First post in this community for me

[anysia]

First, thank you for making this community. I am so glad to find one that is for digital and digitally created artwork.

So, here is my first contribution.



The Fenghuang (Phoenix) symbolizes the union of yin and yang. It appears in peaceful and prosperous times but hides when trouble is near. According to tradition, each part of Fenghuang's body symbolizes a word, the head represents virtue, the wing represents duty, the back represents propriety,the abdomen says belief, and the chest represents mercy. The Fenghuang represents the Yin of the Yin Yang symbol (The Imperial Dragon being its opposite). It is often described as a composite of many birds including the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the legs of a crane, the mouth of a parrot, and the wings of a swallow.

It's also called the "August Rooster" since it sometimes takes the place of the Rooster in the Chinese Zodiac.

Digital painting made with TwistedBrush Pro Studio

Comments

[iconoplast]

Hi anysia! You're quite welcome. =)

Thank you for the background on your subject. I love to read things like that! Also, I've never tried TwistedBrush. How do you like it?

[anysia]

I really like TwistedBrush. I tried and reviewed 5 different photo/graphics programs.

1: "ArtRage": small program, doesn't hog system resources. But for me, it's too clumsy. The brush controls are thick and counter intuitive. There is a free version and an inexpensive $25 US shareware version.

2: "Corel PainterX": pretty good all round painting program. Anyone who has used any older PaintShop Pro programs will feel right at home, as the tool bar layout and keyboard short cuts are still the same. Many good brushes and tools makes for good results. There are some plugins available too. Expensive price tag of $349 US will put off most newbies.

3: "Adobe PhotoShop CS3": Comes with many tools and many brushes, and also has importable brushes. Can also use a lot of the Alien Skin plugins. I would suggest this program for the experienced digital painter, as beginners could easily be overwhelmed. It's a great program, but the price tag of $649 and $999 US will put most people off.

3a: "Adobe Illustrator": Comes with many templates, swatches, shapes and brushes, All the functionality of PhotoShop, but less photograph centered and more drawing/painting. It is a little less expensive than Photoshop, but not by much at $599 US.(I have CS2 that I got years ago, the latest is CS3)

4: "TwistedBrush Pro Studio": Easy to set up, easy to use, whether a newbie or experienced digital painter. There are many brushes, pencils, chalk, pen, and object brushes. Art filters and effects are included with the software. I have found this to be the hands down winner overall. Compared to the cost of Corel and Adobe, the $119 US price tag will attract not only the experienced digital painter, as it's great for photo editing too, but will not be too much of a shocker for the beginner.

[iconoplast]

I primarily use Painter 9.5 -- I haven't upgraded, though I may soon as XI just came out. (Actually, Adobe recently released CS4 as well.) I went with Painter because I had an opportunity to buy the full software for the upgrade price and I appreciate the option to use Photoshop plugins in addition to Painter-specific plugins.

Have you looked at any of the open-source options? I'm always curious to hear other people's opinions. I generally don't use GIMP for much since the drawing tablet support for Windows is very buggy and I don't have a Linux machine with enough hardware support to do anything resource intensive, but I do like Inkscape quite a bit (it's a vector-based program equivalent to Illustrator).

I'll have to try the free version of TwistedBrush and see how it compares to Painter for me. At the very least, having another tool on hand has never hurt me!

[anysia]

I don't have, and don't have the need, for CS4, so I can't vouch for it. But at a $1400 price tag, they can keep it.

I found GIMP ok, for the quick and easy edits, but I had too many issues with it, so dropped it. Paint DOT net is a good webbased photo editor too.

[oleandervyce]

I know this is a totally late response and I'm kinda just jumping in, buuuut...

Have you checked out Paint Tool SAI? There's an English version of it up free for download if you just Google it. It works like a dream for sketching and line-arting. Nooot so much for coloring. It's pretty simplified, like openCanvas, if you've ever used that one.

RE: Painter--I'd hold off on upgrading Painter just yet. Corel has a tendency to release buggy software. I haven't heard great things about X, and I use IX.5 as well after years of using Painter 8. Honestly, I thought the older versions ran smoother, but that's just my opinion. :)

[anysia]

Yes, I did try Paint Tool SAI. It was ok, still wasn't on par with Twisted Brush Pro.

[oleandervyce]

I suppose that depends on what you're doing with it. I gave Twisted Brush a try and a couple of things deterred me--it doesn't really utilize tablet pressure sensitivity or stylus tilt, making lines blocky. That's where SAI excels--it's like drawing directly onto paper. It does better there than most paint programs. It also doesn't port .psds or other file extensions to make work flow between programs easy. However, I like that Twisted Brush's user interface is less complex than Photoshop and other older programs. I don't think I'll use it, but thanks for sharing. It's always fun trying new things. :)

[anysia]

I disagree. TB does utilize stylus pressure sensitivity, and I see no 'blockiness'. I found it drew smoother than SAI, or Corel Painter. *shrug*

[iconoplast]

I haven't tried that one myself; I'll have a look at it when I get a chance.

I've heard some decent things about XI as far as Painter goes, but I'm leaning toward upgrading my tablet before I upgrade any software. That'll give me plenty of time to see how stable and well-behaved XI is before I'm at a point to seriously consider it.