Unconventional Art Software

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Give me your wackiest software to make art.
By art, I mean any kind of art: visual, written, audio, videos, whatever else you can come up with. 
We're not looking for industry-standard or the most complete software with lots of features: but we're looking for off-kilter, wacky and even fun programs.

Think less Photoshop & Krita, more MSPaint and KidPix 

Free software, browser-ready material and links are appreciated but not necessary.

Keep in mind, some of these are old software that might not be compatible with your current OS.

Here's my list, I hope you add to it!

Drawing/Paint Programs

• MSPaint (online version)
• Kidpix (online version) & Kidpix Deluxe
• Magic Artist Deluxe (Disney's Kidpix, a personal favourite of mine)
• TuxPaint
• MarioPaint...? (hey I heard a certain game dev started with this!)
• Beautiful Doreena (links to video about it)
• Pixilart (for pixel art)
• PiskelApp (for pixel art)
• KolourPaint (for Linux mainly)
• GIMP
• Project Dogwaffle(free version)
• Magma (online and collaborative! paint with several of your friends at once!)
• Drawpile (similar to Magma but without paywalls)
• DrawApp for the PICO-8
• Webchemy
• Flying Colors
• LibreSprite (for pixel art!)
• Spirograph
• PaintSpin
• WigglyPaint
• Microsoft Fine Artist
• Dabbler 2.0 (where's 1.0?)
• Va Da (from Hylics' creator!)

Writing Programs

• Written Kitten
• Ellipsus
• Microsoft Creative Writer (&2)

WordArt, simple vector art features and Clippy are the wackiest elements I can think that were on a text editor software. Just to get your gears turning 

Music

• BeepBox
• UltraBox (Beepbox mod)
• LMMS (perhaps well-known, but hey it's free!)
• JummBox
• Bespoke Synth
• Online Sequencer
• Sonic Pi (for Raspberry Pi)
• SuperCollider
• DanielX's Paint Composer (Mario Paint-like)
• Advanced Mario Sequencer (another Mario Paint-like)

Animation

• FlipAnim
• Clipnote Studio
• Microsoft 3D Movie Maker
• Assorted "cartoon movie studio" games (too many to count: Simpsons, Spiderman, Tiny Toons, etc.)
• Pencil2D
• Disney's Magic Artist Studio (the Studio version only)
• GoAnimate
• Imagina y Crea con Pipo
• Opening Night
• American Girls Premiere
• Machinima in general (Sims, GTA, Animal Crossing...)
• The Movies (PC game)

Games

• Bitsy
• Twine
• Scratch
• RPG Maker
• Pocket Platformer
• Bopimo
• Adventure Game Studio
• RenPy

3D Modelling

• Vertex Meadow (online tool to create simple 3D worlds!)
• SweetHome3D (for home interiors)
• Paint 3D
• SculptGL (sculpt & model on your browser!)
• Disney's Magic Artist 3D
• Cosmic Blobs (deluxe version in .cdr, requires registration)

Video Editing

• Windows Movie Maker (2.6) (6.0) (Live)
• Vegas Pro 5.0
• VideoThang
• MovieShaker
• Video Edit Magic
• ZS4

Assorted Other
These can do the "job" of other programs, but maybe they specialize in something that doesn't fit in other categories.

• Electric Zine Maker (for Zines)
• ViperCard
• ASCII Paint
• Talkmodachi - Text-to-speech Tomodachi talk
• Balabolka (text-to-speech. might need you to install voice packs)
• Animated Screensaver Maker
• DVD Styler - to make DVD menus!
• RW-Designer Software - Different programs to make icons, cursors, favicons...
• Wondrous Pixel Turtle (for pixellating images)
• Wario Ware D.I.Y. (microgames for... you guessed, it, Wario Ware)
• Decker (seems you can use this for a lot of stuff...)

Assorted Free Resources

• Pexels (stock images)
• FreeImages (stock images)
• same.energy (stock images)
• unsplash (stock images)
• artvee (public domain images)
• British Library (public domain images)
• List of sources on Reddit (public domain images)
• copypastecharacter (special characters)
• Productioncrate (video resources such as VFX, 3D models, motion graphics, sound effects, music...)

I poured everything I know and comes to mind onto this list. If you want your contributions to be added to it, just tell me along with your forum post! 

Let's give all Melonlanders tools to experiment, play with and make art, of course! 

