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Newgrounds Wiki: Art Resources

Raster Based Art Software


Photopea - A free, web based tool that works very much like Photoshop.


Autodesk Sketchbook - Free tool for quick sketches or fully finished artwork!


FireAlpaca - Free digital painting software.


Clip Studio Paint - Popular among artists, CSP has a free trial and costs $49.99, with frequent sales.


Adobe Photoshop- Requires Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Photoshop may be all you ever need. You can paint, edit images, draw sprites and much more.


Gimp - Free alternative to Photoshop.


Krita - Free sketching and painting program for concept art, texture or matte painting, illustrations and comics.


Paint.NET - Free, open source paint program that @Wolod swears by.


Corel Painter - If you are hardcore into painting, Painter will give you some features Photoshop lacks ($399).


Art Rage - A good $25 alternative for making fine art pieces.


GraphicsGale - Free Pixel Art software.


Pyxel Edit - $9 pixel art editor designed to make it fun and easy to make tilesets, levels and animations.


Aseprite - $15 animated sprite editor and pixel tool.


Vector Based Art Software


Adobe Illustrator - $599, Free 30 Day Trial. Illustrator is preferred if you are drawing in vector format. You can import vector art originally generated in Flash, which is handy if you want to put something on a t-shirt.


Inkscape - Free and open source software vector graphics editor. Its goal is to implement full support for the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 standard.


Sumo Paint - Free browser based drawing program.


3D Art Software


Blender - Free, used in The Secret of Kells.


Maya - $3495 (Free Trial), used in Ice Age and James Cameron's Avatar.


3D Studio Max - $3495 (Free Trial), used in I-Robot and X-Men.


Modo - $995, used in District 9.


ZBrush - $595 (Free Trial), for modeling only, no animation. Good for intuitively painting on textures and color.


Mudbox - $745 (Free Trial), for modeling only, no animation. Good for intuitively painting on textures and color.


Swift3D - $249, allows you to create and/or animate 3D objects and export for Flash. We recommend creating your initial models with alternative software.


Other Art Software


Apophysis - A free 3-D fractal program that can also be used for animating dynamic fractals.


Drawing Tablets


We recommend Wacom tablets, the Intuos Draw is $80 and the best seller on Amazon for beginners, or the Cintiq if you are totally pro. There's a bunch in the middle, too.


Tutorials


Also see our Art Tutorials!


Special thanks to @Art101 for organizing a number of these software suggestions!