Free software alternatives
Digital Art
- Krita - It's free and good. I like it, I use it for any digital artwork I ever do. It's also pretty easy to switch from Photoshop to Krita because it has a Photoshop preset for the keybinds.
- Gimp - I haven't used it too much but it's a classic program. Also pretty good for making blinkies (unlike Krita T_T)
- Inkscape - If you want to do vector stuff you can use it. It can also be used to make fonts!
- Affinity - This is a program that I had to use in high school so I'm pretty well versed in it. It became free after Canva's aquisition of it. It's like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign packed into one, and free. I also find it way more intuitive than Illustrator and InDesign. It can be pretty heavy on your machine though, but that depends on what you do with it. The Pixel mode is definetly heavier than Krita ever is. It is basically fully free, though it does have a paid mode, but that's just the AI features. If you don't like that feel free to skip this program, I get it :P
Animation
- Krita - It's on here twice! Wow! Either way, Krita is an art program first and an animation one second, which is exactly what I've always needed. It has tweening options but they tank the program so I don't recommend doing any heavy tweening.
- OpenToonz - It's pretty good! I prefer using it for tweening or rigging, but it's good for frame-by-frame also. Fun fact - it was used to make a Ghibli movie.
Music
- Waveform - Free and good. For all platforms.
- Cakewalk Sonar - I use Cakewalk, though it's not the best. It has a paid version and the advert for it everytime you boot the program is annoying. I'm used to it though so I use it :P Another downside is it's only for Windows, unlike Waveform.
- Bandlab - It's an app and a browser app. It's limited but can be useful.