I’ve been thinking recently that, maybe instead of jumping back and forth between my favorite drawing apps, it’s time to start using each app for what it’s best at. For example, the artist and animator Yoneyama Mai, whom I wrote about when Netflix released the video of her sit down with Pluto manga creator Urasawa Naoki, can be seen in episode 101 of Drawing with Wacom, depicted above, using both Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop to complete her work. This makes me think back to the nineties, and the early days of computer generated VFX, when we were always looking for that one tool that had it all, and could do it all, but things didn’t quite work out that way.

It’s pretty common, in VFX these days, for artists to use many different tools to achieve a single shot. For instance, if one were bringing a creature to life, the process would very likely start in the popular sculpting tool ZBrush. This tool can let an artist sculpt the most detailed monsters, armor, characters and even difficult mechanical pieces. While this tool also contains everything one might need to put UV coordinates on their model, to allow for painting on, and adding texture to, the monster, almost no one does this. Most workflows use the popular painting app Substance Painter.

Substance Painter is a dedicated painting and texturing app. It is devoted primarily to doing that one thing, and being the best at it, which is probably it is the most widely used. Foundry has a similar app called Mari, and some artists still swear by 3DCoat, but Substance is the clear champion in this arena. The point, though, is that even though ZBrush can do all these things, an app dedicated to doing only that may be the wiser choice. (For studios, anyway, because they can afford it.) The same can be said for lighting and rendering your cool monster. ZBrush has everything one might need to add lights and produce a great render of your object, but, back in day, many ZBrush artists used an external rendering tool like Keyshot. ZBrush had a bridge that allowed users to send everything to Keyshot without losing any data. These days, all tools can import and manage ZBrush file information, so people use Marmoset Toolbag, Maya or even Blender.

When we’re talking about bringing a character to life, this means rigging the character, or adding bones. If the tool is advanced enough, this can even mean muscles and skin. ZBrush has none of these things. It is not an animation app. In the good ol’ days, Soft Image, used on Jurassic Park, was the de facto leader in this field, but it has, since, been bought by Autodesk, stripped for parts, and those tools folded into their flagship apps, Maya, which they also bought, and 3DS Max. If you’re creating a character like The Hulk, high level animation tools are an absolute must.

If your monster is wearing any kind of clothing, there are tools dedicated to just that as well. Enter Marvelous Designer, the Korean made, cloth simulation software that began life as a tool for the fashion industry, but eventually became the industry standard for dressing CG characters for games, animation and film. I absolutely loved this tool, and worked hard to push it while teamed with the reseller in Shanghai. Some of my work is even featured in their, I think, 2020 demo reel. There are, of course, other tools that do cloth simulation, but an app dedicated to it, that started life as a tool to make real clothes for the real world, will probably have a leg up.

Now, if your monster is breaking down a wall to escape a burning building, there is one tool that immediately comes to mind for achieving this. That tool is Houdini. When it comes to breaking things, and doing realistic water, fire, smoke and explosions, there is no substitute. This is the tool that I believe allows shows like Alice in Borderland, The Umbrella Academy, Halo and others to do VFX previously reserved for only the largest Hollywood blockbusters.

Interestingly, Houdini can actually do everything written about above. From start to finish, from creating your character, painting and texturing it, rigging it when bones, muscles and skin, simulating clothing for the creature, animation, all of it. That’s just not how the industry works though. Some dedicated tools are bound to be better at doing those individual things. Large studios, with an incredible amount of specialized manpower, will opt to use the tool that is the best for each particular task.

I think I need to start working along these lines. There are things I love about Procreate, and there are things Clip Studio Paint is simply better at, even if it is harder to use. It may be time to seriously consider just using both of them, rather than constantly jumping back and forth.