[Memory]

ooh these are all so cool~!

my laptop has KolourPaint on it (a KDE application - like MS Paint but for GNU/Linux) and i use that primarily to make things.
i do have Procreate on my tablet but i don't really like using it much for some reason. i just have it there like i do with Krita on my laptop - i never use it, i just prefer not to use it :P

i mean, Aseprite looks good, but i have no moneyyy!!    plus i make pixel art in KP as well lol
eh, i'd rather just wing it with KolourPaint. MS Paint was good but i can't tolerate Windows anymore at all unfortunately.
also my laptop has GIMP but it's entirely just for removing backgrounds on things.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I've actually created quite a bit of artwork in Microsoft's Paint 3D, which is a shame because it seems they now want the program to go away. It's pretty easy to use and has just enough functionality for me to feel comfortable using it with my very limited 3D modeling skills.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

For Music:
Sonic Pi and Supercollider - both are scripting languages that result in sound. Sonic Pi is rather simple, and was developed for the Rasberry Pi - getting it to run on x64 systems ain't that easy. SuperCollider is much more complex and powerful. Both are free software.

Many years ago, I made pictures with Project Dogwaffle. People who enjoy a retro experience might like this!

Also, while Blender is not exactly obscure, many people might not know about the 2D-Animation and the sculpting mode.

Shameless self-plug: Use the turtle if you want to pixelate anything!

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Updated the list with your suggestions, and added a smatter of my own! I've been researching a bit about the "Magic Artist" PC games from Disney in the 90s-00s... I'm surprised with the things they made apart from my well known Deluxe  A primitive 3D program for the kids and a primitive animation tool (ACTUAL animation, not just "put GIFs of Mickey and friends on the canvas). It only allows for 5 moving things and 5 frames, and it has automatic tweening between the frames! Sure, it's not much looking from a more professional standard, but I wish I had something like this as a kid to muck around with.

Other highlights include SculptGL, a tool that lets you sculpt/model in a browser, and Online Sequencer, which is what my BF is using to make music (he's so talented!  )

[edea]

There were a lot of these on the NDS thanks to the stylus - Flipnote Studio's the most famous (Clipnote in your list is a recreation of it), and there's still an animator on YT with a decent following that uses it. Art Academy series also got its start on NDS, and there's a couple entries on the Wii U as well

Personally, I really loved WarioWare DIY on NDS as well - was a full suite of tools to make microgames, including tools for audio AND visual stuff for your little games. Even had built-in distribution tools back when the servers were up.

[mittens]

i'm a fan of drawapp, it's a pico-8 app with very limited features (no layers, no undo/redo, etc) and is super fun to mess around in. it gives you a 128px canvas with a random palette each time you open/refresh it

seconding beepbox as well! (i use ultrabox (a mod of it) quite a lot)

i havent used this one in a while, but webchemy is pretty fun for making funky and optionally symmetrical sketches

[infinitysnapz]

interesting that there's a JS recreation of KidPix.. i may have to try this out some day.

here are some of my suggestions for this cool list

a similar art program that has alot of that olden Win95 crust is Flying Colors - except this has some interesting colour cycling properties as well.
another drawing program is Drawpile, which is like Magma except without any paywalls

i have a music addition too - Bespoke Synth - with its rather novel node-based approach i use it for pretty much all of my music production nowadays


one area I have explored quite extensively for unconventional art software is the realm of Video Editors, and i have found some quite interesting tools, and some real stinkers. most of these have watermarks for that extra added quality

the first choice i'd go for is not exactly novel, but Windows Movie Maker. it's age and its lack of layers delivers quite a nonstandard look nowadays. there are 3 different versions of this: 2.6, 6.0 and Live
Vegas Pro 5.0 is alot of fun because of how stripped back it is compared to modern versions
VideoThang is a miserable pile of bones for a defunct video hosting site
MovieShaker is a video editor with inbuilt flash overlays, and it is extremely crusty
Video Edit Magic crashes alot and has a horrible pixellated looking aliased watermark
ZS4.. i have no idea how to use this one

there are almost definitely some video editors that i missed too, these are just the first few that came to mind right away

[mychemicalvyvanse]

technically not quite animation, but i've always wanted to see ppl make weird videos with opening night/american girls premiere

like... i want surreal queer horror with janky FMVs. is that too much to ask. i'm too much of a n00b to even fathom how to do this but i wonder if you could add mods to these? so u have custom characters n all that

if any of u enjoy making weird stuff with these programs and wanna do, like, a discord hang where we click around and make stuff together, hmu i want in

[skigo]

I've actually created quite a bit of artwork in Microsoft's Paint 3D, which is a shame because it seems they now want the program to go away. It's pretty easy to use and has just enough functionality for me to feel comfortable using it with my very limited 3D modeling skills.

i might have a good substitute for you! i just discovered cosmic blobs a few days ago, and it's like a mix between paint 3d and kidpix. it's a lot of fun to use and has a pretty impressive amount of depth in what you can make with it. i haven't done much 3d modeling before, but i picked this up super quickly and made this cool little computer guy!



