Hello, I would like to know whether Krita or Procreate is better for digital art and short animations. I’m thinking about getting an iPad because I travel a lot. I love Krita as a drawing program and have used it for years. The question would be whether Krita will be available for the iPad at some point or whether you should then work with an Android tablet/stand-alone tablet from Xpen. It would be important that I can use digital art like before and that it can also be used for animations. Is Krita better than Procreate? I’ve used Procreate a few times, but I don’t find the drawing feeling that great and I feel like the functions are more limited. So could someone please help me with that, thank you.
Is a Porsche better than a Ferrari? Kinda depends what your priorities are. I don’t know if Krita will ever come to the iPad, probably not soon if ever. The thing is that due to the Apple app store’s terms, Krita can not be released there. Which makes things difficult. Even on Android it is kinda hard to use. Creating animations on Android is possible in theory but difficult in practice since most android (and all handheld) devices are pretty weak, animation takes a lot of hardware resources and in addition the software Krita relies on for rendering animations (FFMPEG) is not available on iOS or Android.
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IDK about animating, but for art I use both regularly.
Out of all the popular art software, Procreate is probably the most severely limited in terms of features, but it has a good brush engine and drawing-feel, IMO. Its strengths are definitely that, and UI/UX. The limitations can get frustrating pretty fast if you’re used to more fully-featured programs, but there are often workarounds possible. However, many features are entirely absent.
I know animation is possible, but I would guess it’s also very limited in features, and they also have Procreate Dreams, a separate app, specifically for animation. From what I’ve seen online, Dreams is also missing a lot of features users are accustomed to having. For simple animations, you may find either adequate.
I personally like the iPad drawing experience (with a screen protector for texture), but I know a lot of people don’t. I’d say definitely research carefully that anything you need isn’t missing from these apps before you decide to go with it.
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The limits Procreate enforces are probably due to the limits handheld devices have. Even small animations in Krita can quickly need several gigabytes of memory on a desktop computer and handhelds often don’t have as much. Krita enforces no limits on size, frame count or layer count. It assumes it knows what you’re doing and what your computer can handle. So even when Krita runs on a handheld, it will be held back by the hardware and since it doesn’t help the user accommodate for that the experience can suffer. There are a lot of people that even overwhelm their desktop PC, it’s one of the most reported animation issues on the forum.
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I’m sure you’re partially right, especially back when Procreate was getting started on the original iPad, but nowadays I think it has more to do with Apple’s minimalism fetish and love of guardrails, a philosophy which Savage seems to have adopted, being basically a 2nd party developer. That, and their development resources now being split by their new 2nd app with Dreams.
The iPad Pro should be capable of roughly everything the new Macbook Air models are, since they share the same Apple silicon chip and the better models have 16GB of RAM. Procreate does adjust the limitations based on hardware at least a bit, allowing higher layer counts for devices with more RAM.
Also, there are iPad apps that aren’t lacking features like Procreate is, like Artstudio Pro and Clip Studio Paint. They have feature parity with most desktop software.
Procreate is just missing basic stuff that’s been requested for years, for example you can’t even color pick from current layer, or expand/contract selections, or adjust group opacity, or use clipping masks with groups, for a few things off the top of my head. The list is pretty surprising and extensive 
. The end result is usually that destructive editing is necessary.
I’m digressing into my own rant though, while Procreate is very limited, it may be completely adequate for OP’s needs. What it can do it does quite well. I’ve also heard good things about ToonSquid, another iPad app specifically for animation that may be worth looking in to.
I have an iPad because I thought I’d be using Procreate for portable work, but I wound up going back to Clip Studio Paint on Simple Mode, so I might as well have gone with Android. Procreate’s lack of non-destructive view flip is the one that bothered me too much.
CSP Simple Mode generally works great. It’s not as minimal UI nor as innovative with keyboardless controls as Procreate is, but the UI doesn’t take up too much space on a tablet either. “Flip Horizontal View” is there and easy to reach. The downside is that you have to switch back to desktop/“studio” mode to do certain things like select multiple layers or turn a layer into a draft layer… which is weird because Simple Mode is still compatible with draft layers. On the plus side, the devs added a button to instantly switch between simple and studio mode, so at least there’s a bandage solution for until simple mode gets fleshed out a bit.
However, CSP on iOS and Android is subscription-only, while Procreate is a one-time payment, and a cheap one at that. We haven’t reached the one portable platform raster program that has it all, yet.
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