[Mike Stumbo]

Hi fellow animators, Mike Stumbo here.

I don’t use social media, as a means to communicate with peers, because I’ve found in the past that trolls 🧌 really do in fact exist! And by trolls, I mean those that like to jump onto peoples posts and speak their opinions as if they’re professionals, while in reality they’re just a scummy troll randomly visiting a post they’ve seen from one of their friends or followers and decided to jump in and give their inexperienced, uneducated opinions! Okay so enough of that. Sorry about my ranting and raving, but man…SM can suck. Anyways, onto the intended purpose of this topics thread.

Recently, this past week or so, Savage(creators of Procreate) gave a presentation in the UK at Playgrounds in Motion. It was on their technically second app they’ve ever made, that they apparently spent the last 5 years working on. It’s called Procreate Dreams. It’s an upcoming, all-in-one, traditional animation (2D cel drawing) app, that will only cost a onetime payment of just $20 USD. And, just like its parent app(Procreate), is an iPadOS exclusive(I have my reasons, theories and/or assumptions as to why that is, but that’s not the point of this thread either). Point is—

If you’ve seen the app, what are your thoughts and final takeaways on it? If you haven’t seen it, I’ll leave the url at the end of this threat and put it in the Topic Tags as well. Do you think Apple iPads are an adequate screen size for drawing, or do you prefer a larger canvas? Traditional animation paper, as made and sold by Lightfoot Ltd., came in only 3 sizes. The common, yet rarely used is 10f which is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, then there’s 12f which has always been the standard, at least by the great Ub, Walt and the other Nine Old Men. That size is 10 1/2 by 13 inches. And the rarest is 16f which is 13 1/2 by 17 inches, which sadly they no longer produce Blank Acetate Cels that big anymore, at least not by Lightfoot that is. So technically 10f would be the only size you could use on the app, without having to pinch to zoom, which can cause it’s own headaches and problems when doing.

So yeah, that’s all I have left to post. Please feel free to respond, I’ll have the thread set to monitor and am curious to all of your thoughts and takeaways! Thanks 🙏 for the read and happy animating. As always…

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

 

Ps. Here’s the link as promised: https://procreate.com/dreams

[Niels]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for bringing this up. I saw the presentation. It’s of course hard to tell exactly how well it works without having tried it – but it looks great.

In my opinion it was a very sales’y presentation – I mean, rosy language (but that’s what the presentation was for, so understandable ;)). Much of what was said, I felt, could apply to Animation Paper too – so it will be interesting to check it out. Procreate is obviously good and popular, so it will be interesting to see how Dreams does. A scary competitor for me of course. 😉 But that’s how it is – healthy competition.

The price tag is amazing. I think $20 is super affordable. They must me planning on selling large quantities. He did mention quite a few times, that this-and-that was only the beginning and more would come, which tells me that the various features might be somewhat limited – on the other hand, they have had 5 years to develop it all. Even though 5 years can go by quickly – when developing animation software, I can tell you! Hehe 😀

About your size discussion, I am not sure. Once it is all digital, I feel it is super individual what people prefer. People have different habits (zooming/not zooming/drawing from wrist or arm/etc etc).

Looking forward to read what others have to say on this… 🙂 Please participate folks! 🙂

Best,
Niels

[Bahadir Tosun]

I’m so tired of jumping from one app to another. We forget the most important one and that is how to draw. Animation paper will be the last app for me (I hope) and I hope new updates will fulfill my expectations.

[Mike Stumbo]

Hey Niels,

Good to hear from you and it’s been awhile right? Yeah I have used Procreate when I had an iPad, and really do love Apple’s Pencil, especially the 2nd Gen! My kids have iPads and so my oldest uses it, so that’s cool, no money wasted. I have my problems with Savage and its CEO and Co-founder, James Cuda. But I’ll remain professional and not use this thread to vent any more than I already have. 😂

The app did look really impressive, but tablets are just not gonna cut-it in full production studios. I mean sure, I see them used for Pre-vis., for storyboarding and note taking, but to actually sit down and crank out hundreds of frames a day for weeks on end— never gonna happen! It’s simply a shtick for indies and tubers. Not my thing, but I’ll be getting it for my kid, cause she likes to try and animate like her daddy. ☺️

Well Niels, it’s nice hearing from you and hope development is running smoothly for you! Hope to talk soon. Cheers!

