-Repost from Deviantart, please don't mind the grammar and vocabulary mistakes, was written late at night.-
(Sounds like a sale's pitch, ahaha)
From the creators of Manga/Comic Studio and Retas!Pro we finally have an illustration and drawing program created by one of Japan's most renowned companies for designing niche products for cartooning, comic creation and animation. They take it to the next step with IllustStudio 1.0.6, combining mostly elements of Paint Tool Sai, meshing vector line manipulation with raster, overall illustration with some picture/image manipulation of some aspects of Photoshop and Illustrator, 3-D models, etc. However, it's limiting to those who know the full extent of Photoshop's power, because of what this is marketed toward.
It harbors in it's illustration manipulation, basically how to control the line and changing them to suit your needs almost flawlessly. Remember how you could control the thickness of a line by merely increasing the pressure on a certain point? What about how you wish that coloring in base hues for simple cartoons could be more efficient? And scaling images to your needs without loss of quality? Needed a template to trace on for practice? Need perspective lines and speed lines? How about the smooth blending from Paint Tool Sai? All this and hopefully more is included in this first release. To learn more, look at the videos provided in this link:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.illuststudio.net/&ei=DZaESrz9GIitlAe-zsnABQ&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DIllust%2BStudio%26hl%3DenThere is definitely some cons, if you are looking for full PS power, but like I said, mainly a niche produce for cartooning/anime artwork, as most Japanese software is geared for. Also, a lot of shortcuts, but naturally you use what you want of it. The sheer power and what it can do is what makes this such a feature rich application, combining what many small scale programs like OpenCanvas, Paint Tool Sai, NekoPaint, and 4thPaint among others. I'm hoping in the next releases more complex brushes will be added, but I'm sure you can import your own and all.
To download the install you need to sign up onto that Clip program, however, from what I've heard it doesn't run on anything but Japanese operating systems. Do you think running AppLocale would be sufficient, changing the unicodes? Also, I get stuck during installation when it wants to make a path in the settings. If any of you can figure out it, please drop me a line.
Anyway, just trying to start spreading new software around. Hopefully it will be picked up by an English supplier like Manga Studio and Retas!Pro, so, for now, have a look see. c:
