What was your first art program?

[Kutan]

Was it something aimed at kids, or did you go straight to a program for professionals? Was it on PC, or was it something you downloaded on mobile? I'm curious to hear!

My very first was Kid Pix, and I imagine a couple other people will have grown up with that too; it was really popular. Alongside that, I had Flying Colors, which I adored as kid. It was marketed around its outrageous color cycling effects, which pleasantly tickles a part of my brain in a way that I'm still susceptible to today. Oooh, shiny!

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I figure all that stuff is on tablet now, and it's probably a thousand times easier to use! I had one of those clunky drawing tablets that plugged into the TV, and it was kinda cool, but I would have been way happier with an iPad



What about everyone else?

[/home/user/]

When we are strictly talking about graphics editors, like, properly, then I started off with paint dot net, and eventually moved to GIMP where I am comfortable to this day.

But if we're counting art programs I had on disk as a kid:
Kai's Power Goo was a silly image distortion program mainly for fun.


Disney's Kreativstudio was a playful, German Disney themed stamp/art maker and drawing program that unfortunately has some very strong phobia triggers inbuilt, which is why I cracked the disk and threw it away.

[DoctorDizzy]

I think that my very first art program was FireAlpaca...? I suppose there could have been things from my early childhood that I don't remember, but FireAlpaca was the first digital art program that I used once I started actually drawing. I still hold it in pretty high regard, even though the ads can get kinda annoying! :omg:k: I've since moved to Clip Studio Paint, and while I've tried other art programs, CSP is the one for me, I think.

[plantovision]

My very first was Kid Pix, and I imagine a couple other people will have grown up with that too;

Undo Guy from KidPix was the greatest thing to ever grace my eyes back in Elementary School.

Undo! Undo! - Oh no - My bad! - Now wait a minute! - I made a boo boo, yeah! - No way! - Oops! - No no no! - Whoops!

[MamboGator]

Creative Writer. It came with my parents' Windows 95 computer. It's not really much of an art program, since it was just a bunch of clipart and fonts, but it let you design and print birthday cards and stuff like that.



I also had Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio on Sega Genesis.

[TheFrugalGamer]

My first was probably Kid Pix, which I have very fond memories of, but I don't remember working it with for very long. As a got older, I started using Adobe Pagemaker, which was a print layout program that I used to make a neighborhood newspaper that I charged everyone a quarter for.

Then I moved on to MSPaint, where I made pixel dollz and struggled with the lack of layer support. Back then I wanted Paint Shop Pro more than anything, and I felt like I was really limited with the tools I had. These days I feel like layers are a bit overrated and do most of my pixel art without them. The grass is always greener...

It's funny I saw this topic today, though, because just last night I found a zine on Itch.io that all of you would probably like. It's an artbook made entirely of art done in old kids' software, and I love it! Check it out here:
https://everydaylouie.itch.i:ha:kidpix

[Gnorkel]

The very first art program i used was actually more of an in-app social media - Drawquest. Created by Chris Pool, the whole idea was that, every day, a new drawing prompt (usually a pre-drawn template) would be posted for you to do. This obviously incentivized people to keep coming back but it also was a great exercise in creativity. It was also the first time I had ever found an online community to join.



I remember it being one of the more popular art apps at the time, so the servers going down in 2014 was a shock to a lot of people... while reading up on this app again though i found out it became open source back in 2015.
I don't have any of my own drawings from there anymore. Which is probably good cause they were toddler drawings LOL. But I do have a single item saved, and it's this:



My MLP oc, drawn by a very sweet person lost to time. ^^

P.S. That KidPix zine @TheFrugalGamer linked is crazy cool!!!

[Veezle]

MS Paint on Windows XP, lol (or maybe it was 95 or 98, don't quite remember).

[tokoissick]

definitely ms paint, when my family got a home pc! me and my brother thought it was super cool back then i still use it