14 DAY TRIAL // Starting a new review is always easy, hard, the same yet different every time, and with other tasks is pretty much the same thing. Nowadays, you have to learn new things from time to time just to keep up with the world around you. Leaving aside the necessary things like using credit cards, online management tools, new functions offered by the latest cell phones and more, everybody has - or should have - a hobby or even more than just one.
Digital painting became a real interesting occupation once the first programs dedicated to it were released. Its advantages over traditional painting are the ability to use layers which are developed independently, unlimited undo and redo operations for the brush strokes and other operations performed or virtual color palettes consisting of millions of colors, and even more.
Today's digital painting program is called TwistedBrush and comes as a trial version free to use for 21 days. The installation kit has 11MB and the setup process is a piece of cake. Once you finish downloading and installing the program, this trip can start.
Before everything, I have to tell you a few things about the interface of this program. When starting it for the first time, TwistedBrush will display a welcome screen that can help you find your way through its interface. This screen acts like a basic help tool and can be quite useful for intermediate users, but beginners won't get only quick hints on how to perform jobs using this program, without many details, but more specific indications.
The program's workspace has a dusty look, the item that I don't like at all being the black and white icons. Come on, guys, was it so hard to draw some colored, nice icons for the toolbar? Leaving the menu bar and the toolbar behind, the element that takes up most space on the interface is the drawing area, having a tool control panel to its left.
In the left panel you can take advantage of the paper, brush and color selection tools, adjust settings for the currently selected brush, choose your color from the easily accessible color palettes, adjust it or open the layers panel.
Until I start talking about the amazing things that can be done with TwistedBrush, I will tell you about how are your documents organized.
This program is designed around the concept of a sketchbook. When you start the program for the first time, after closing the welcome screen, it won't ask you to create a new file or something like that, but take you to the first page of your first book instead, and all you have to do is start drawing.
You don't have to worry about the number of the sketchbooks you create, because the program's help file states that this is unlimited, and I have no reason to say it's otherwise. Each sketchbook can have up to a hundred pages, and you can make them all have the same size or use different dimensions for each page.
Now let's get to the drawing part. What can we use to do it? The drawing tools basically orbit around the painting brush and the huge amount of presets available. How many presets? You can have six sets opened at a time, each one having nine brushes shortcuts, but those can be chosen from the hundreds available in the built in collection. Each brush has its own settings that can be adjusted, while saving and loading your own brush (and other tools) presets can be done easily, using the Edit ArtSet tool, available in the ArtSets menu.
Right next to the brushes, when talking about power and impact on an image, we have the filters. I was surprised in a pleasant way to find an extremely rich filter collection in TwistedBrush. Apart from the usual filters that can be found in most image editors, starting with the artistic ones and ending with the stylize set; this program has also four special items in this area.
The backgrounds set, the two texturizers and the displacement bump set allow you to add surface effects to your active layer. Of course that each tool from these sets has a lot of available presets, so playing with this program should be a real pleasure for everybody, once the basics have been understood.
Most tools that you can think of are here, and the only drawback is that some of them don't have keyboard shortcuts assigned and their use is sometimes different than it's usual with other graphics programs (the text tool, for example, although very easy to use, gave me the trouble of my life until I managed to use it the right way).
Before I go, I have to point out one more interesting feature, the scripts. The TwistedBrush scripts are the equivalent to the Photoshop's actions, and this says it all - they are a great way to automate and fasten your workflow, and can also be used to teach other people your digital painting techniques.
I will jump to the conclusions now, and I hope that you will get TwistedBrush and give it a spin in the end, because it won't waste your time at all.
The Good
This program is small, easy enough to use for most of us, and the built in content is extremely rich. It can load and save layered PSD and TIFF files, and everything comes for an extremely competitive price that you'll have to pay if you want to continue using it after the trial period. The last thing that needs to be mentioned here is that it uses layers, and I am sure that you'll find at least twice more goodies than I did!
The Bad
First bad thing that hit me was that TwistedBrush has a lot of keyboard shortcuts missing, which takes away a lot of the speed that can be achieved using them. The help contents is insufficient, at least, since "absent" would be too rough. Most of the interface should be polished to make it look like a program from this century, and the speed could be improved, I am sure of that.
The Truth
No matter the drawbacks, I love this "twisted" program! The trial version can be used successfully to learn using the full program, since it has no limitations, you can even export your work, without any watermarks or resolution limits!
Pixarra TwistedBrush is on the right path, but still has to work on some areas to become an excellent program. Let's help it achieve that, use it without any hesitation, you can become a talented digital painter in no time!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
