Back in the day, there was a nice free bit of experimental software called Al.chemy, aka Alchemy, which recalled the good ol’ days of Processing and Kai’s tools. Alchemy was intended for concept and character doodlers in the game and sci-fi concepts space, who work with silhouettes first. When they find a silhouette that “reads” really well at its edges, then they paint in details. It worked well. It’s still available for free for Windows, Mac and Linux, though (apart from a Linux fix in 2014) development ceased in 2010.
However it’s good to see that there’s now a developed equivalent to Al.chemy that’s built right into the open source Krita 4.0 software. Which, as many will know, is now a very fine painting and inking software and a direct rival to Sketchbook Pro and (to an extent) Inkscape. And it’s still roaring ahead with its development.
Here are the details of the “Shape Brush Engine” in Krita. Among the many luscious brushes that ship with Krita, it may be one that many will have overlooked in testing. It could be worth a second look. At present it doesn’t seem to be otherwise well documented, and I failed to find any video-demo for it.
In 2013 Ivan Yossi also made a set of “pull shape” brushes for Krita, in emulation of Al.chemy, which are still available free. Getting old brushes into the new Krita 4.0 is not easy, but they may be useful to some.