I wanted to shoot out an idea that is roughly outlined below.. A printed Guide to Digital Painting with Krita.

The Goal

A printable Handbook to Digital Art with Krita. Based on practical usage and real projects.
Tools, Filters, Menus, Setup and anything else explained in a Turorial based step-by-step format in a project orientated context.
Making this Book physically purchasable and available for free as downloadable pdf. Bringing all existing stuff together in a unified format
and layout and filling up what's missing..

Why? Is there a need for this?

The wiki is incomplete and there are not alot of people contributing content to it. I am sure that it is easier to find people
willingly to write for a complete book-project than for the wiki. On the other Hand if such a project would be realized the content
could be integrated into the wiki/online help later.

Digital Art Creation is changing permanently with new possibilities of soft- and hardware. Krita introduces Tools that are not
commonly used compared to other 2-D painting applications. Which of these tools are used in a productive environment by
skilled artists? How do they improve their workflow in Krita and what makes the difference to other painting applications...

Content?

First to Last page -> step by step workbook
Index -> Reference to Krita
By Chapers -> Choosing a starting point based on the individual skill-level

Profit?

Artists and Authors - Reputation
Developers - Feedback
Users - Help

Funding?

Surely it would be nice to make the book physically available. To achieve this a starting capital is needed. Eventually this could be done
via crowdfunding (kickstarter). The project starts after reaching a certain amount of money. People who have spent money get a
reward depending on the amount.

Steps?

1. Discuss about - Started...
2. Find contributors and people who manage the project
3. Crowdfunding
4. Create Content
5. Layout
6. Manage financial and technical aspects
7. Publish

There are a lot more of pros and cons i am thinking of, but i haven't written them down to keep it short at this point.
I have absolutely no idea if this is realizable and.. just let's discuss it; so what do you think about it?

I think this is a good idea.

This could be done with the FLOSS Manuals people, who are used to writing such documentation.
We could then organise a booksprint with a few users and developers to write it efficiently in a short time.

http://www.flossmanuals.org/
http://www.flossmanuals.net/
http://fr.flossmanuals.net/

Also we may not need to make a kickstarter to make a printed version, there are other altrnatives for the few who will really want it on paper.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?type ... ulu.com&q=
http://flossmanualsfr.net/

So if other people are interested in the idea, I can contact them to try to organize a krita booksprint :.)

This cover represents how a lot of people think about open source....



colorless, boring, featureless, but hey it's free
You are right - not a lot of people would pay for this to have it on paper..

That was not really what i thought of. Also i did not meant a manual or documentation with
plain instructions to the functions of Krita. What i thought of, was a book explaining Digital
painting techniques and how they are used in Krita, authored with the help of skilled artists
giving insight to their work.

You really want developers to write about the software they programmed? I am not sure, if this
is a good idea

It might be, that it is not realizable what i though of, cause their is not enough interest for the amount
of work and time spent for it. I just like the idea to have a nice book about Digital Art printed in high quality
and with nice Artwork in it - all around Krita - lying next to me on the desk.

Your comment on this cover style is not very relevant to the proposal.. (and you see it "colorless, boring, featureless", I see it meaning "simple and natural" in this case.. that's purely a style choice.)

Also floss manuals are exactly "Turorial based step-by-step format" for production usecases, as you would expect.. not some plain instructions..
And what I meant about the "few who will really want it on paper", is more that the market for people buying printed books (for collection, or to actually read it :.P ) is getting smaller and smaller, that's a fact. But of course me too would love a printed version, with great illustrations and nice content I can want to read again and again..
And even more as software evolve so fast, the actual software-documentation part can quickly turn obsolete, so for actual documentation purpose it's more convenient to have a digital version updated regularly, than buying several revision of one physical book.

Ideally booksprints bring together some users , a few developpers and a facilitator guiding "from zero to published book" ... (see here: http://www.flossmanuals.org/book-sprints-sprint-confs ).
So I don't exactly "want developers to write about the software they programmed", but it can be very useful to have a few during this process to potentially give useful technical information, check usecases, and improve the code , which they do best ;.)
Of course it's the users who bring the content, ideas, pictures, etc.. and the facilitator just helps to put it in good organised shape.

So gathering some good users, we could produce a good content for sure. And the illustrations style will depend on them, so it can be as fanciful as needed.

Yeah okay. My experience with publishing floss manuals tends to be zero^^ So all is cool - i hope you haven't understood my comment as offence... let's see to where the discussion leads

I've noticed the same but instead I've been contemplating making a tumblr with highly technical focused tutorials. Mostly because one of the things that annoy me about regular tutorials is that they present a manner of working that is conventional but not exactly efficient, and I'm noticing that people stick to that method and don't try to improvise.

