The Draw toolbar is a row of instruments you made: a brush, a colour and a size, remembered together. Pick one up like a pen, instead of re-dialling three settings.
BRUSHES THAT
FEEL RIGHT!
93 brushes, pressure and tilt, smoothing that settles your line as you draw it, and import for the brushes you already love. On the same canvas as your designs. No second app, no export dance.
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with the brush library on the left. Studio Pen draws a crisp yellow ink wave, Watercolor a soft blue wash under it, Fat Cap a sprayed orange line and Neon a glowing cyan loop. The view then zooms in close on the marks to show the grain and edges of each.
SPLAT!
WHY BOTHER
Your sketch belongs in your file
Here is the usual dance. You sketch in a painting app on a tablet. You export a PNG. You drop it into the design tool, where it sits as a flat, uneditable rectangle. Then the client wants the doodle moved two millimetres left and a bit bluer, and you are back in the painting app, exporting again.
We got tired of the dance. In PopCraft a stroke is a real object in the layer tree, in the same file as your frames, components and type. There is no separate paint document to keep in sync. Ink a mascot next to the landing page it lives on. Scribble arrows on a board. Paint the comic panel inside the comic page. Then move it, recolour it, mask it, animate it, export it. It is just a layer.
93
brushes in the library
13
groups, sketching to stretch
3
kinds of guide: grid, iso, perspective
0
paint files to keep in sync
THE LIBRARY
Pick a brush, see its grain
Click Draw in the top bar and the left panel turns into the brush library. Every brush in the list draws its own preview stroke, so you are choosing by eye, not by name.
Little chips say what each one is. Vector is an editable path. Pixel is textured, soft-edged and wet-mixing. Tilt means tilting the pen changes size, opacity or colour, and Side means you can lay the pencil down and shade. Press B in any mode to grab the brush, so a quick line never means leaving Design.
A comic page in Draw mode, with the brush library in the left panel. Oil Pastel is picked from the library and two curving strokes are drawn across a panel; each lands as a stroke layer in the layer tree.
THE RACK
93 brushes, 13 drawers
This rack is built from the library itself, so it is never out of date. Every name below is a brush you can pick up today, before you buy or import a thing.
Sketching13
Graphite, charcoal, pastel and crayon. Dry, toothy, speed-thinned.
6B Pencil · HB Pencil · 2B Pencil · Willow Charcoal · Compressed Charcoal · Soft Pastel · Oil Pastel · Chalk · Conté · Artist Crayon · Mechanical Pencil · Sketch Pencil · Colored Pencil
Charcoals4
Vine, block, pencil and dust, for smudgy tone.
Vine Charcoal · Charcoal Block · Charcoal Pencil · Charcoal Dust
Inking12
Pens with confidence: Studio Pen, Dip Pen, Crow Quill and friends.
Studio Pen · Syrup · Gel Pen · Dry Ink · Fine Tip · Ink Bleed · Inker · Technical · Ballpoint · Dip Pen · Felt Tip · Crow Quill
Calligraphy7
Monoline to chisel, for lettering that swells.
Monoline · Calligraphy · Italic · Script · Brush Pen · Brush Script · Chisel Marker
Drawing6
Hatching, contour and a few odd inks with personality.
Gesinski Ink · Eaglehawk · Oberon · Hatching Pen · Scratch Pen · Contour
Painting14
Round, flat, acrylic, oil, gouache, watercolor, palette knife.
Round Brush · Flat Brush · Acrylic · Wet Acrylic · Oil Paint · Gouache · Watercolor · Water Wash · Water Brush · Soft Round · Sable · Dry Brush · Palette Knife · Stucco
Artistic3
Sponge, rake and scumble, for texture you can feel.
Sponge · Rake · Scumble
Airbrushing5
Soft to hard airbrush, ultra fine, classic spray.
Soft Airbrush · Medium Airbrush · Hard Airbrush · Ultra Fine · Classic Spray
Spraypaints5
Fat cap, nozzles, flicks and splatter.
Fat Cap · Medium Nozzle · Fine Nozzle · Flicks · Splatter
Textures9
Grunge, stipple, halftone, concrete, canvas, paper tooth.
Grunge · Stipple · Halftone · Concrete · Bristle Brush · Spatter · Noise · Canvas · Paper Tooth
Luminance3
Neon, lightpen and glimmer. They glow.
Neon · Lightpen · Glimmer
Touchups3
Fine hair, soft tint and hard round, for the last 5%.
Fine Hair · Soft Tint · Hard Round
Stretch9
Marker, highlighter and the wide cinematic tips.
