Introduction
I've created brush packs for most digital applications. I know what is needed, which parts could be better, and how complicated and frustrating it can be in many of them.
That's why I wanted RobinPad to be a complete and easy-to-use suite, so you can design brushes or brush packs from scratch whether you have experience or not.
What is a digital brush?
A digital brush is a shape that repeats a number of times per stroke.
The design of the shape, how many times it repeats in each stroke, its spread, how it reacts to pressure, direction and rotation: those are what make each brush unique and give it its own purpose.
RobinPad lets you design that shape and set those values, and it is easier than other digital apps have led you to believe.
The stamp: the shape and the modifier
This is the idea the whole creator rests on. It is worth understanding before you start.
In RobinPad you don't create "a brush" in one go. There are two separate things:
- The stamp is the shape. The drawing that repeats on every stroke.
- The modifier is how that shape behaves.
Every brush you create uses a stamp and a modifier. The practical consequence matters a lot: the same shape can give you many different brushes without drawing the shape again or importing it again. You draw a leaf once and, just by changing the modifier, it turns into a soft blur brush, a hard brush with a visible texture, or a brush that responds to pressure, whatever suits what you're painting at that moment.
It's also what makes trying things out cheap. You can build a brush, try it on the notebook, and if you don't like it, change its modifier instead of starting all over again.
Brush packs
A pack groups brushes together so you can use them, share them, and organize them by topic.
Whatever you build in the creator is kept in the temporary pack, a live pack: if you change a brush, the pack updates right away. If you create a new leaf-shaped brush, it'll be available in the temporary pack without needing to export anything. It'll simply be there, ready to use.
In the brush pack selector you'll see it under the name Temp. Brush Creator.
A pack holds up to 64 brushes.
Every brush in the list has its own three-dot menu: copy its settings to another brush, change its shape or save it on its own. And the order of the list is yours to decide: you drag the brushes and leave them the way you use them.
Exporting and importing packs
Once you have the brushes you want to keep, you can save the whole pack as a single .rbrush file. It's one file with everything inside.
You can import that same file later to keep editing, so it is not a one-time export: it is your working file. As always, it is yours: share it, sell it, or build your own personal collection.