Help finding right software for daughter (artist)

[TomGabriele]

I am looking for a software that can help with my daughter's artistic desire. She is a sketch artist and likes to draw anime and other fantasy creatures. Additionally she is looking to animate her drawings. As a parent I am looking to get her a draft tablet. (Huion - Inspiroy DialQ620M) and connect it to a macbook air or possibly a macbook pro. Anyway, is the Affinity software a good option to add to this hardware to allow her to draw and animate these sketches? Can you help make a recommendation for me?

 

Thanks
Tom

[NotMyFault]

Hi Tom,

buying the new V2 bundle vor 40% discount is an excellent option for the sketching purpose and many coming desires.

Affinity apps wont do any animation, you will need another app for that step.

[TomGabriele]

Do you have an additional recommendation for animation software?

 

[2ddpainter]

I would recommend to her " Clip Studio Paint "
Has many Tools for Manga / Anime Artist
and Animation build in

(Edited: App Name corrected, think i was already tired)  

Edited November 10, 2022 by 2ddpainter
Typo

[kaffeeundsalz]

The software is correctly called "Clip Studio Paint" and might be the better option because as @2ddpainter said comes with animation. The point is that I would leave this decision to your daughter. In the end, she's the one who's going to work with the software, so she should choose the one that she thinks will best meet her requirements. Both the Affinity suite and Clip Studio Paint have trial versions available that your daughter should really check out and use for a while before you spend any money on a particular software package. After all, that's what trial versions are for.

[PixelPest]

I´d send her to Krita.org

[bayustudio]

Assuming it's desktop drawing apps that support frame-by-frame animation/flipbook style, I'd start with Krita, which is good and free/open source. the UI is also photoshop-like. like affinity photos.

other recommended alternatives:

• clip studio paint (paid). You need the most expensive EX version for animation with more than 24frames.
• sketchbook pro (free, formerly by Autodesk). The desktop version can do flipbook too.

if she is getting serious with animation or needs full-fledged animation app that also support vector based

• moho (debut version looks affordable)
• morevna or opentoonz (free/open source)
• synfig (free/open source)
• adobe animate CC (paid)
• toonboom (paid, industry standard)
• blender+grease pencil (free)

if the animation is motion graphic style,

• rive (freemium, web based)
• after effects
   

[Shustenia]

I would strongly recommend Clip Studio Paint for both painting/sketching and animation purpose! It was created for anime and manga.

You can pay for monthly subscription of Clip Studio Paint or buy the perpetual license. By the way, there's going to be a huge update for the CSP (just as well as Affinity creative suit has just been upgraded) in March 2023, version 2.0 is on its way! Better to wait for the release and buy the Version 2.0 perpetual license.

I am a digital artist myself and I am deeply in love with Affinity software. But there is a special software developed exactly for digital painting so it will give your daughter a better experience and understanding how it all works, in my opinion. Brush engine power is highly important!

I use both Clips Studio Paint for painting and Affinity Photo for post editing of my art. 🙂

[Medical Officer Bones]

As others here have recommended: ClipStudio Paint is one of the best options out there for sketching, drawing, and animation. I'd also suggest Krita, which is also an excellent digital drawing/painting app with quite acceptable frame-by-frame traditional animation. It is quite amazing that Krita is open source and free.

And consider OpenToonz as well: a production-proven 2d animation studio that was and is used in Japanese feature animations. Futurama was produced with the help of the older Toonz version. ClipStudio Paint exports animation sequences directly to OpenToonz for combining, compositing, and mastering all scenes into a final animation. While ClipStudio's animation options are good, the app itself is not meant to combine and master multiple scenes into a longer animation production. OpenToonz is meant for this job.

OpenToonz is extremely capable (on par with Toonboom advanced and even Harmony in many respects), and amazingly enough free and open source.

http://opentoonz.github.io/e/