Clip Studio Paint vs Drawpile

Clip Studio Paint is a digital art app for making illustrations, comics, webtoons, and animations. Its customizable brushes are designed to evoke traditional materials, and adjustable 3D models can serve as references for drawing characters and backgrounds. Comic tools include panel frames, speech balloons, text, effect lines, screentones, and multi-page project management. Animation features include a light table and onion-skin tools; PRO supports simple animation up to 24 frames, while EX includes full-length animation tools. Monthly and annual plans include 10GB of cloud data, with an option to add storage. Clip Studio Assets offers downloadable brushes and other materials, and GOLD can be used to buy materials there. Projects can be saved in compatible and industry-standard file formats. The app is listed for Android, iOS, macOS, web, and Windows; the download page also lists Chromebook. PRO is described for concept artists, illustrators, and designers; EX for comic and manga artists and animators. PRO monthly plans start at US$0.99/month and EX at US$2.49/month.

Drawpile is a drawing, painting, sketching and animation app for people working together on one canvas, with offline use also available. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and the web; on iPhone and iPad, the browser version works, but there is no native iOS app. Its toolkit includes more than 200 built-in brushes, several brush engines, a brush editor and stroke stabilization. Layers and layer groups support blend modes, alpha preserve, clipping groups, masking and alpha lock. Animation tools include a timeline and onion skins. Canvases can be saved as OpenRaster or PSD, and images can be pasted from files or other programs. Users can join official community servers without arranging their own infrastructure, or operate a server themselves. External authentication can let users access potentially untrusted third-party servers without sharing their password with those servers. Drawpile says it does not transfer information to other networked systems unless a user or operator specifically requests it. The free plan costs nothing.