Feature Requests/Suggestions for Artrage 5

[CMDesign]

Here are some requests and suggestions I have for Artrage 5. These are some things I was really hoping to see when it comes out.

First off Gravity, Canvas Tilt, and RUNS!! I think we can all appreciate some runs in our artwork. This is something I have felt needed to be in Artrage a long time ago. Without being able to make runs we are missing a very big factor that comes into play when painting in real life. I personally love work that has lots of runs and splatters that work well with the image.. Alex Pardee is a wonderful example of someone who incorporates runs and splatters in a beautiful way. Also if the size, quantity, and length of the runs was affected by the thickness of the paints being used.. that would be amazing. For instance fewer, thick, short runs for oil.. and many thin long runs for watercolor.

There are a couple of different things that I do in real life to make runs and splatters. one way is to take spray bottle with some water and spray it onto ink or paint and then it will of course cause extra thin opaque runny runs. Also air. I like to take either my air brush and just use the are to push runs where I want them to go and cause them to make that awesome spiderweb effect. Then I also will just use a straw and blow through it. So with the above mentioned feature/mechanic.. this would be an excellent tool to add in with it.

A way to splatter paints.. maybe add some type of brush sling mechanic that allows you to create splatters in a somewhat controlled manner. And I of course mean dynamic splatters that show the arc at which they were thrown and splashed out at the right angles and shapes in relation to how they hit the canvas.

Better Watercolor bleed and more realistic dry times.. When painting with watercolors in real life they are very thin and have a tendency to bleed out into the cracks and crevices of the canvas just a little bit. Also when you have one color on the canvas that is still very wet, and you drag another color into it, the color bleeds out in a very liquidy wonderful way that gives it that signature look that makes it obvious that it is watercolor. Currently the watercolor brush in artrage doesn't bleed that well and it doesn't represent how it mixes with other colors very well at all... not realistically anyways. At the moment the color mixing is too controlled. It needs to be a lot looser, The colors should swirl around each other (kind of hard to explain without showing what I mean) and stretch on their own a little bit. Not just stop where you put them.

Double dipping your brush... a neat little trick to do when painting in real life is dip half of your brush into one color then the other half in another color. When you paint it automatically blends it for you.. which makes it a super nice method for doing things like roses, tree trunks, or whatever.

burn/dodge/glow tool

Not sure if this one will be included in Artrage 5 or not. Haven't seen anything about it.. But custom erasers!

This one is hard to explain... Think of the ruler, elipse, and french curve tools in Sketchbook Pro. A tool thats almost identical but allows you to create your own curves. I find myself wanting a tool like that pretty frequently. I feel in sketchbook the french curve tool is almost useless as its just dumb trying to find the perfect curve to fit your artwork.. instead I should be able to easily create/manipulate that curve with ease. And speaking of Elipse tools.. Artrage needs one. Currently there is no easy way to make an empty circle with a clean pencil thin line. The only way I know to do that is to take 2 circle stencils, invert one and place one inside the other and size them to what you want. This is just way more of a pain than it needs to be.

Rotate the grid and in a controlled way to where you can easily rotate it another direction and put it back exactly to where it was before you moved it. I was just recently working on a piece where I needed perfectly spaced, perfectly straight diagonal lines at different lengths and widths being able to rotate the grid and use snap to grid would have made this a breeze.

I saw someone else mention this in another post but I'll go ahead and add my voice to theirs.. stencils in symmetry... This is an issue that I run into often. Trying to use a stencil in symmetry mode.. its SOOO annoying that the mirrored portion doesn't acknowledge that you have a stencil in use. Actually just earlier this evening i was working on a very geometric piece where perfect shapes and distances were very important. So both stencils and symmetry were of great use.. I was having to place 2 stencils on both sides of the screen and kept having to readjust to get them placed in just the right area.

And sorry if any of these are already included. I am just going off of what the announcement page says.



That,s all I've got for now.