Interview with Demented, Part II

This is a continuation of OpenArtBox's interview with Demented. Demented is an active member of the GimpTalk forums, and is known as DementedSnake on Deviant Art (http://dementedsnake.deviantart.com/). 

(Continued from Part I)

 

OpenArtBox: Which open source art/design software packages do you
use? What, in particular, do you do with them?

Demented: I use (hold on, let me check...) MyPaint, GIMP, Inkscape, recordMyDesktop, OpenShot, Audacity, and MakeHuman; in that order, from most frequently used to least. Plus there are a few other things not directly used for art, but which help, like Firefox, or the Wacom drivers. I don't use them professionally, although I've thought about if I ever could (Wishful thinking, I know). For example, I see great artists like David Revoy, Ramon Miranda, and our very own Griatch the Scandinavian Tyrant, who all make use of libre software to create amazing works of art. Open source has come a long way in the short time I've known it. I see no reason why it shouldn't be professional grade, besides a shortage of free time or developers. But with the explosion of open source recently, both are increasing exponentially. Shouldn't be long now.

OpenArtBox: What do you like about the open source software that you use? Which features do you find particularly useful?

Demented: It's free, Free, and freedom. I can download as much as my bandwidth will allow, rip out the guts, throw my own version together and turn around and hand out copies. That's the whole point, and the greatest strength of FOSS. It cannot be tamed, confined, restricted, or killed off. It's the best kind of virus. A meme of grand ideals, if you like. I'll put up with the occasional silly bug for that kind of freedom. Plus, being able to read and write to almost any format imaginable has it's perks. My iPod cries if I try to put anything other than MP3s on it. Just sayin'.

OpenArtBox: What proprietary (non-open source) software packages have you used for art/design, and how do they compare to the open source packages you have used?

Demented: I've tried out Photoshop. It's nice, but I'm not crazy about it. It seems too heavy and bloated for my needs. In MyPaint, I can spin my canvas around like a top and not lose a bit of speed. I tried that in Photoshop, but had to enable some video card options first. Then it was just too sluggish to use and lagged when I tried to rotate the canvas. I'm not saying Photoshop is [an inferior product], but if it were open source, that problem would have had five developers giving six resolutions each within a week. FOSS is flexible, man. It's great. But this isn't "hate on commercial software" day. The official Wacom driver package is much nicer than the current open source one. The latter is good, but still a bit rough and unsure of itself. Plus, it doesn't have per-application support or built-in OLED functions yet. Go with what works. For me, that's mostly open source.