Krita and MyPaint: differences between their goals

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Sunday 11 April 2010, silvio grosso wrote:
> Hello Folks,
> 
> Lately I have been using MyPaint 0.8.2 version (on Windows xp home
> edition). To make it short, I have been wondering what are the main
> differences between MyPaint and Krita?

We have been discussing that in Deventer before. Basically, looking at our 
vision statement and Maxy's statements about what he want to be MyPaint might 
be the easiest way to figure out the difference:

Krita:

"Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end–to–end 
solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters."

"Fields of painting that Krita explicitly supports are concept art, creation 
of comics and textures for rendering."

"Modelled on existing real-world painting materials and workflows, Krita 
supports creative working by getting out of the way and with snappy response."

MyPaint:

"MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital 
painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on 
your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you 
need it."

So, the way I see it, MyPaint doesn't try to facilitate the whole process from 
sketch to finished file, but rather one phase in the artistic process. Krita 
has a fixed size canvas, MyPaint an infinite canvas (though I'm jealous of 
that feature, and want it, too!). Krita doesn't mind showing the user 
complexity (as long as it's well designed and usable), MyPaint goes for the 
bare-canvas style -- which is great as well. MyPaint doesn't care about the 
traditional painter's workflow, nor about brushes that reproduce traditional 
media effects -- Krita does that explicitly (though we're reproducing the 
effect, not the physics!)

I love and respect MyPaint -- wait, that's not a difference :-)

Maxy? I know you're on this mailing list -- feel free to chip in with more, or 
with corrections :-).

> Quite probably, this is a too
> generic question. I am aware of that :-) On the whole, in my opinion,
> Krita has much more tools than MyPaint. It suffices to take a look at both
> their GUI to grasp that :-)
> Unfortunately, what I can't really figure it out, is the strenght of both
> softwares regarding the painting. In other words, what are the goals for
> both softwares regarding the painting department?

Krita wants to support digital painting in all phases, sketching, inking, 
coloring, painting proper. 
 
> At present, it is difficult to understand their different features and
> strenghts because of the lack of documentation for both softwares :-( On
> the whole, it seems to me that, for instance, Krita has currently 2 brush
> engines whereas Paint has "only" one (but, maybe, I am completely wrong).

MyPaint has one brush engine, Krita close to a dozen, and I'm still working on 
integrating MyPaint's brush engine in Krita, as well.

> For both sofwares there a lot of new features which have been working out
> lately :-) When the brushes of MyPaint will be fully compatible on Krita
> one user might start a painting with MyPaint and finish it with Krita and
> vice versa. As a consequence, BOTH softwares are useful. Thus, my question
> is not which one is the "better" one :-) What I am trying hard to
> understand is, whether or not, one software is more "useful" than the
> other one regarding some ways of painting?

I think most real artists will have three or more apps in their toolbox: 
Krita, MyPaint, Gimp. Personally, as long as our vision for sketching isn't 
implemented yet, I'd start doodling in MyPaint, using the infinite canvas so I 
don't run out of space. I might then continue in Krita to carefully finish one 
part of my sketch. I might turn to Gimp for printing.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org