If you are choosing between ibisPaint and MediBang Paint for anime drawing, ibisPaint is usually the better choice for beginners who want a large brush library, strong illustration tools, filters, materials, and animation features. MediBang Paint is a better fit if your main goal is manga and comic creation, especially when you want comic panels, screen tones, fonts, cloud storage, or collaborative projects.
Both apps can handle anime-style sketches, line art, coloring, character illustrations, and manga. The better option depends less on which app is “more powerful” and more on what kind of anime art you want to make and how you prefer to work.
ibisPaint vs. MediBang Paint at a Glance
| Feature | ibisPaint | MediBang Paint |
|---|---|---|
| Anime character drawing | Excellent | Excellent |
| Beginner-friendly drawing | Excellent | Very good |
| Brush variety | Extremely large selection | Good selection |
| Manga tools | Very good | Excellent |
| Comic panel creation | Good | Excellent |
| Screen tones and comic materials | Excellent | Excellent |
| Illustration filters | Excellent | Good |
| Animation | Built in | Not its main focus |
| Cloud workflow | Available | Strong |
| Cross-device workflow | Good | Strong |
| Collaboration | Not its main strength | Strong |
| Best for | Anime illustration and general digital art | Manga, comics, and collaborative projects |
The biggest difference is focus. ibisPaint is more illustration-focused, while MediBang Paint has a stronger manga and comic workflow.
Which App Is Better for Anime Drawing?
For most beginners, ibisPaint gets the edge for anime illustration.
Its large brush and material libraries give you many options for sketching, inking, coloring, effects, and backgrounds. You do not need to use every brush, though. A beginner can get excellent results with a small set of reliable tools.
MediBang Paint is also well suited to anime art. It offers customizable brushes, layers, snap guides, comic panels, tones, backgrounds, and fonts.
So the choice becomes clearer when you separate anime illustration from anime-style manga creation.
Choose ibisPaint if you mainly want to draw anime illustrations
ibisPaint makes more sense if your projects look like:
- Anime character portraits
- Full-body character illustrations
- Fan art
- Character sheets
- Anime-style backgrounds
- Colored digital illustrations
- Social media artwork
- Short animated drawings
- Experimental digital painting
Its animation tools are another advantage. You can create frame-by-frame animations and use onion skinning to help keep movement consistent between frames.
Choose MediBang Paint if you mainly want to create manga
MediBang Paint becomes especially attractive when your goal is to make:
- Manga pages
- Webcomics
- Comic panels
- Black-and-white manga
- Screen-tone artwork
- Multi-page comic projects
- Collaborative comic projects
Its comic-focused tools can make it easier to organize pages, panels, tones, backgrounds, and other elements.
Drawing and Inking
Both programs can handle the most important part of anime art: clean line work.
Anime drawing often depends heavily on confident lines. You may sketch lightly first, reduce the sketch opacity, and then create cleaner line art on another layer.
MediBang’s layer system supports this workflow. You can keep your sketch, line art, colors, shadows, and effects on separate layers.
ibisPaint also provides a strong layer system and stabilization features designed to help produce smoother lines.
For a beginner, the difference is not dramatic. Your stylus control and practice will have a much bigger effect on line quality than the choice between these two apps.
Brushes: ibisPaint Has the Bigger Advantage
If brushes are one of your biggest concerns, ibisPaint has the clear advantage in variety.
The app offers a very large selection of brushes, including pens, pencils, airbrushes, watercolor-style brushes, crayons, digital pens, and other brush patterns. Brush settings can also be adjusted for size, opacity, thickness, and texture.
MediBang Paint has a smaller but useful collection of brushes. Its pen tools are particularly suitable for manga-style line work, while watercolor-style brushes can be used for coloring.
This creates an easy choice:
ibisPaint: better if you enjoy experimenting with many brushes.
MediBang: better if you prefer a focused collection of drawing and manga tools.
Layers and Coloring
Layers are essential for anime artwork because they let you separate your sketch, line art, base colors, shadows, highlights, and effects.
For example, you could create:
- Sketch layer
- Line-art layer
- Skin layer
- Hair layer
- Clothing layer
- Shadow layer
- Highlight layer
- Background layer
If you make a mistake while coloring the hair, you can work on the hair layer without damaging your character’s line art.
