[Rodrigo Rodrigues]

As a user I want to be able to use my touch screen devices to rotate and zoom as I do with other drawing softwares.

[Niels]

Sure. You mean using “gestures” like pinching to zoom, and so on, right? This is in our plans. Just haven’t gotten to it yet. 😉

Thanks Rodrigo!

[Mark Watterston]

Gestures would be *the* selling point for many stubborn 2D animators having trouble transitioning from real paper and pencil to Cintiqs etc.

Pressing Return and getting a 5 page flip is cool and holding it down to get a repeat is awesome again, but here’s another suggestion:

Expand on gestures. eg.

Fanning 5 sheets of paper:
If you’re right-handed, I was thinking using all your 5 left fingers/hand in the upper left of the drawing area and sliding them back and forth across the screen to simulate fanning the animation paper flip.

Go back and forward a frame/keyframe:
A single fingered diagonal swipe from left corner or from the right corner to going to the previous or next drawing.
A two finger swipe would be the keyframes of the same thing.

New frame:
A single vertical swipe from upper center to simulate an animator getting a new sheet of paper from their blank pile of paper.
A two fingered vertical swipe from the upper center to add an inbetween the current and the next.

Play animation/Play button:
A single vertical swipe from the lower center to middle of screen to simulate an animator taking the paper off the pegs/drawing desk and flipping the full stack

The less keyboard interaction – the better.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Mark Watterston.
• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Mark Watterston.

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Mark!

Yeah, gestures like this are in our plans. I will use your good suggestions for reference, when we get to it soon.

I was thinking, though, if fanning would be better with just one or two fingers needing to touch. I understand your analogy, but to make it simpler and less straining for your hand maybe it would work better with just one finger dragging up/down to flip back/forth. What do you think?

Cheers,
Niels

[Mark Watterston]

Thank you for the reply!

Just to clarify, the fan wouldn’t be center up and down as you wrote, but would be from the left or right corner of the paper, depending what the user sets as their drawing hand. ie. Right-hander would be from the upper left corner. To simulate a real drawing desk.

Here’s my dream 🙂

From the top corners, one finger dragged towards the center of the screen could be previewing the very 1 sheet underneath,
2 fingers would skip the previous drawing entirely and display the 2nd previous drawing. So forth for 5 fingers.
If you watch animators (I know you do) they often *open* if you will, not flip, to a specific previous drawing to look as reference. It assists with keeping characters on model, maintaining size etc.

When you release your finger, you bounce back to your active frame.

What would be the creme de la creme, but I’m not sure if Cintiqs are capable of having fingers and pen tips at the same time, is the ability to hold your finger down and draw on the drawing your looking at when you want to make minor fast tweaks to a previous drawing, without leaving the active frame. Release your finger and you again bounce back to the active drawing.

Onion skin is nice, but often rough animators don’t even use the light, they prefer rolling/fanning and removing from the desk and flipping. Onion skin can be very messy and tiring to look at. Breakdown artists also follow this, but inbetweeners and clean-up artists use the lightbox/onion skin. Every other animation software has onionskin, so if you really want your software to stand out from the crowd, I recommend placing an emphasis on gestures. That would make “Animation Paper” really animation paper! 🙂

Cutting, pasting, zooming…. great! But imagine trying to sell the software to the most stubborn of animators who refuse to give up pencil and paper. ie. Mark Henn and Eric Goldberg (I think are the only exclusive 2D animators left at Disney), Glen Keane, Andreas Deja etc. Sell “the experience”.

[Niels]

Thanks for clarifying Mark! Truly appreciated.

Very good points and good ideas. I totally agree with you. Thank you!

So the only thing for me to check is what is possible hardware-wise with a Wacom (and other brands). Like you say, is it possible to register touch (of up to five fingers) together with the pen tip at the same time?

I have a Cintiq my self and I must admit I had to just disable touch, because it kept triggering on my hand as I rested it while drawing with the pen on the surface. Maybe it is better on newer models? Anyway, I love your ideas! I really hope it will be possible to do! Thanks again!

Best,
Niels

[Mark Watterston]

Good luck and great success!!

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Mark!

[Mike Stumbo]

While the idea of gestures are awesome, the fact remains that both Windows and MacOS have problems in this area! Especially transitioning from pen to touch! If you’re an avid animator like myself, you probably rest your hand on whatever platform or medium you’re using; this caused smearing problems for the traditional animators back in the days of the nine old men, and with Windows, it does essentially the same thing! With MacOS, the pinch to zoom or twist to rotate can be tripped while resting your hand on your touch device(ie. Wacom) it is this reason above all that I had to add touch on/off on my Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. And there’s nothing any system developer or computer programmer can do about this, because these problems lie within both operating system preferences, and are system locked or bound, meaning they can’t be altered.

[Dan Rossati]

I agree with the need for the gestures too, it’s good they’re on the road map. I really struggle to use programs that don’t have pinch/zoom/rotate all mapped to touch. Best app for it on windows is sketchbook pro IMO. It’s just effortless to draw in Sketchbook but it’s nowhere near as fully featured as AP for animation though.

[Niels]

Thanks a lot Dan. Noted.

Do you not experience the problems Mike are describing? (gesture features are triggered falsely by side of hand or such).

Best,
Niels

[Dan Rossati]

I tend to just wear a modified glove on the drawing hand which stops that and also it helps the hand glide across the screen.

[Niels]

I see. I thought those gloves were only for the gliding – but good to know that it helps with the false triggering too. Thanks!

[Dan Rossati]

This one is custom made so, pretty thick around the base of the palm, ring and pinky finger so it doesn’t trigger touch. Most of the ones you can buy do, but they’re really anti fouling gloves I think.

[Niels]

OK. Appreciated.