Hi everyone,

I'm new here and wanted to share some thoughts about, well, why I'm new here and not a regular Kritan since a year or two. I put it this way because actually I should have been a Kritan but I was an Inkscaper before (and still am partially of course, it remains a superb program).

Since a year or two I'm bit by bit diving into digital art, more as "contemporary" gallery art type. I don't mean to snob other types of art, on the contrary, I think "gallery art" much of the time is boring, snobbish and square and that other artforms, more pop, like game art and manga, anime and such are really ten times more powerful. But that's a whole other discussion and I still remain interested in making gallery art in a digital way. If you want to see some of my boring art (I truly think it needs some spunk but I'm working on it) you can go to my online portfolio bartvanaudenhove.be.

A few days ago I was looking into ways to combine MyPaint/Gimp with Inkscape - I love vector graphics but also Mypaint effects and especially brushes - and got frustrated by the fact that they none of these programs provide vector layers and bitmap layers in one and the same program. I already imagined (and found described on the internet) complicated workflows involving Gimp, Inkscape, importing/exporting and even python scripts etcetera that finally are almost unusable, at least for me.

Then I stumbled upon a page on wikipedia I think (I don't seem to find it now) with a long list of graphic software describing the programs as "vector", "raster" or "both vector and raster". So being an open source fan and already knowing the other listed options for "both", I followed the link to Krita as the only option I hadn't looked into yet.

So to make a long story short(er), the thing is I realize now that I had passed several times by Krita before, but I didn't take it seriously as an option (shame on me, I know). Maybe it can be of interest to the Krita team to know why I didn't get hooked, as I should have, before.

Well, in my case, in hindsight I realize that I didn't consider Krita as an option before because of the "cute" appearance of the logo in particular and the website as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against "cute" and both the logo and website are truly beautiful, but the fact is that looking for a full blown and full grown vector/bitmap program filled with professional options, tweaks and settings, I just skipped over Krita thinking it was a very simplified drawing program for children! My mistake, I know, but maybe a lot of other people make it. Which is a shame.

This time I delved more deeply in Krita's possibilities and am truly blown away by it's possibilities in artistic terms. It's like having a truckload of painter's materials of all imaginable kinds unloaded right in my driveway, it really leaves me dazzled. I know Gimp, I know Inkscape, I know Mypaint (a bit), but from a creative artist's point of view, Krita gathers all that's useful from these three and puts it into one and the same program. Especially the seamless and effortless integration of vector and bitmap layers in one program is really powerful, and exactly what I needed.

You guys (Krita team) have here a program that can do what neither Gimp can (vector support is very rudimentary), nor Inkscape (no bitmap support at all, for good reasons but still it isn't there), nor any other Open Source program out there I know of (not to mention free). I even considered buying Adobe programs but luckily I didn't. This is really a niche in the market and I am convinced not enough digital artists out there know Krita.

So this long post here is actually a kind of testimony and maybe a hint to consider changing Krita's "face"? It's a beautiful face, and I like the logo in itself, but it makes a full grown, mature and very powerful program look like a kid's toy, I find, which is a shame and might cost (a lot of) users?

Second thought: really play out the "vector" AND "bitmap" functionalities in one and the same program, because this is, I think, what really makes Krita stand out among the rest. If you're an artist with a heart for open source who wants to incorporate both advanced vector and advanced bitmap functionalities, I think Krita is almost the only option for you - and it does a great job at it too (I think, I just started experimenting with it but it looks great until now). Do enough people know this? I didn't anyway...

Actually, Kiki has only very recently become such a frontispiece, before that we had a more generic look to everything.

Maybe it's because Scott(web designer) is magic, or maybe it's because Kiki does actually tickle the artist's aesthetic bone, but since we put her on the front-line, the Krita community has actually grown hugely.

I'm not surprised, it really is amazing artwork and website design. Scott has great talent.

I'm probably an exception anyway, in terms of aesthetics and specific personal goals.

Hope I didn't offend anyone? Just keep up the good work then

In the mean while, I'll dive further into Krita. Great stuff.

Hi, i'm one of the people whom Kiki made curious about Krita.
I'm not an Artist, but to me she looks much more professional than the addobe Photoshop logo for example.
That one looks like nobody has yet gotten around to designing a logo and they stuck with the placeholder.
Arne

bartv: Thank you for your story about Krita and a little bit about your history.

Whether it is a website, or any other type of communication, the vision and purpose of the application is what needs to be strong. A specific technology is not the most important thing to communicate (raster vs vector in this instance) .

Knowing who a product is for is the most important thing to communicate for a product like this.

Why?

That focus is what drives the direction for an application. For example, if we add a bunch of photography to the site, people will think the application is made for photographers. People will request photo editing features. If we start touting that we do a lot of vector imaging, people will think that we are competing with illustrator or Inkscape. The conflicting priorities of different audiences would really make the developers life harder. The end product will also be a bad version of a lot of different programs.

Believe it or not, cartoons are a very commercial concept. Krita is designed for commercial artists -- not creating high art. The developers are always trying to get feedback from people in the entertainment industry, comic book industry and such. Commercial artists don't care about art galleries. They care about meeting deadlines. Krita might be able to give some results you are after, but that wasn't the original intent -- just coincidence. That is why the website looks like it does.

Kiki looks like something I might see on the app store for a video game. It seems to fit in perfectly with Krita's target audience.

Agreed. And thanks for the insights! I didn't realize most of what you mention. Glad to have discussed this with you.