Basic · Heist · Blockbuster · Grindhouse · Biopic · Spaghetti Western · Slasher · Marker · Highlighter
MARK MAKING
Ink, wash, spray and glow
Four brushes, four completely different marks. Studio Pen lays a clean ink line. Watercolor puts down a soft, grainy wash. Fat Cap sprays like a can held too close. Neon glows. Zoom right in and each one keeps its own edge and texture.
The pen brushes stay vector, so that ink line is a path you can edit forever and print at any size. The wash and the spray are pixel brushes, baked as you draw. That is what buys them grain and soft edges, and it is what keeps a file with hundreds of painted strokes fast.
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with the brush library on the left. Studio Pen draws a crisp yellow ink wave, Watercolor a soft blue wash under it, Fat Cap a sprayed orange line and Neon a glowing cyan loop. The view then zooms in close on the marks to show the grain and edges of each.
UNDER THE NIB
What happens to a stroke
The secret to a brush that feels right is not the texture. It is what happens between your pen touching down and the line you keep. We studied how the best drawing apps handle this and built our own engine, in five stages.
- 01 · IN
Your hand
Position, pressure and tilt, many times a frame. Wobbly, as all hands are.
› - 02 · CALM
A speed-aware filter
A One-Euro filter: slow, careful lines are smoothed hard; fast flicks track the pen with almost no lag.
› - 03 · REFIT
The tail is redrawn
The last part of the line is refitted behind the cursor as you go, so a curve settles into shape while you draw it.
› - 04 · AHEAD
A predicted tip
A short guess ahead of the pen is drawn, then corrected, so the ink feels attached to the nib.
› - 05 · OUT
Vector or pixels
Inking brushes stay editable paths. Painterly ones bake to pixels for grain, soft edges and wet mixing.
The upshot: careful lines come out glassy and fast lines come out lively, without a lag that makes you feel like you are drawing through syrup. Every brush carries its own smoothing amount, so the inking pens hold steady and the sketchy pencils stay loose.
PERSPECTIVE
Wobbly hand, straight lines
Turn on a drawing guide and strokes are held to its directions. Two point perspective is a corner, one point is flat on, and three point adds the vertical squeeze of looking up at a tower or down off a roof. Grid and isometric (the 30°, −30° and vertical axes) are there too.
In this clip every stroke is a rough, jittery drag. With Assist on, each one comes out ruled to a vanishing point, and a box appears from seven sloppy lines. Turn Assist off and the guide is just something to draw against. Either way it never exports.
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with a two-point perspective guide on, its vanishing points far out to the left and right on a horizon. Wobbly hand strokes with Studio Pen come out ruled: each line runs straight to a vanishing point or straight down, and a box in perspective appears from a handful of rough strokes.
SYMMETRY
Draw one petal, get eight
Symmetry mirrors your stroke live as you draw it: across a vertical axis, a horizontal one, both at once in quadrants, or radially around a centre with as many segments as you like.
Faces, logos, mandalas, ornamental borders, a perfectly balanced character turnaround. Draw half (or an eighth) and let the mirror do the rest. Every copy is drawn by the full engine, smoothing and all, so the reflections are as clean as the line you drew.
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with radial symmetry around the centre of the view, eight segments. A single looping stroke with the Brush Pen is drawn in one wedge and appears in all eight at once, live, making a flower-like mandala. A second stroke in Watercolor fills it in.
BRING THE BRUSH
Your brushes come with you
Every illustrator has the brush: the one they bought years ago and tuned a hundred times. Asking people to leave it behind was a non-starter. So the Import button at the top of the library takes .brush and .brushset files from Procreate, along with PopCraft's own .json brushes. A set comes in as a group.
We read the brush's shape and grain textures and map its settings onto our engine: spacing, jitter, scatter, size and opacity curves, pressure and tilt response, and the blending of wet brushes. Imported brushes live in your library, not the file's, so they follow you into every document, and sign in and they follow your account.
A comic page in Draw mode with the brush library open. Import takes a .brushset, Inking Kit, and its three brushes come in as a group in the library. One is picked and a stroke is drawn with it.
A comic page in Draw mode, with the brush library in the left panel. Oil Pastel is picked from the library and two curving strokes are drawn across a panel; each lands as a stroke layer in the layer tree.
THE TOOLKIT
Little things that add up
SMUDGE
SMOOSH!Uses any brush as its tip and drags the pixels already there along your stroke, instead of laying down new colour.
QUICKSHAPE
SNAP!Draw a rough line, circle, rectangle or triangle and hold the pen still at the end. It snaps to the clean shape.