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Mike – I couldn’t agree more.

We have had some pumps on the road the last year – so things have been somewhat slow. Should be very close to the last Alpha release (Alpha 8) now though – and from then on to the beta fase and finally the actual 5.0 release! So excited about getting there…

[Herb Montes]

I’ll have to say Procreate does seem like an amazing animation program if one goes by all the bells and whistles on that site. I do see one “Achilles Heel” with the program and that is limiting the implementation to the iPad. One thing Animation Paper and all the other animation programs have going for them is being able to run on various platforms.

I’ve done animation on everything from flipbooks to drawing on film leader. It is a craft with no limitations. Digital is only one more way to make the impossible possible. Will Procreate become another toolset for the modern animator will remain to be seen. We have more than enough tools to work with as it is. It can only get better.

[Kim Johansson]

Hi there!

I tried procreate dreams since release a couple of days ago and be honest… I´m really really underwhelmed!

I think you can rest assured Niels that animation paper is on the right track here! If one is used to traditional animation Dreams is extremely frustrating and lacks fundamental features that are essential to many serious animators workflows. I have hopes they will add a few more essential functions but here are a few things that made me really unimpressed:

– The massive canvas they showed in their keynote is not as impressive as it seems compared to animation papers infinitely resizable lines. There is no way to upscale drawings without loosing quality in Dreams. You are also strictly limited to a few seconds on higher resolutions. (I know my iPad is kinda old 10,5 2017 but still. In callipeg, rough animator, clip studio ex I can work with much longer sequences in 4k without issues.)

– No lasso tool to cut and paste parts of a layer. (Although they will probably add this feature it´s kinda strange it didn’t make it to a final release.)

– I don´t see an out of pegs or light table feature. Regular onion skins is what you get. And to be honest I don´t think their target group will ask for one either which makes the app kinda irrelevant as an animation tool for more complex scenes.

– Creating in-betweens for multiple cels at ones is a no go. You have to move them one by one which is SUCH A PAIN… OMG!

– Changing the exposure from ones to twos and so on is also a no go. I mean you can drag and adjust one frame at a time but I mean. Who does that, it takes forever!?

– No way to export a PNG sequence… What is going on here?

I think it makes sense Niels that you are taking your time on this one, there is absolutely no reason to stress because of Dreams release. Your application is for another kind of user in my opinion, even if they overlap in certain areas. And your brush engine just makes SO MUCH more sense for the purpose of animation when you need to rescale drawings often. And if you can nail a colouring feature where you can change multiple frames at the same time as in toonz, I will choose and recommend animation paper over Dreams any day of the week!

[Kim Johansson]

Tonight after playing around a bit more in dreams I have to admit my last post was perhaps a bit too critical to the app. I did find solutions that kinda solves a few of the mentioned frustrations. Like a three finger tap to create space between cels, which is kinda nice. And you can also extend multiple cels with some finger gestures. I´m gonna try to be less grumpy and more open minded and Dreams will no doubt grow into something pretty good. Animation Paper is still more in my taste. And I wouldn’t have a problem to pay a bit more either for a quality app and to support your commitment to AP.

Trevlig helg!

 

[Niels]

Thanks a lot for both your initial thoughts and for your comments after giving it a bit more time. Of course interesting for me to listen to. Thanks for your kind words too!

And I can confirm, that our coloring features will be great – parts of it a bit like Toonz. I’m looking forward to being able to reveal more on this 😉

Thanks again Kim!

Best,
Niels