December 15th, 2006
Corel Painter 9.5
Finally actually bought a piece of software. 27 years of age, using computers for more than half my life and never actually bought any legit programmes. I’ve bought tampons more than I’ve bought software. (twice)
I’ve been a Corel nut since I was 15, my Da bought version 3 as he made the move from handmade posters and ads to digital. Poncho led the way in showing me what could be done to my crappy drawings and I was converted. My over-reliance on computers to make comics was at its peak around 2001 and since then I tried reducing the amount of screen time.
Last year I got the Corel Painter 9 demo and was completely dumbfounded by it. The versatility and realness is just mad, Jesus just check out this lad, all done in Painter. I let it slip and I forgot all about it till 2 months ago when I needed a copy of Corel Draw for a loaned laptop for this gay presentation thing in my day job, on the Corel site I saw the Corel 9.5 free trial and grabbed it. You get 60 days to dick around with it which is more than enough time to convince you. For the 60 days I messed around with it and inked around 6 pages , you get used to drawing on screen so quick it’s scary.
What pushed me over the edge was Alex Maleev’s Daredevil comic which he does completely digitally with Painter. For the first time I went about pricing software instead of just stealing it, like when you download a great album and feel guilty about it I reasoned that those Princes in Corel deserve the cash and the money would go back into developing the next version. I reckoned it’d be 500-800 clams and was hopefully going to con my boss into buying it for me. I was shocked to see that you can buy Corel Painter 9.5 for UK£150. It arrived yesterday (just at day 59 of my 60 days trial)
The first thing I noticed about the packaging and enclosed literature was the informalness, maybe contrived but the relaxed tone of the ringbound guide is the furthest thing from the usual cold instruction manuals you get. It’s just great. In conjuction with a Wacom you can do ANYTHING. So go get the free download here
