I want to make Custom Apparel for my wolf Silvestris, but it seems incredibly confusing to me. I'm trying to do this with as little time spent on YouTube as possible and without spending any IRL money. I have a general idea but I can't seem to put it together properly on Magma Studio. Is this just my problem with being terrible at online art, or the app I'm using?

I would like to know:

-What app I should use, and won't have to pay money to use

-What videos on YouTube I should look at, or if I should use YouTube at all

-How I get an image preview thing for when my CA is displayed in the Custom Apparel Shop

-If I put this in the right thread

Thank you!

I have very little artistic talent, but the CA page has some really good tips. One being;
Please note: certain programs, such as FireAlpaca, are not compatible with our files and will result in pixelated/fuzzy images. We recommend Photoshop, Clip Studio, GIMP, or other similar software.

Gimp is basically a free version of photoshop and is very similar - i'm not familiar with what Magma Studio is but I would start with one of the recommended programs, and start from there.

There are two I recommend, and this is going to highly depend on which one you feel most comfortable with after trying.
GIMP and Krita are both free. Both have entirely different feel to them and I have used both. Krita feels more professional to me, but GIMP is something I learned on and is a great beginners overall tool with tons of tutorials online for its usage.

For art help, I recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR-SNcnZItc

You are going to most likely want to use cellshading as it matches better with the site art like the wolves.

Program Tutorials:

Krita: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv7Tu-cOzPw

Gimp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX-S1CX1HUI

The gimp one is a lot longer since it has a lot more going on for it, but I still recommend it. Either way you are going to want to spend some time watching videos of the tools and videos on art tutorials.

Also, when you say " I have a general idea but I can't seem to put it together properly on Magma Studio" what do you mean by this?

@Kitariki thank you! I'll probably try GIMP, my brother makes it look really easy and I'm sure I'll learn fast.

@StrayPup I will watch those videos, thank you! As for my general idea problem, it's the fact that I have a picture of what I want it to look like and I tried drawing it but it simply wasn't right.

I would look at real life photos of what you’re envisioning and maybe sketching them out before putting together your own version. It can be hard to draw even simple things when you haven’t spent any time studying how said thing moves. Or sits on the body. You want to examine the smallest details like folds in the fabric. What makes worn leather look worn?

Start sketching these reference photos before you draw what you want; you will be able to conceptualize better that way.