Want to See Krita Improve... FAST?

Krita 2.1 has been released, so the Krita team is already planning for Krita 2.2 in May. 2.2 should become the first release to be completely ready for production usage by graphic artists everywhere. It should be fast, it should be stable, it should have great usability. Krita 2.2 should be:

A leading, innovative application creating images from scratch and scans, with complex, flexible brushes and tools on huge, high-bit depth, multi-layered canvases.

To bring you this, will need a lot of work! Fortunately, we have a secret...

Lukáš!

Lukáš Tvrdý, is the two time Google Summer of Code alumnus and creator of the wickedly cool brush engines you enjoy today in Krita 2.1. For three months (February-April, 2010), Lukáš will be available full-time, all-day-long to accelerate Krita's performance, stability and usability! (And, Lukáš adds, during the evenings he'll continue doing what he's been doing all along: hacking on Krita for pleasure...)

The entire Krita team is excited about this plan and supports Lukáš fully: we will all be fixing bugs and implementing features supporting our shared vision alongside Lukáš' focussed efforts. Lukas will be reporting every week on the progress made on his blog and on krita.org. The 2.2 roadmap is detailed on our wiki, and Lukáš' work planning is here.

To use this opportunity your help is needed though! Remember when the open source world cheered as we raised $100,000 to open source Blender, our leading 3d creation suite? That start got Blender moving, it gave us something remarkable, and today Blender challenges commercial software costing thousands. Well, Lukáš has to eat, of course!

Lukáš is will be available full time for over three months for around 3000 euros.

Only 60 people contributing an average of just 50 euros will make it happen (a total of approximately 3000 euros / 4500 USD / 2500 GBP). Every amount helps. A higher amount may mean Lukáš becomes available for even longer, improving even more. Like Blender, who can imagine where things can go from there? With version 2.2 due out in May, followed by version 2.3 in September, 2010 could be an exciting time to be creative in open source.

Your contributions can get us there. Please help however you can, thank you!

Note: In 2009, we ran this campaign on pledgie.com. Pledgie no longer exists: you read about it here.