm not crazy about the fact that I have to use a graph for editing and the changes aren't real-time, but it gets the job done. Gmic's color feature, would certainly be wonderful if we get it. It really is the one thing I don't like, tedious coloring. But, whats worse yet is trying to get the edges neat in a painting, line art is easier in that regard.

I'm fine with the UI now, which is saying alot because I'm ocd over that stuff, the icons were pretty bad previously, hard to read on dark at least. Just a few adjustments here and there like the layer icons, I feel should be fixed. Red should symbolize off, green on, in dull colors of course. I use a lot of layers so that would certainly be a nice addition though small. Changing brush icons could be little more intuitive too, but again, it gets the job done fine. What I really love though, are those real-time brush previews, think painter or sketchbook. The color tools, as well as brush resize, should be faster I think. It seems to me it could, as I've used them before on weak tablets in other software and they're responsive, but it's a totally different framework I suppose. Krita has one smooth brush flow though, it doesn't lag like photoshop or sketchbook. One thing that always tweaks me is how even on a very powerful rig, painting pixels seems to be so demanding sometimes! 0.0

If you want, I can contact Matt (founder of ctrlpaint) and see if he'll leave a mention or quick review in his blog or twitter. Crazy as it sounds, I don't think he's even heard of Krita, or at least tried it. This would be very easy and quick way of spreading the word out.

Azzart wrote:

scottpetrovic wrote:For helping with the application's UI, I am starting to email well-known concept artists and asking them for feedback on the application. It should be interesting to hear their thoughts and progress on it so far. I think everyone has good ideas, but getting feedback from more artists that do this 40 hours a week should create a good perspective.

I can suggest that, to be attractive to that kind of artists, Krita really needs to improve A LOT in its image editing performance.
Krita has a lot of great features, but the classic needings of concept artists (copy/paste, modify, deform, scale, levels and such filters) are very slow, at least on windows. To the point where they are not very useful in a production environment.

I have friends who finds Krita very interesting, but it can't compete yet with the likes of Photoshop in things that are not pure painting.

I completely agree with these statements. Krita is great for drawing/painting, but I always have to use photoshop to resize images, add drop shadows to layers, and add certain filters. G'mic is awesome for filter fx, but not so much on windows (slow, no or bad previews, glitchy) and updates to G'mic in Krita are slooow coming. To be honest I use krita for all things art these days, but at some compromise to things I liked about Photoshop. Some things in particular are layer styles/options like: Drop shadow, line strokes, gradient maps, and BEVELS. I used to use bevels all the time to non destructively create bumps and textures via layers. I can't do this in Krita but I wish I could. Here are some examples of how I used texture brushes on a layer with a certain bevel type set to create realistic looking texture.







Stjepan Sejic uses a similar method (layer bevels) to create blood effects, face wrinkles and dragon scale fx. Layers styles/options improvement are needed in Krita as well as better or less buggy filter and photo editing options (image resize, artistic filters, blur/light options etc). These thing are things that will only make Krita better in my opinion. At this moment Krita already is the best for pure illustration it just needs a bit more polish with other crucial aspects. Don't want Krita to be a Photoshop clone, just a better tool for professional artist.

What's the problem with resizing? Anyway we are getting of topic. Krita is of course still behind Photoshop in many ways, but that's not something that can be changed in the short term.

slangkamp wrote:What's the problem with resizing? Anyway we are getting of topic. Krita is of course still behind Photoshop in many ways, but that's not something that can be changed in the short term.

Sorry everyone Slangkamp is obviously correct about resizing. This is a lesson in checking out something thoroughly before running my mouth. I went to check for and option to resize in Krita thinking Canvas resize was the photoshop alternative, but I was wrong. I for some stupid unknown reason i did not see "scale to new size" as the option I was looking for in image resizing. I just missed that option, apparently, embarrassingly, countless times. So that option is there sorry for the misinformation in that regard And we are a bit off topic.

I look after updating the DA group and being that DA is such a hugely popular nexus of artists I'm thinking more could be done with the group to raise enthusiasm/awareness in general. For instance, being supplied with info to put into journals about Krita's updates, community things etc would be a great start. I'm not so good writing these myself because I'm frequently not quite in the loop on technical things or current events but I'm more than happy to keep the group updated with given info. Also lots of times artists ask questions on the page and I find I'm not easily able to answer anything because my knowledge is not that in-depth yet; I only know what I've been using myself and that's usually not enough information to help with their questions. Someone to regularly help keep on top of that would be awesome. Promotions/competitions could also be useful in this group. In short, there's next to no engagement of the community that we're steadily growing on DA and so it's untapped potential. Engaging peoples' feelings of loyalty and excitement towards the program by being active at a personal level with the folks who use it will cause a ton of word-of-mouth advertising. I'm also an active user of FA and have seen small ripples of interest in the artist community there but more waves could probably be made somehow. It's not as big an arena as DA, but it covers a wide cross-section of digital anthro/fantasy artists from the amateur to the professional.