MediBang provides layers, folders, opacity controls, blending modes, clipping, masks, and other layer-management features.
ibisPaint also has a strong layer system designed for detailed illustration work. Its filters and materials can be especially useful after the basic coloring stage.
For normal anime coloring, both are capable enough that you should not choose an app based only on layers.
Manga and Comic Creation
This is where MediBang Paint has a major advantage.
MediBang is designed around both digital painting and manga creation. Its tools include comic panel creation, page management, snap guides, premade tones and backgrounds, fonts, and other comic-focused features.
Its cloud features can also help artists access artwork across supported devices and organize larger projects. Collaborative features can be useful when multiple people are working on a comic.
If you are planning to draw a 20-page manga rather than a single anime character, those tools can matter much more than having an enormous brush library.
Anime Backgrounds and Effects
Backgrounds can take a lot of time, especially when you are still learning perspective and composition.
ibisPaint has a strong collection of materials and filters that can help create anime- and manga-style effects.
MediBang also offers premade tones and backgrounds, plus snap guides that can help with perspective and speed lines.
For a beginner creating an anime bedroom, street, classroom, or fantasy scene, either app can help reduce the amount of background work you have to create from scratch.
Animation: ibisPaint Has the Clearer Advantage
If you want to animate your anime drawings, ibisPaint deserves extra consideration.
The app includes animation features that allow you to create frame-by-frame animations using tools familiar from regular illustration work. Onion skinning can show previous frames in a lighter form, which helps you maintain consistent movement.
MediBang Paint is much more strongly positioned around static illustration and manga creation. Its main strengths are comics, panels, pages, materials, cloud storage, and collaboration rather than animation.
So if your long-term goal is to turn anime illustrations into short animations, ibisPaint is the more natural starting point of these two.
Which Is Easier for Beginners?
Both apps are usable by beginners, but they can feel different.
ibisPaint gives you a large number of tools and materials. That can be exciting, but it can also make the interface feel overwhelming when you first open it.
MediBang Paint has many tools too, but its workflow can feel especially natural if you are learning manga-style drawing.
The most important beginner mistake is not choosing the “wrong” app. It is switching between apps constantly instead of learning one well.
If you are just starting anime drawing, choose one program and spend a few weeks learning:
- Brush size and opacity
- Stabilization
- Layers
- Selection tools
- Clipping
- Alpha lock or similar controls
- Color picker
- Transform tools
- Basic shading
- Canvas navigation
Once those skills become automatic, moving to another drawing program becomes much easier.
What About Drawing on a Phone or Tablet?
Both apps support mobile drawing workflows, making them useful for artists who do not have a traditional desktop setup.
MediBang Paint is available across major desktop and mobile platforms, while ibisPaint is also widely used for mobile and tablet illustration.
That matters if you want to draw directly on a tablet instead of using a computer with a separate graphics tablet.
For example, imagine you have a basic tablet and stylus and want to practice anime characters during your free time. Either app can work. The deciding factor may come down to whether you prefer ibisPaint’s illustration-focused toolset or MediBang’s manga-oriented workflow.
Two Practical Anime Drawing Scenarios
Scenario 1: You want to draw anime fan art
Suppose you are a beginner who wants to draw an anime character, color the hair and clothing, add shadows, and create a simple background.
ibisPaint would be my first choice.
Its large collection of brushes, materials, filters, and illustration tools gives you plenty of room to experiment as your skills improve.
You also do not need to learn every feature. Start with a pencil-style brush for sketching, a clean pen for line art, basic coloring tools, and a few layers.
Scenario 2: You want to make your own manga
Now imagine that your goal is to create several manga pages with panels, dialogue, tones, backgrounds, and organized pages.
MediBang Paint becomes the stronger choice.
Its comic panel tools, page management, tones, backgrounds, fonts, cloud features, and collaboration capabilities are designed around this type of workflow.
The extra manga-focused features can save time as your project becomes larger.
Which One Should You Pick?