I've ntoiced this very often with hobbyist forums, where once someone's reasoning to disrecommend vectors for lineart was "you don't learn how to create lineart from that". I can think up a few disadvantages to vector lineart, but that quote is definitely not among them.

The Booksprint thing sounds good - an interesting approach to get things done! With the help of people experienced in organizing and managing this it seems to be a realizable project. I guess any more specific questions have to be discussed later by the participants. Maybe the project should be promoted to find users that like to take part in it?

Speaking for myself, i could definitely offer time for this, but i think my experience with Krita and digital painting in general, is to limited to be a good writer in this case.. so i hope some users with more insight will offer their time and knowledge

Oh, awesome idea! Go ahead I'm pretty sure that the end result will be quite cool. I might be worth it to contact Packt, btw, who do a lot of books on floss apps: http://www.packtpub.com/. They might be interested, too. As for the market, I know I would love to see a paper book. It is sort of a validation of an application,

Hi all,

I'm Elisa, or yemanjalisa on irc and i lead the flossmanuals project in France as the manager and the facilitator. (irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals).
I already meet some of you at LGM meeting since few years (Animtim, Boud, DmtryK, Ramon, etc), so if you want to put face into nickname ...

(edit : i may wrong about puting face into nickname i.e. DmtryK, Boud... well for Animtim i'm sure )

I'm french so excuse my english. I understand better than i write or speak.

In floss manuals our goals are helping in producing free documentation about free software or free culture. For this purpose we love write books in 3 to 5 days (ideally 5 days) using the methodology "booksprint".

I'm also a professionnal graphic designer and love use Krita to make illustration and a freelance trainer about graphic design with free graphic software.

What is a booksprint : in 5 days, ~12 co-authors are put together to write collaboratively a free book about one subject, here is about Krita. We love to put together people who now very well Krita (and involving in the project), less and newer but interested. This kind of 3 level of knowledge make the book better. Also, we love to bring some core developers of the software to report some bugs encoutered during the booskprint and patch the solutions.

The cover of the gimp book, if is not appreciate, is not a problem, we can creat one for the krita book with a lot of hapiness and color.

Cedric Gémy, one of the manager of Floss Manuals Francophone, graphic designer too, and attending all the LGM meeting, have already write a book at PackPublishing.
With this editor the process of writing is not the same, is more traditional : the content is not free. They pay a % of the price of each book sell and send to the author one or twice by year, like traditional editor. Interior of the book are un black and white.

In Floss Manuals francophone we are not a traditional editor.
Contents are free (we can discuss about wich licence use).
Contents are collaboratively write.
We can make a book in color.
As the book is free, the fundation can sell the book. Yes i'm talking in auto-edition and not put the book in a existing network of traditional publisher.
Author are not pay secund the % of the sell but we try to found money to : reimburse the trip to the booksprint and the location, to pay the workday. (Example i'm actually facilitating a booksprint and we found a "subvention" who pay author 300 euros per day of booksprint (5 days for this project)).

I love Krita, and i'm happy in helping this idea of a booksprint about Krita. If you choose to write this book in another area, and if the book is free, i will happy to translate the book into french.

Questions ? Comments ?

What Elisa has written sounds all good to me and i could imagine that this would be the best way to choose. But i am thinking about some upcoming "events" and i would suggest to postpone this idea/project into the beginning of the next year after 2.8 is officially released? Additionally there is the Muses DVD coming out, what might be a help and inspiration for the book and Christmas time is maybe not the best period to start a project even if the main work is done in a short time.

We have a basic discussion started and reviewed some possibilities for the realization. What do you think about keeping this idea in mind and picking up the discussion in spring 2014? We could then maybe directly start to search for people who want to participate.

Hi,
I've waited some time as your suggestion to wait for 2.8 release is a good idea.
Now 2.8 is coming quite soon, so I think it's a good time to start organizing this to get it ready soon enough after the release.

So now we need to know who can come to this, when can we do it, and so how much it'll cost.
Then we can run a crowdfunding campaign to finance it, using Indiegogo or another good alternative.
Probably it'd be good to have it managed by the Krita foundation, so I'll talk about it with boud.. News to come soon!

Aye, i have thought about this topic the last days. From my side i can offer time, but it might be problematic to finance a trip.. (unfortunately a common combination). If there is anything else, i can do in preparation, let me know about - as i said i have time

We should be able to get sponsorship for travel with not that much trouble. KDE e.V. has a budget for that, too.