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Murasaki wrote on 2012-09-01 21:03
Fire Alpaca is a free program that resembles Paint Tool SAI. It's very lightweight and easy to control. Unlike SAI, Fire Alpaca is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
I've tried it for myself and think that it's pretty good. Keep in mind that this is primarily for drawing, not for editing images. Here's what it looks like:
[Image: http://puu.sh/115uL]
- All tools are easily accessible on the left.
- The brush has multiple settings, all of which are listed under the brush preview.
- Responds very well to pressure sensitivity with tablets
- Zooming in and changing brush sizes is quick and easy.
- The layers start out transparent, and you can see the checkerboard beneath, if that's what you want. I know I was surprised when SAI didn't have this...
- You can save in JPEG, PNG, MDP (Fire Alpaca's format) and PSD, which means you can easily take these into photoshop with all its layers.
- Colors blend well.
- You can move the interface windows around and arrange them however you want, and you can change the sizes as well.
I'd like to see this have more customizable brush settings, like Photoshop and SAI,and I still don't know if there's a way for this program to work with the Intuos 4's wheel on the side, which I use largely for changing brushes. Fire Alpaca's brush-changing hotkeys are easy (ctrl+alt+drag) so it's not too big of a deal, but it would still be something I'd love to see. For those not reliant on this wheel, it's not even a big deal.
Big thanks to Mihari for telling me about this~
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Guyverunit4 wrote on 2012-09-01 21:12
Think I'm too used to SAI to go to anything else, but since this seems pretty similar I'll give it a try.
Cool name too.
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Murasaki wrote on 2012-09-01 21:17
I'm used to SAI as well, mainly because I have brush settings on there that I never change. I use the same brush for every part of the drawing, so that I can end up doing stuff like this:
[Image: http://puu.sh/115MU]
I haven't found a way to get a brush to do that in FireAlpaca yet, but I do like the way it blends so easily. I'm also used to the SAI and Photoshop hotkeys (since they share a lot of them) so this feels a bit funny. Even though I'm used to the other two, though, using FireAlpaca didn't feel unpleasant once I figured out the slight hotkey differences.
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Noxctis wrote on 2012-09-02 06:41
Way too used to Sai but this looks interesting. :D
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Dracius wrote on 2012-09-04 03:16
Hehe, Fire Alpaca.
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Rin wrote on 2012-09-04 14:42
If it's freeware, is it ongoing with community updates?
And if that's so, would it have custom plug-ins?
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Murasaki wrote on 2012-09-04 14:50
Haven't had much luck looking into that. The last time I checked, the official site wouldn't load, and it's hard to find stuff on it elsewhere. I'm hoping it goes somewhere, though. *_*
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Elleanior wrote on 2012-09-07 02:09
I've just been trying Fire Alpaca for a bit, and it's overall quite fun and relatively simple. Within the first 30 minutes, I knew most of my limitations, but I think that it's a very good program for beginners.
I have done most of my artworks with Photoshop Elements 5.0 (for those who don't know, photoshop elements is not designed with manga-esque lineart in mind--it's designed for special effects and "photoshopping", and thus, lineart is a lot harder to make as "finely detailed" as programs like Manga Studio, Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop CS can make it. Especially seeing as how much a piece of crap my machine is, I can't easily handle large files and then shrink them for a more "polished" finished result), and so I've found a lot of convenience in the fact that it's compatible with PSD files. I can do the sketching on Photoshop Elements, take it to Fire Alpaca for the lineart, then go back to photoshop for the rest!
I have yet to find a truely free full version of Paint Tool SAI, so this is quite nice. Even with how nice it is, I do have a lot of ideas for improvements.
Thanks much for mentioning this here, because I would probably never have found it otherwise. :bow:
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Murasaki wrote on 2012-09-07 16:44
You're very welcome!
My version of SAI is.."portable"...but so far I've found no limitations on it. It seems to have all the features of the normal one.
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Osayidan wrote on 2012-09-07 17:24
The name reminds me of
firesheep.