Yes, we are in contact with some artists who don’t hesitate to tell us what they need, and we’ll, for instance, visit the blender studios this Thursday to see real artists engaged in real work. Peter was insistent we shouldn’t just listen to one artist telling us what he needs, but to extrapolate to the real, underlying, shared need for particular types of work. We’ll have a lot of learning to do, but the energy this focus gives me is exhilarating!

As for the input, yes — we’re heavily focussed on tablet input. Most Krita developers have access to tablets, and for painting, it really is the way to go.

Yes, it’s very good statement

Best wishes

As for the high-end question, we have a set of real artists that we want to turn into full KDE users, but when we say “high-end” we means people who work 20 to 30 hours a week with Krita. As for the research on artists, for a while we have being working with a few artists that compile Krita/trunk on a regular basis to have early feedback on our changes, we would like to have more of them, and of course to be able to observe them if possible.

When it comes to delivrable, we have decided to stop to files, so no printing (other than desktop, no industrial painting). And Krita should be able to work with mouse and tablet.

Finally, we are new to that, not trained in those area, and do not expect a revolution, but evolution.

I can only hope that you start the research, then the design as opposed to diving back immediately into code.

The few projects in our culture that make the baby steps in the right direction often just stop and start repeating the very same mistakes.

Who is a “high-end painter” as defined in the vision? Are there examples to help flesh out the vision and make it clear to involved participants?

What are the needs of the audience? Are your needs based on research across several of those artists or worse, general guesses and conjecture? Is it possible to have the team watch a selection of the artists during work?

What role does the application play in the audience’s production pipeline? What deliveriables are common? What formats require consideration? Does linear colour play a role for output? For uptake?

What is the preferred input and output context of the intended audience? If it is a tablet for input, are there design decisions that could be made that more greatly add to the workflow? What if those decisions detract from alternate forms of input such as mice?

I sincerely hope the Krita team can set a benchmark for application design. There are complex and difficult decisions to be made. May you have the strength and persistence of vision to see them through and provide a compelling choice to the intended audience.

For me, the most needed features for concept-art & painted textures are :
- ability to change the diameter/scaling of bitmap brushes.
- bitmap brush tip creation (the workflow would be : paint something, select it, menu>add to brush tips).