As most of you are completely unaware, I am currently in the process of working on a new project, and although I would rather push my personal views on it, I figured some input to ignore would be useful.

So, the question, most simply, would be: Which of the drawing applet(s) on 2draw you like best and why?

In particular, I am talking about the interfaces of Lascaux Sketch, Shi-painter Simple, Shi-painter Advanced, PaintBBS, and OekakiBBS. Each one has a fairly unique interface and apparently appeals to different people.
In your favorite applet, if there is something specific in the interface that you like, let me know.
Likewise, if there are things that confuse you or you do not like in other applets, what are those?

I am also curious as to what graphics programs (Photoshop, Painter, MSPaint, none, etc.) you had used before being introduced to drawing on the web and how you think that influenced your choices on this site.

Thanks for j00r input, and have a good time.

makes sense Marcello. lol

well, for me I like Shi-painter because for one, everthing is to one side and the interface is pretty simple. You see a paintbrush, you get paintbrush. You see brush size you get brush size and so on. I'm a visual person, I don't like guessing what each botton does if it doesn't have a pic on it.

I dunno. as for the other programs, I never really gave Lascaux a chance for one... I'm having a hard time finding how to work is how change my brushes. I don't even know if Lascaux has a watercolor tool..BUT, the thing I do like about Lascaux is the color grid. (and the layer options)

(ohh yeah, photoshop is my baby.)

I like the color boards on Lascaux and the zoom in feature. The blur tool and the opacity scale is useful also. I only wish that the Laxcaux had an animation feature.

personally, never done any regular or computer drawing before i got here. the only applet i really like is lascaux. it is the simplest, for me anyway, to understand and use. still learning, but completely lovin it. awesome program. and ditto on everyting thug said about the tool...specially animation

Much of a GIMP fan myself. there are custom brushes with GIMP(not talking about brush variation); it has a quickmask feature which is extremely helpful in lineart; it has soul, brutha! Lascaux is probably the best applet on here for the interface BUT it does not have smudge or a decent watercolor tool.

the watercolor brush in oekaki shi is VERY cool, I love that thing

mee tooo! that's probably why I use it so much. (watercolors and oil are my fav. medium) anyways. YES! Marcello, I used the eclipse tool... I still don't understand how it's useful. it just darkens as a circle. O_o.
woohoo?

lascaux has a tool similar to what shi-painter calls "watercolor," known as blend. Which is more accurate as to what it does than watercolor... (try corel painter 8 if you want to see some nifty watercolor on a computer).

I was gonna say that you can make Lascaux do watercolor, you can get it to do any medium. I love it, I don't like the others. I don't care if it has animation... the world prefers that I draw without it, no one wants to watch me screw up, undo, redo, screw up, undo.... etc. lol It is definitely the most sophisticated of the applets. I never submitted anything with the others, but I tested them. It only takes a little while to learn lascaux even if you just piddle around with it... it's pretty much moron proof after you figure it out. (Even though this moron hasn't found everything it will do yet) So... you aren't considering doing away with Lascaux, are you? NOOOOO? text abuse! NOOOOOO! I will hate you if you do!

i like Shi-painter Advanced the best as i find it easy to use and i like all its tools... lascaux is also ok, i like its layers option and the blend tool... i havent used any other graphics programs b4...

I never did any real offline (except with the basic paint program). I was used to an oekakibbs ( I dont know why, but I just cannot figure out how to use paint..all that multipurpose button stuff.. I cant remember).. I like lascaux alot.. the one tool I would like from oekaki is that smudge tool.. I know the blur , the blend , and opacity can achieve the same sort of thing..but thats a one step tool , if you want to shade ..its quick and easy... I do miss that at times..

Lascaux Features that I like: Nice Simple Layout, Zoom feature, The Caligraphy Brush (would be better if you could change the size of it), loads of layers, The board of all the colours. I mainly use Lascaux now.
I use Lascaux when I want to use lot's of layers, usualy un-cartoon stuff. Being able to rename the layers would be good. An example of when i need named layers: I normally start on a black background, and then on other layers I paint on really pale colours. When the colours are pale I cant bloody see em on the thumbnail of the layer! So I have to go through each one and make it invisible and then back visable again. How anoying.
I really want to be able to download an animation, so a feature that does that would be good... It would be hella useful in my Art A Level.
I hate the floating windows idea in Shi-Painter.
I really like the pen tool in Shi-Painter.
I really don't like the Burn and Dodge tools in Lascaux.
I liked making Pixel drawings in Paint before I came here :D.
hmm...