As a Tumblr user I would -love- to see more work by Krita users featured. The features seem pretty sparse these days (possibly out of a sense of not wanting to spam?) but I feel like that's another arena by which you can foster a sense of community... plus it's a reciprocal process - the artists get some exposure from being featured, and that can help drive their enthusiasm in creating more/better art which in turn gives Krita more visibility. Unfortunately at the moment whenever I see folks talking about free or inexpensive art programs I don't usually see Krita mentioned and I think that could be changed by engaging artist communities far more.

I think a Patreon would be a super idea. Everyone knows what Patreon is and I know so many people who are willing to vouch a little bit of money towards artists they feel a loyalty towards - so why not artists vouching a little towards a program they feel attached to? Once you have built up enthusiasm in the artist communities, pointing that towards an easy manner in which they can help out (many people already have accounts) sounds like a great way to build up a steady monetary support base.

As an artist I'm really interested in the art book/calendar ideas and would jump at the chance to be involved in projects like these. I'm also very happy for any of my artwork (barring some commissions if the client is not happy with the idea) to be used in any promotional/demo material. I don't have the clout of say, David Revoy, but I'm very outspoken about using Krita everywhere that I post my art and I will continue to be so for as long as I can use the program. I'm also open to being approached for any arty/community things that you may want help with. I can almost always be reached on the IRC channel (nickname is Eo`) or by emailing omnom at toastweasel.com

slangkamp wrote:What's the problem with resizing? Anyway we are getting of topic. Krita is of course still behind Photoshop in many ways, but that's not something that can be changed in the short term.

Uhm sorry, I didn't want to derail the conversation.
But since it's been mentioned the need to attract more attention on the art community, I wanted to suggest to direct the attentions to pure painting illustrators. Because this is the actual real strenght of Krita: painting.
Other figures like concept artists, graphic designers, photographer/photo-retouchers and all those figures that relies much on transformations, image manipulation, colour correction and similars will hardly be attracted by Krita as it is now and it may even lead to bad advertisement from them which would be unjust to such a good software.

Azzart wrote:Uhm sorry, I didn't want to derail the conversation.
But since it's been mentioned the need to attract more attention on the art community, I wanted to suggest to direct the attentions to pure painting illustrators. Because this is the actual real strenght of Krita: painting.
Other figures like concept artists, graphic designers, photographer/photo-retouchers and all those figures that relies much on transformations, image manipulation, colour correction and similars will hardly be attracted by Krita as it is now and it may even lead to bad advertisement from them which would be unjust to such a good software.

Exactly, I think that would help the image a lot, as well as the fact people could possibly "do away" with gimp and photoshop, less is more if you don't need it. Since Krita already has some of those tools, it's worthwhile to improve them and eventually add a few more in. You don't want a software to be too specialized in one thing after all. It will be interesting to see how popular it is once a proper mac release comes, because as most people know, that's what most big studios use, as well as a lot of pro hobbyists. Nice portfolio by the way! Your composition and use of light is wonderful. Nice to see another 3D artist among the forums too. Just curious, are you using Krita for the brush engine over painter, or experimenting?

As a Tumblr user I would -love- to see more work by Krita users featured. The features seem pretty sparse these days (possibly out of a sense of not wanting to spam?) but I feel like that's another arena by which you can foster a sense of community... plus it's a reciprocal process - the artists get some exposure from being featured, and that can help drive their enthusiasm in creating more/better art which in turn gives Krita more visibility. Unfortunately at the moment whenever I see folks talking about free or inexpensive art programs I don't usually see Krita mentioned and I think that could be changed by engaging artist communities far more.

No, that's actually because setting up the queue for tumblr is tedious, and especially when I have other things to do, I have a tendency to procrastinate on it. I recently added 90ish pictures to it, that get posted twice a day, so it should be going for a while. (Just need to remember to add to it.)

And alright, I'll add devianart journal to the list of places I spam when there's a new development update.

scottpetrovic wrote:@boudewijn - have you given any thought to my proposal about sending out communication to the media about the upcoming 2.9 release? It would be good to make a list of media sources and outline new features, how to obtain a development version of it, and getting feedback on it so far. If you don't have time, I am certainly willing to help. I have some ideas.

I am wanting to improve my sales skills as well(I read a lot), so this might be a good opportunity for me to grow.