(also, here's an alternative download link that might have more features? this one says it's the deluxe version, but only comes as a cdr file so it'd be a bit more annoying to install on windows/linux)

[TheFrugalGamer]

i might have a good substitute for you! i just discovered cosmic blobs a few days ago, and it's like a mix between paint 3d and kidpix. it's a lot of fun to use and has a pretty impressive amount of depth in what you can make with it. i haven't done much 3d modeling before, but i picked this up super quickly and made this cool little computer guy!



(also, here's an alternative download link that might have more features? this one says it's the deluxe version, but only comes as a cdr file so it'd be a bit more annoying to install on windows/linux)

Ooooh, I will definitely check this out, thank you! I have a virtual machine on my PC for playing around with older software, so I'll get it up and running and see what I can do with it! I haven't had much luck with Mac VMs, though, so I'll probably stick with the IA version. You'd think it'd be easier to get a Mac VM running on a Linux machine, but no suck luck....

Also your little computer dude is pretty adorable :)

[alexela64]

i mean, Aseprite looks good, but i have no moneyyy!!

Hmmm

I'm putting some design resources here as well since I do a lot of collaging and mockups as art.

Would like to add:

Gamedev
- RenPy

Stock Images
- Pexels
- FreeImages
- same.energy
- unsplash

Public Domain images
- artvee
- British Library
- List of sources on Reddit

Special Characters
- copypastecharacter

Video resources
- Productioncrate

Summer Camp
- Spirograph
- PaintSpin

Fonts
- Oldschool Fonts

That's all i can find for now. Might come back with more later.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Adding all the suggested ones to the main list so it's easier for everybody to find!  Sorry for taking this long, thank you for being patient with me 

How come I didn't add a video editing category before??  I used Windows Movie Maker for one of my greatest (and cringiest) videos. It was messy and it crashed on me twice but I had a lot of fun.

Now that @infinitysnapz mentioned the 5.0 version of Vegas, I must admit I would love to try older crustier versions of Photoshop and Animate Flash, but unfortunately Adobe really doesn't like people having older versions of their stuff... or ANY of their stuff without paying   

Speaking of animation, I wonder if anyone would be able to bring GoAnimate back from the dead...? I find it extremely limiting, but sometimes that's where creativity shines thru.

One thing that comes to mind kinda similar to GoAnimate is this piece of old software I had called Imagina y Crea con Pipo. It allows you to make "stories" which were structured in pages where you would make a scene and add GIFs and speech bubbles. Here's a very crusty picture of it:


Fun fact: I literally bricked my computer once because little me wanted to put AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL the animals in one single page  If I ever manage to bring this game back from lost media limbo I'll make sure to share it for everyone here.

@mychemicalvyvanse your comment also made me think of the Machinima genre, and how people make whole movies out of GTA and Sims animations. I was watching a few horror Sims movies not too long ago, and they both amuse and impress me because of the inherent shortcomings coming from using a game not meant for this, paired with the clever ways the animations are being strung together to create a story.

I've temptatively added Machinima as one of the items on the list of animation along with a few game examples. If anybody more well-versed in Machinima wants to argue it deserves its own section, I'm willing to lend them an ear.

I also added the game called The Movies (for PC) into its own section because it's a tycoon game that's also meant to let you make your own "movies"!

@skigo thank you very much for blessing this thread with your adorable little computer guy  and for suggesting Cosmic Blobs! It looks like a very fun tool I'd love to try. 

Finally, @alexela64, while I appreciate (a lot) the resources you're providing here, some of them escape the scope of this thread... which is alright, because we can just make another one for them  I preemptively added them to the masterlist, but I would like to have like, a thread meant for free resources like images, 3D models, music, sound effects, etc... Maybe we could even start a page on the wiki about this!    (if there isn't one already that is  )

Overall, thank you everybody contributing to the noble cause of bringing niche creative software back to life!       

[AY38910]

Protracker: a music production software for the Amiga:)
TextWall: A collaborative ASCII canvas similar to "Your World of Text" but with more features :)

[shapezncolourz]

i'm a fan of drawapp, it's a pico-8 app with very limited features (no layers, no undo/redo, etc) and is super fun to mess around in. it gives you a 128px canvas with a random palette each time you open/refresh it

i've been hyperfixating on pico-8 recently and had no idea about this!! it's so cool

drawing i made!!

[close]

related to this, i've been wanting to try picocad lately for 3d modelling :]