The simplest way to decide is to match the app to your project.
| If your priority is… | Better choice |
|---|---|
| Anime character illustration | ibisPaint |
| Huge brush and material selection | ibisPaint |
| Anime-style effects and filters | ibisPaint |
| Basic frame-by-frame animation | ibisPaint |
| Manga page creation | MediBang Paint |
| Comic panel management | MediBang Paint |
| Screen tones and manga materials | MediBang Paint |
| Cloud-based comic workflow | MediBang Paint |
| Collaborative manga projects | MediBang Paint |
| Learning basic anime drawing | Either |
This is not a case where one app is universally better. ibisPaint is the better general recommendation for anime illustration, while MediBang Paint is the better specialist choice for manga and comic production.
Is ibisPaint Better Than MediBang Paint for Beginners?
For a beginner who specifically says, “I want to learn how to draw anime characters,” I would start with ibisPaint.
Its large selection of brushes, materials, filters, illustration tools, and animation features gives you plenty to explore without immediately needing another program.
However, if your definition of anime drawing is really drawing manga pages, MediBang Paint may be the better first app. Its comic-oriented tools become increasingly useful when your artwork grows from individual illustrations into complete pages and stories.
Is MediBang Paint Good for Anime Drawing?
Yes. MediBang Paint is more than capable of creating anime-style artwork.
Its brush collection includes tools for inking and painting, while layers, snap guides, tones, backgrounds, and other features support both illustration and manga workflows.
The fact that MediBang is strongly associated with manga should not make you think it is only for black-and-white comics. You can use it for colored anime characters, sketches, illustrations, and other digital artwork too.
Do You Need a Drawing Tablet?
No. You can start anime drawing with a mouse, touchscreen, phone, or tablet, depending on the device and software version.
A pressure-sensitive stylus is usually more comfortable for serious drawing because pressure can help control line weight and brush behavior. But expensive hardware is not required to learn the fundamentals.
If you already own a tablet and stylus, try the software you are considering before buying additional hardware.
Your drawing fundamentals—gesture, anatomy, perspective, line confidence, color, and shading—will matter more than having an expensive setup.
Common Mistakes When Choosing an Anime Drawing App
Choosing based only on the number of brushes
A massive brush library sounds impressive, but beginners rarely need thousands of brushes.
A smaller set of brushes that you understand well can produce better results than a huge collection you never learn to control.
Assuming more features means better art
Features can make a workflow easier, but they cannot replace drawing practice.
If you spend more time searching through effects and materials than practicing anatomy and line work, the extra features may actually slow you down.
Choosing a manga app when you only want illustrations
MediBang is a strong manga tool, but you may not need its comic-specific features if you only want to create standalone character art.
In that situation, ibisPaint’s illustration-focused toolset may feel more useful.
Switching apps every few days
You can learn both eventually, but constantly switching makes it harder to build muscle memory.
Pick the app that matches your current goal and learn its core tools before comparing every advanced feature.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ibisPaint or MediBang Paint better for drawing anime characters?
ibisPaint is generally the better choice for anime character illustration because it offers a very large brush and material library, strong illustration tools, filters, and animation features. MediBang is also capable, especially if you want your character work to become part of manga or comic pages.
Is MediBang Paint better than ibisPaint for manga?
MediBang Paint is usually the better choice for manga-focused work because its feature set includes comic panel creation, page management, tones, backgrounds, fonts, cloud tools, and collaboration features. ibisPaint can still handle manga-style artwork, but MediBang’s workflow is more centered on comic production.
Can I use both ibisPaint and MediBang Paint?
Yes. You can use ibisPaint for character illustrations and animation practice, then use MediBang when you want more manga-focused page and comic tools. However, beginners will usually learn faster by choosing one app first and becoming comfortable with its basic drawing workflow.
The Bottom Line
For anime drawing, I would choose ibisPaint for most beginners. Its broad illustration toolset, large brush and material selection, filters, and animation features make it a flexible place to learn and grow.
Choose MediBang Paint instead if your main goal is manga or comics, especially when you need panels, multi-page projects, tones, cloud tools, or collaboration.
The practical tip is simple: do not spend too long searching for the perfect app. Pick the one that matches the art you want to make, learn its basic tools, and start drawing regularly.
