If you have any sort of creative, artistic ability and you own a 3DS then you’ve most likely purchased at least one of the MANY art applications the eshop has to offer. The Collavier Corporation, developers of Comic Workshop and Painting Workshop have just released a new option to utilize your skills, Comic Workshop 2. Like the first Comic Workshop this will focus on creating your own customized comics and manga from scratch. While I haven’t had a chance to play the first Comic Workshop I have played Painting Workshop which is very similar… minus all the comic stuff. Anyways, I never fancied myself a story teller however I do like to draw and add cool effects and words to my art like POW! and KABAANNG! So I had a lot of fun reviewing this one :)

The first thing you’ll be doing in this game is choosing which hand you want to draw with, which you can change at any time. After that you’re free to start creating! However, take heed artists, there are many tools to master in this game! I highly recommend checking out the tutorials section where you can find 29 visual tutorials showing you how to use every tool in the game. It might seem time consuming but they’re only about 30-60 seconds long. If you want to get the full potential out of this game, just trust me. All of the standard tools are here plus TONS more. The usual Pencil, straight line tool, color fill, shape creating tools. Not to mention the many stamps, stickers, gradation tools, layer options, custom speech bubbles, text options, you’re even able to add your own panels and make the comic exactly how you want it to look.

The stickers (clip art) and stamps are my favorite tools. They give you a number of images to use in your drawings (Effects, creatures, food, accessories, weapons, etc.) that you can resize and edit to your liking. You can also create custom stickers that you’ll be able to use in future drawings to speed up the process. Another neat feature is the texture fill ins when creating a background or pretty much anything with a pattern. There are a ton of options but one example is a brick pattern, which I used to create an alley way type background. You can change the color and size of the texture too, its very easy when aiming for some quick detailed artwork.

The controls are really handy because you can pretty much customize everything to your liking. You can use the X and Y buttons for tools you use frequently as well. Overall Comic Workshop 2 a really awesome application but like everything it has a few flaws. The only couple problems I had with the game is that you cant post your artwork on Miiverse if you uploaded any photos to your drawing (not really the developers fault). You’re also able to upload your creations to an SD card if you do ever want to share them, which I think is what most artists would want to do. I also think that saving takes a while, not FOREVER or anything but I sat there for a good chunk of time just waiting on it to save my artwork.

Another thing that could have been better is Ive noticed the art apps that Collavier keep coming out with all look the same over all. Like the menus, layouts and tutorials, it would be refreshing to update things like that over time. Small problems aside, Comic Workshop 2 is a really fun creative app that I recommend to all artists that own a 3DS. Unless ofcourse youre not a comic book fan, then I recommend Painting Workshop which is very similar, like I said before (You can read my review here.). Another cool thing, Collavier is giving a %40 discount on Comic Book Workshop 2 to people who already own the first Comic Book Workshop. That’s about $4 down from the normal $9.99 price, not bad! So if you have any sort of creative bone in your body checkout some of the other neat art applications Collavier has to offer on the 3DS Eshop and hone those artistic skillllz!