(would be better if you could change the size of it)

Erm, you can... if by caligraphy you mean the elliptical brush. In the little brush preview where you change the size try messing with holding different combinations of ctrl,shift,alt to change the shape/size.

Animation support as I have mentioned previously is about 80% complete, I just have never gotten around to finishing it (there are lots of little annoying bugs and whatnot that make it difficult).

I really don't like the Burn and Dodge tools in Lascaux.

Do you like them in something else?

smudge... there are two reasons I didn't include that in lascaux, 1) being related to something from 2draw v1—that is, basically all the n00bs decided to post their "finger paint" drawings using the smudge tool—yea, it was pretty bad, and considering the smudge tool isn't really super necessary, I left it out. 2) I have no idea how to write a smudge tool, and putting that kind of tool into lascaux would be a pain in the ass.

Yea the burn and dodge tools in Shi are good. :)

Ahh I can see why you would leave smudge out... I hadn't considered the fingerpainters...

fin: well, perhaps this tip will make you like it better: color affects burn/dodge.

For the basic tests, try setting the color to near white, grey, and near black, that will give you essentially the same thing as 'hilights', 'midtones', and 'shadows' in Photoshop's burn/dodge.

Those three stages really help when using the tool, but even better is to get the full greyscale range.

If you really want to get pro with the tool, then you can start experimenting with how color affects dodge/burn (it lets you selectively brighten different colors and other nifty stuffs).

[rant]I have tried out every single applet in 2draw, most of the time upgrading to a new applet every time I felt i was doing the same thing over and over (not improving) with one applet. I personally prefer lascaux, because it has lots of many nifty tol, it has a simple built in help system, and basically everything one could need :)

Oekaki shi painter has a pen tool, which in my opinion is very messy, though easy to use, and has a simple interface, but the pop up window idea is annoying, and when you float the applet, which is a routinary thing for me, there are little "move marks" on it, and you have to click undo and redo for them to go away. The layers system in shi paintah sux but the watercolor system is way better, which I have not seen in lascaux.

I know how to use the blend tool in lascaux, but stil, it is no match to shi's watercolor system. PaintBBS and OekakiBBS just plain sux0rz so I have nothing to say about them.

Before I found 2draw (don't ask me how I found it because I don't remember), I had visited othr sites which required previously drawn picture for the mods to judge it and decide if they will let you in or not, and drew prctice drawings in the Windows built in paint sytem. I practiced until I drew a fairly good one and was prepared to send it in. I found 2draw and was relieved I didn't have to send anything in, beause I had no previous online drawing experience at all.[/rant]

We should all be grateful that marcello has created such a wonderful site for all of us to enjoy, and all for free. So thank j00.

P.S. 'Cello, I remember Lascaux used to have animation in 2draw v.1, what happened to it?

It never had animation in v1.

Also, lascaux can get to the level of shipainter watercolor if you tweak flow and brush style.

Um..."free" is subjective.. Marcello does it for no pay..but its costing.. remember to contribute if you are able to.. !

Hmm....weird. Thought it did. Guess not. Maybe the watercolor thing is due t my lack of patience while carefully slecting opacity and flow levels. Free....well, I'd donate if I were old enough to, I really would. When will the 2draw tshirts be out? I'd like to buy one.

In shi, the easiest way to get rid of the annoying marks is to choose the float feature.

First off, Marcello, this site is the best out there of its kind (actually, it's one of a kind) and although shi-painter has some features that I loved, mainly the watercolor and pen, I'm still experimenting with lascaux and finding that it's definitely the best of any of the applets. I just tried your tip on the brush sizes and found that lascaux has way more than shi-painter....thanx.

