Art Software Review - CLIP STUDIO PAINT

WEEK 2

Art Software Review - Clip Studio Paint

Hey there, everybody! This week I'm gonna follow up my artist-oriented tablet-review of last week with a review for my favorite digital illustration program: Clip Studio Paint.

This program was already featured in plain sight in last week's Huion Kamvas 16 review, as it was the very program that I had pulled up on the screen. Since all I had used it for in those photos was one photo of a blank canvas and one VERY quick 2-minute sketch, I'll take the opportunity this week to highlight some of the great things about CSP and exactly why this is the program I use (almost) every day.

To begin with, Clip Studio at its base is a very powerful and professional program. There are canvas presets that allow for simple illustration canvases, presets for professionally-configured comic pages, and animation files. Once a user has opened one of these, they are met with an intuitive interface that offers a fantastically broad range of tools, pens and brushes, enabling just about any visual style that an artist would wish to pursue. Plus, it has a strong community of user-created resources that help in any number of ways (3D pose models, brushes/materials, etc.). Below is a photo of such a menu, with the folder for my own downloaded community brushes selected and opened.

The exact features that you're able to access, unfortunately, depend on which version of the program you decide to put money toward. There are two paid versions of CSP (plus one cut-down free trial version), which are the PRO and EX versions. Though the PRO version comes as feature-rich in its own right, there is a swathe of smaller tools and a few important ones that only come from the more expensive EX version; only the EX version, for instance, lets you create animations with no limit on frames, as the PRO version has a 12-frame cap on animations. If there are any such features that you would consider an essential aspect of your ideal art program, this is something to be considered.

All that said, the PRO version of CSP can be bought at any time for $50. This is on par with the popular program PaintTool SAI, though Clip Studio has the distinct advantage of (relatively) frequent sales, in which it can be bought for only $25--an excellent deal by all measures. Plus, if you feel like upgrading to the EX version at any point, like I have, you can pay reduced price for it if you've already got a PRO license.

I fell in love with Clip Studio Paint ever since I first snagged it years and years ago, and I will recommend it from now till the end of time. Thanks for reading!