TILT & SIDE
SHHH!On a stylus, tilt shapes the tip. Brushes with the Side chip shade with the flat of the pencil, like the real thing.
EVERY STROKE A LAYER
POP!Strokes sit in the layer tree. Select one, move it, recolour it, mask it, or key it on the timeline in Animate.
BRUSH PACKS
SHARE!Signed in, Publish shares brushes you made or imported as a pack on the marketplace. My packs keeps track of them.
FROM ZERO
Your first drawing in six moves
- 1
Click Draw
In the top bar. The left panel becomes the brush library, and the toolbar becomes your palette of instruments. - 2
Pick a brush
Every brush draws its own preview stroke, so you see the grain before you commit. Chips say Vector, Pixel, Tilt or Side. - 3
Press B and draw
Each stroke lands as its own layer in the same file as your frames and type. Move it, recolour it, delete it. - 4
Turn on a guide
Grid, isometric, or one, two or three point perspective. With Assist on, strokes are held to its directions. - 5
Save an instrument
Hit + on the palette to keep this brush, colour and size together. Picking it up again is one click. - 6
Bring your own
Import takes .brush and .brushset files and PopCraft's own .json brushes, and keeps them in your library.
THE OLD WAY
Paint app + design tool = two files
| THE OLD WAY | IN POPCRAFT |
|---|---|
| Sketch in one app, export a PNG, place it in another | Draw on the same canvas as the design |
| A flat picture you cannot edit | Every stroke is its own layer; ink stays a vector path |
| Leave your favourite brushes behind | Import .brush and .brushset files |
| Rule perspective lines by hand | A guide with Assist holds strokes to the vanishing points |
| Email the file around for feedback | Share the link; comments pin right on the drawing |
SEE IT ALL
More strokes, more clips
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with radial symmetry around the centre of the view, eight segments. A single looping stroke with the Brush Pen is drawn in one wedge and appears in all eight at once, live, making a flower-like mandala. A second stroke in Watercolor fills it in.
A blank sketchbook in Draw mode with a two-point perspective guide on, its vanishing points far out to the left and right on a horizon. Wobbly hand strokes with Studio Pen come out ruled: each line runs straight to a vanishing point or straight down, and a box in perspective appears from a handful of rough strokes.
A comic page in Draw mode with the brush library open. Import takes a .brushset, Inking Kit, and its three brushes come in as a group in the library. One is picked and a stroke is drawn with it.
A comic page in Draw mode, with the brush library in the left panel. Oil Pastel is picked from the library and two curving strokes are drawn across a panel; each lands as a stroke layer in the layer tree.
GO DRAW SOMETHING
Ink it where it lives
Open any file, click Draw, pick Studio Pen and press B. That is the whole setup. When you want comics, the comic pages are built for these brushes, and the drawing docs cover every control.
ASKED & ANSWERED
Questions, answered
How many brushes come with PopCraft?
93, in 13 groups: Sketching, Charcoals, Inking, Calligraphy, Drawing, Painting, Artistic, Airbrushing, Spraypaints, Textures, Luminance, Touchups, Stretch. Every one draws its own preview in the library, and each carries its own smoothing amount.
Can I use my Procreate brushes?
Yes. Import takes .brush and .brushset files. PopCraft reads the shape and grain textures and maps spacing, jitter, scatter, size and opacity curves, pressure and tilt response and wet blending onto its own engine. It is a translation, not a byte-perfect copy: settings with no equivalent are dropped, and you may want to nudge size and opacity on a brush you use a lot. PopCraft is not affiliated with Procreate.
Are strokes vector or raster?
The brush decides, and its chip tells you before you start. Inked lines stay vector paths: editable and resolution-free. Painterly brushes like watercolor bake to pixels as you draw, which is what gives them grain, soft edges and wet mixing, and what keeps a heavily painted file fast.
Does it support pressure and tilt?
Yes, on a stylus. Pressure drives size and opacity, and tilt drives the shape of the tip, so a pencil laid on its side shades with the side. Each brush decides how much of that it wants.
Do guides show up in my export?
No. Grids, isometric and perspective guides, and symmetry axes, are aids on screen only. They are never exported.
Can I share my brushes?
Signed in, Publish at the top of the brush library puts brushes you made or imported on the marketplace as a brush pack. My packs lists them, and you can list, unlist, rename or delete each one. Brushes from a pack you installed are someone else's and cannot go into yours.
THE MANUAL, FOR THE DETAILS
SPLAT! YOUR TURN.
Pressure, tilt, smoothing and your Procreate brushes. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.