Paint Tool Sai

For this blog, I’d like to bring people’s attention to a software that I’ve come to grow very fond of, especially if you’re into Anime or cartoon illustrations.  The software/program is called Paint Tool Sai, and it is from Japan. Paint Tool Sai costs around 50 USD.

One of the reasons I love this software is that, although it doesn’t have as many tools as Photoshop, it is really great for outlining scanned drawings and creating ‘lineart’, and I believe is cheaper than buying Adobe Photoshop. This software is meant to create, edit, and enhance graphic images or photographs. The interface is pretty simple to navigate through, but it might take some time to get used to where things are, as well as trying out the different paint tools. However, once you get the hang of it (and there are plenty of tutorials out there on DeviantART or YouTube that you can look into to familiarize yourself with the program) you can create some pretty amazing art. 

One of the things I like most about this program is how easy it is to manipulate lineart, where you can get precise contours when outlining your scanned drawings (I recommend using the 'Curve' lineart option). I sincerely love the ‘Pressure’ tool, where you can change the thinness of any anchor point on the lineart you’re making, and once you have the entire lineart done you can use the ‘Weight’ tool to change the thickness of the stroke too. The lineart ends up coming out crisp and clean.

Some great perks about Paint Tool Sai is that it supports file formats like PSD, BMP, JPG and PNG, so if you feel like you limited yourself with effects on this software, all you have to do is save it as a PSD and bring it onto Photoshop where you can make changes and touch up on your art; Sai has layers like Photoshop, so when you save it as a PSD it’ll configure and open up on the program just as any document created on Photoshop itself. A downside to this program is that it doesn’t support Mac, only Windows PC. Sorry Mac people, but hopefully they’ll make it available in the future!

Here are some examples of brushes and their strokes, as well as some of the settings for them that you can manipulate to your liking. If you’d like to give it a try at this software, you can download a trial period of 1 month from Softonic.

CGHUB - The Social Network for Professionals in Entertainment

 
I just recently came across CGHUB and have been hooked since my first visit to the site. Basically, it's deviantART without the 13 year old anime fangirls clogging up the feed with their really quite terrible "artwork." This is a place where you can really find talented individuals with an eye for creature and character design. The majority of the work posted on the site is digital, both 2D and 3D, but you can still find traditional artwork on the site. I have found profiles of concept artists who post some of their work for films that have recently come out, like Pacific Rim, The Hobbit, and others.

If you have an account, you can post your own illustrations for the world to see, as well as comment, like, share, and favorite other people's work, and subscribe and follow different artists whose collection of work you would like to revisit in the future. When posting new works, you can ask other members of the site to critique your work. It's a helpful tool because better artists than you man stumble across your image and give you just the advice you needed. 

On the home page, the Editors Picks are featured at the top (a collection of really superb works of art), and below them are a collage of "Popular Now" works of different sizes, showcasing a variety of styles and content from different artists. Whenever a new image is posted, or some other notifiable activity occurs on the site, there is a tiny thumbnail at the very top of the page saying ______ left a comment on _______. While sometimes this might be a little useless, occasionally cool new artists can be discovered by clicking on this link.

CGHUB also hosts Articles, Forums, and Challenges for its users to participate in. Job postings are available on the site as well, so professionals in the field looking for work can post their availability or organizations looking for artists can put an ad on the site when they're looking for artists. When I'm out of school, I plan to use this to try and find some work.

If you like this kind of website, I would suggest you check out these other art sites: Behance, CGSociety,  deviantART, ConceptArt.org
If you're interested, my profile is at kilianmcmann.cghub.com.