The color boards on lascaux are a big favorite because when I need a certain color, they're easier to find.
The location of the tools is fine to me, as I don't use a lot of layers yet. I don't 'go over to that side of the board too much.

There are a couple of problems that 'I' have though:

One...I have Adobe photoshop LE, that came with my pen and tablet and it has a feature that I haven't found on lascaux but shi-painter has it too...the option to erase the whole layer with one click of a button that you're working on without deleting that layer. Is there a way to erase the layer and not have to delete it, on lascaux?

Two...How the heck do you work that friggen wand tool? I can't get it to undo for the longest time...annoying.

My favorite is Paintbbs. It doesn't have any features that set it apart, it just gets the job done. All I need is a pencil and a watercolor tool, and I don't need anything else.

From this, you can guess why I do not prefer Lascaux. :)

Shi-Painter is alright, but it's just a modified version of Paintbbs. I like Shi-Painter because it has that nifty mosaic feature. And it's good for pissing off my furry pr0n fans. :D

let me repeat the bit about interface. I'm not talking about the actual tools themselves, but how you access them, how you use them, their location and so on.

My previos 2d digital experience is basically just Photoshop. I had no real pure digital drawings though, all of them were scans because I figured coming up with something good with a mouse wasn't worth it. I'm fairly experienced with it but have only done a few low level designs and some album covers and stuff.

After coming to this site Lascaux is definetly the applet most like photoshop in that it has good layer support period. As said before, a way to label layers would be ideal. The annoying bugs in Lascaus include not being able to use AA with Flow turned down on the brush and that mysterious bug that happens once in a blue moon that prevents you from drawing. Other than that, I can pretty much do anything I can think of using a combination of layers, blending modes, and messing with the brush. The tools that I use are just the normal "freehand stroke", the line tool, the fill tool, the font tool once in awhile, and the move tool. Since the selection stuff isn't too great, I don't use it and I often don't find myself ever needing anything else. I don't use blur, sharpen, dodge or burn.

Lascaux does however suffer from a kinda clumsy interface with the tools scattered a bit imo, although I supposed I've gotten use to it. For instance, halftone options are on the left side away from the brush tool, intuitively it should be on the right since it does effect the brush. Also I feel that the brush area has so many options that it's probably not intuitive at all to a beginner. There is also nothing really explaining what the shortcut keys are (ctrl, alt, shift) although it does say that you can "fine tune" in the description.

I have no experience with the other applets on this site because of lack of real layer support, it's just the way I work.

Some extra features that I might use would be an automatic gradient color palette, ie you give it two colors and you get a palette with some gradients inbetween. Some savable brushes palette would be nice, preferably something that can hold like 10 brushes. For that matter a savable color palette for an image could be nice too. Another thing that I sometimes find myself needing is a way to merge visable layers or linked layers like in photoshop without screwing up the blending modes between them. Also it would be nice to have more than one active color (2 or 3) and be able to switch between them with a hotkey.

Hrm... I guess I could post more ideas later, that's all for now that I can think of.

i'm partial to lasaux, and i like it cuz it's the most similar to photoshop (photoshop is my lover ^___^). meh...the other ones are to buggy for me. the do have some nice features (like tones...i can't remember which program that is though), but the pros are outweighed by the cons.

tappie: lascaux has tones, try the slider over on the leftside under "Halftone"

I personally like Lascaux. It feels (at least to me) a lot like Photoshop. The only thing that I miss(and maybe you have already gone over this earlier is that I wish the objects drawn on the layers were able to be scaleable like with Photoshop's transform tools. Also looking forward to the Lascaux documentation.

lascaux..... alll the way!

I like oekaki shi painter is my favorite. I like how you can change the oppacity with the pen tool. I also like the dodge/burn tool. (not for shading realy, just for the cool affect.)

Meh, I love paintbbs. I agree with FoR.
lol... I guess most people have ditched it by now.

Lascaux killz shi and pbbs in lay out.... Seeing as i hate clicking the button to get to water colour than in my hate i over click it and have to do it again ><;; and no i dont think i'm impatient!!! but to keep this short shi and pbbs is better cuz it takes those three seconds less to load. XD