I found VPaint while stumbling around the internet recently. A new graphics tool, I thought. It seemed exciting to me. But I soon realized VPaint is actually an old graphics tool, left in its experimental beta phase, and it's barely been updated much in the last decade. But that doesn’t make VPaint a bad tool. In fact, it’s got some features I’ve not seen anywhere else and might become part of my open-source creative toolkit. Its developers are working on more experiments that encompass the vibe of VPaint for the modern day, and I’ll happily incorporate these tools into my creative workflow, especially animation.

VPaint and VGC are experimental graphics tools

Permanently in beta mode, but that’s not a bad thing

VPaint is an experimental graphics and animation tool from VGC Software. VGC Software is working on VGC Illustration and VGC Animation as two separate tools with similar features.

Despite being initially released over a decade ago, VPaint is an experimental beta tool rather than having been developed into an alpha tool at any point. Due to its experimental state, it needs a degree of patience when being used.

You can expect bugs, crashes, and minor or major issues when using VPaint — it’s only an experiment and not a perfect graphics tool. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have impressive features.

VPaint has basic animation tools as well as illustration features. Its features offer insight into what’s missing in other tools, though.

VGC stands for Vector Graphics Complexes, which is a new mathematical concept developed by the VGC Software team. This complex concept allows digital illustrators to use vector graphics in ways unseen elsewhere, such as keeping track of the connectivity between lines in a drawing and representing two shapes sharing a common border that can be edited without overcomplicating the borders.

VGC Illustration and VGC Animation will incorporate new animation and illustration features borne from those implemented in VPaint, including automatic inbetweening in animation tools and multi-faceted border controls in illustration tools.

Features I’ve never seen elsewhere

Not even Adobe compares here

Since VPaint is only experimental, it doesn’t have a ton of tutorials available. Learning how to use the tool by myself has been hard, but there are many features I’ve not seen in other animation or illustration tools, which means I’m learning entirely new things.

I love the ability to draw with auto-intersected lines, which immediately allows you to separate shapes — even those which share the same separated line. The intersected line allows for any lines that cross over or under another to be repeated, so it can be selected as its own section. You can create two halves of one shape without needing to redraw the shared line when splitting the halves. This is really helpful for animating elements that break into smaller pieces.

The snapping feature helps to draw accurately placed elements and ensure their ends and angles snap together. You can change the snapping threshold.

The Sculpt tool is another very helpful tool I haven’t seen in many places before. It simply allows you to select and move any element of your drawn animation easily. You can increase the threshold to select a larger area or decrease it for subtle movements.

Open-source project with minimal updates

Experimental projects are slow-going

VPaint is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, an open-source license that allows for commercial use, modification, distribution, and private and patent use of VPaint as a tool. The VGC Software tools in the build stage also use the Apache 2.0 license, giving users the same abilities to modify or distribute the code for their benefit.

The ability to modify source code allows anyone to change the program to suit their own needs, but typically, the program available to the public works just fine for those who lack the coding knowledge to modify it (I am including myself in that demographic).

Unlike other open-source tools like Krita, GIMP, or Inkscape, VPaint — and VGC Illustration and Animation — lacks awareness from community members.

The more people who get involved in open-source projects, the more successful the project will become. Even with a Kickstarter page, VPaint and VGC tools haven’t seen much movement in the last five years. But that doesn’t mean these tools are dead. They’re just stagnant for now.

The experimental features in VPaint show a lot of promise, and with VGC Software looking to create two separate programs, each focusing on illustration and animation respectively, there’s a good chance each tool could be successful on its own. With a bigger audience, better funding, and more general awareness of these tools, they could be the next best option in graphics and animation design.

Although VPaint is free for all, the VGC Animation and Illustration tools will be released commercially on perpetual licenses. However, VGC Software uses GitHub to publicly develop its project. The team believes that source code is knowledge, and it should be accessible and free to all. VGC Animation and VGC Illustration will be sold as commercial products upon public release.

It isn’t an After Effects or Illustrator replacement

Maybe one day, though

VPaint, and subsequently the VGC software’s other developments, are nothing like Adobe tools. As a motion graphics tool, VPaint is very basic compared to the likes of After Effects or many of the weird motion graphics tools found on the internet. It’s an experimental tool and should be treated as such, but in terms of drawing animation timelines and cutting down on working on each individual frame, VPaint is incredibly clever and intuitive.

The illustration tools in VPaint lack many features. I can’t compare VPaint to Illustrator or even to Vectorpea which is a basic tool in itself. It has a pencil tool with extremely basic additional functions, like adding width or snapping to itself. You aren’t going to be making any masterpiece illustrations with VPaint.

VPaint is simply here to pave the way for VGC Software’s future products, which may ultimately surpass Adobe After Effects or Adobe Illustrator in their offerings, thanks to VGC’s expertise and research in vector graphics. For now, I’m just taking VPaint at face value and not as a comparison tool.

Where has this been all my life?

VPaint was released over ten years ago, but it’s taken me this long to discover its existence. With the introduction of two new tools from VGC in the near future, these graphics and animation tools might be enough to inject some new excitement into my creative processes — and yours, too. A combination of open-source and proprietary development helps the creative community feel more involved in the tool rather than exclusively being customers and bank accounts being drained for little in return. VPaint excites my creative mind, and I can’t wait to see how VGC Animation and Illustration come to be upon release.