ImagineFX_Issue_148_June_2017

Digital art revolution!
Images © Martin Hanschild
rebelle
Roll up your sleeves for the realistic
traditional media software that’s both
experimental and seriously creative
Price £48
Available PC/Mac
Company
Escape Motions
Reviewed Issue 123
Rating ★★★★★
Images © Martin Hanschild
ebelle is all about getting
your hands dirty – or at
R least feeling like you have.
Think Corel Painter at a
snip of the price, and you’re close to
understanding Escape Motions’s
ambitions with its flagship software.
“I love how the program encourages
experimentation on the canvas,” says
artist Martin Hanschild.
“I’ll randomly paint spots,
shapes and lines on the
wet canvas, to see how
colours flow across the
screen, and then find interesting
structures and shapes to change into
characters or landscapes.”
His job is made easier with Rebelle’s
tools. The Blow tool brings a breath of
inspiration to your work – literally, as
you can manipulate your watercolour
marks as if blowing on the paper. The
Tilt control enables you to make the
wet media run and drip, or you can use
the dry media brushes (pastel and
pencils) to slow things down.
The newly released version two
promises an even more realistic acrylic
arsenal, while continuing its attention
to detail in how the media and the
paper grain interacts. The user interface
remains beginner-friendly, so as not to
put off traditional artists who are
making the jump to digital, and this
might explain why Escape Motions
haven’t done much to develop
Rebelle’s tool customisation. All this
takes a lot out of your computer.
“The math running behind the
program’s painting process is quite
The Blow tool
brings a breath of
inspiration to your
work – literally
complicated,” says Escape Motion’s
Andrea Vachova. “Rebelle has to
compute around 25 layers,
which include water
simulation, diffusion,
wetting, drying and all the
different watercolour
effects, so the computing speed will
depend on your hardware’s setup.”
Basically, it would stand you in good
stead to have at least Intel i5 or a
similar AMD processor, although it’s
worth noting that new OpenGL
brushes have been developed in
Rebelle 2, which speeds things up
significantly, especially when painting
with large brushes.
June 2017
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