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Been inactive due to busy-ness.
12 years ago
General
I've been stuck running around and doing things.
One of them pertains to a current side-job fiasco involving Manga Studio 5 and the new English release of Clip Studio Paint.
Basically, Celsys is a Japanese company that developed Clip Studio Paint, Illustudio, etc. Up until recently, they contracted with SmithMicro to publish their software in the west. SmithMicro repackaged Clip Studio Paint as Manga Studio 5 and released it as such.
I think only six months have passed between the release of MS5 and now, and in that time, SmithMicro did a really good job of getting resources together, getting exposure and highlighting artists for the sake of MS5. What happens? Celsys cuts out the middle-man and takes digital publishing by themselves. For a new customer, this is great, because Celsys is selling ClipStudioPaint Pro (or Manga Studio 5 vanilla) for 50 dollars. 20 bucks off, basically.
For me, not so good. Besides the whole uncertain future of MS5 as a supported product, I've been spending most of my time promoting MS5 in person. I literally just sold a guy on the program two days ago before I knew about the price cut. I feel freaking stupid. To top it all off, I have to switch from promoting MS5 to CSP simply because the price difference is so vast between identical programs. I have to restart what I've been working on for the last couple months.
That and as far as beginning digital artists go, MS5/CSP is so much more economical and enjoyable than Photoshop. Heck, at this point, it's actually cheaper than PaintToolSAI. Celsys made the giant killer, but there's a lot of community fragmentation because of different names and whatnot. I mean, think of it from a tag perspective: Photoshop has one tag, SAI has one tag, MS5/CSP has two. When you're roaming through tumblr, you have a 50% smaller chance of running into something relevant based on how diligent content producers are with tagging.
I met with the SmithMicro team and they tried really freaking hard to make their presence known. Setting up shop at conventions is not cheap and it does make a difference. I really feel bad for the people behind the English side of it all, because they got undercut by their own developer and, well, I'm sure their job certainty is everything but certain at this point.
Either way, good news for people on the fence about MS5/CSP! You got a price cut and it's deep as hell. I mean, I'm just moody, but I'm far from buttmad because I can just buy CSP and be done with it, haha.
Anyway, still busy as shit though. Lots of non-art related website jobs are soaking my time and I blow my relaxing moments on the antithesis of relaxing, LoL ranked 5s at 2AM.
One of them pertains to a current side-job fiasco involving Manga Studio 5 and the new English release of Clip Studio Paint.
Basically, Celsys is a Japanese company that developed Clip Studio Paint, Illustudio, etc. Up until recently, they contracted with SmithMicro to publish their software in the west. SmithMicro repackaged Clip Studio Paint as Manga Studio 5 and released it as such.
I think only six months have passed between the release of MS5 and now, and in that time, SmithMicro did a really good job of getting resources together, getting exposure and highlighting artists for the sake of MS5. What happens? Celsys cuts out the middle-man and takes digital publishing by themselves. For a new customer, this is great, because Celsys is selling ClipStudioPaint Pro (or Manga Studio 5 vanilla) for 50 dollars. 20 bucks off, basically.
For me, not so good. Besides the whole uncertain future of MS5 as a supported product, I've been spending most of my time promoting MS5 in person. I literally just sold a guy on the program two days ago before I knew about the price cut. I feel freaking stupid. To top it all off, I have to switch from promoting MS5 to CSP simply because the price difference is so vast between identical programs. I have to restart what I've been working on for the last couple months.
That and as far as beginning digital artists go, MS5/CSP is so much more economical and enjoyable than Photoshop. Heck, at this point, it's actually cheaper than PaintToolSAI. Celsys made the giant killer, but there's a lot of community fragmentation because of different names and whatnot. I mean, think of it from a tag perspective: Photoshop has one tag, SAI has one tag, MS5/CSP has two. When you're roaming through tumblr, you have a 50% smaller chance of running into something relevant based on how diligent content producers are with tagging.
I met with the SmithMicro team and they tried really freaking hard to make their presence known. Setting up shop at conventions is not cheap and it does make a difference. I really feel bad for the people behind the English side of it all, because they got undercut by their own developer and, well, I'm sure their job certainty is everything but certain at this point.
Either way, good news for people on the fence about MS5/CSP! You got a price cut and it's deep as hell. I mean, I'm just moody, but I'm far from buttmad because I can just buy CSP and be done with it, haha.
Anyway, still busy as shit though. Lots of non-art related website jobs are soaking my time and I blow my relaxing moments on the antithesis of relaxing, LoL ranked 5s at 2AM.