Yes, I am all in favor of sending out information as soon as possible! If I make a draft with new features, a paragraph why Krita is special because of openness and so on, can you edit & make the list of places to send it out?

scottpetrovic wrote:For helping with the application's UI, I am starting to email well-known concept artists and asking them for feedback on the application. It should be interesting to hear their thoughts and progress on it so far. I think everyone has good ideas, but getting feedback from more artists that do this 40 hours a week should create a good perspective.

I think we're doing pretty well, but getting more feedback is always good. Besides, everyone who gets asked to give feedback will then learn about Krita's existence

I'm, of course, aware of Krita's current limitations. When it comes to performance, I'd like to point at my initial post in this thread: it's one of the four big projects that I companies should be interested in. To quote:

* LOD performance optimization: this will bring Krita's real time painting performance up to par with Photoshop, or even go beyond that. There is currently a proof-of-concept, but it needs at least four months of work, about 20,000 euros.

We basically know what Krita is already good for, and what needs to be done -- it's just that we need to make it possible to work on those areas!

Oh, and about G'Mic: we update g'mic in Krita every time a new release comes out. Lukas is curently working on the preview code, let's hope that gets finished before 2.9. And layer styles are part of the 2.9 kickstarter funded effort as well, I'm actually working on that already. Though I think Photoshop layer styles are rather outdated compared to our filter masks and filter layers

TheraHedwig wrote:No, that's actually because setting up the queue for tumblr is tedious, and especially when I have other things to do, I have a tendency to procrastinate on it. I recently added 90ish pictures to it, that get posted twice a day, so it should be going for a while. (Just need to remember to add to it.)

And alright, I'll add devianart journal to the list of places I spam when there's a new development update.

Awesome, that will be great!

BTW Boudewijn you guys are doing great. Krita development has moved at ludicrous speed within the last year considering it's just a super small crew of volunteers and developers with little to no resources. I don't won't that to get lost in the message. Thank you. Everyone on the krita team is awesome and very much appreciated.

scottpetrovic wrote:For helping with the application's UI, I am starting to email well-known concept artists and asking them for feedback on the application. It should be interesting to hear their thoughts and progress on it so far. I think everyone has good ideas, but getting feedback from more artists that do this 40 hours a week should create a good perspective.

It's a great idea !

However, a lot of well-known artists are using MacOS. So you can have a lot of feedbacks like " Tell me when you'll have a stable version so I could really test it ".

To be honest, nearly ALL the best digital painters I know are using MacOS (when I know what OS they use). I'm talking about the masters, like concept-artists for Pixar, etc.
When we'll have a real OSX version, it will make a HUGE difference.

A good part of the digital painters community is using the Apple products. For example, make a simple google image research on "Wacom Cintiq" and count the Apple logos :
https://www.google.com/search?q=wacom+c ... CAYQ_AUoAQ

feydk wrote:However, a lot of well-known artists are using MacOS. So you can have a lot of feedbacks like " Tell me when you'll have a stable version so I could really test it ".

To be honest, nearly ALL the best digital painters I know are using MacOS (when I know what OS they use). I'm talking about the masters, like concept-artists for Pixar, etc.
When we'll have a real OSX version, it will make a HUGE difference.

A good part of the digital painters community is using the Apple products. For example, make a simple google image research on "Wacom Cintiq" and count the Apple logos :
https://www.google.com/search?q=wacom+c ... CAYQ_AUoAQ

Properly finishing the OSX version will take about six months, or about 30.000 euros... It's another thing that we might:

* do a kickstarter for?
* find funding from commercial users of Krita
* do speculatively, but then the OSX version of Krita won't be a free download, but, say, for-pay on Steam or the OSX app store (if that is at all possible, license-wise).

boudewijn wrote:Properly finishing the OSX version will take about six months, or about 30.000 euros... It's another thing that we might:

* do a kickstarter for?
* find funding from commercial users of Krita
* do speculatively, but then the OSX version of Krita won't be a free download, but, say, for-pay on Steam or the OSX app store (if that is at all possible, license-wise).

- A kickstarter would be a good idea (but I have no idea if 30 000 euros is easily achievable)
- But how the potential commercial users under OSX can know Krita because it's not on their platform ? It's like the egg-and-chicken problem!
- As a user of both Linux and OSX, paying the OSX version would be ok for me.... as long as it's a fair price like 25-30 euros, not the XXX euros of Photoshop... Overall, I think OSX users are more often willing to pay for software than Linux users (maybe because the OSX environnment is already more expensive).

Final observation :
There is a strong Apple community with websites about OSX news and so on... It could be a good area to communicate about Krita (if for exemple we launch a crowfunding campaign).