[paul fierlinger]

Wow! So you are thinking bigger than I had imagined. The fourth monitor is exactly as you say, a remote full project view. Are you thinking in terms of projects and clips? A project can be just one piece of animation or made of several scenes that make a project. There’s lots of features to come up with but that begins to make the software very complex and my impression was that you want to avoid that. I think you are right on to make a software for beginning animators. BTW I like your layout style which promises to keep things simple. If you want to we can Skype and talk about this. My website is slocumfilm.com and my wife, Sandra and I have lots of stuff on Vimeo.

[paul fierlinger]

Hi Niel,
I like the tiny pencil looking type of cursors, even just a short slanted line as long as they encompass two views; visible against a dark background and light background, but then it requires actually another pair: left handed and right handed.
A question, since I have your attention: I never took the trouble to check out the availability of using the Wacom pen’s rocker switch which most people like to use for erase and draw, but there are several other very useful variations to make use of this important utensil. Does Paper Animation have anything like that?

And what about the distribution of panels across multiple screens? Two monitors is very common these days and I even have 4 monitors (for TVPaint), or is this something you prefer not to get into? I understand that you are targeting a different type of user than TVP, which I agree needs your software more than something like TVP. But even the simplified animation program in my view needs to interact with any NLE out there whether animators know this yet or don’t — eventually everyone needs a good companion video editor.

[paul fierlinger]

No horizontal layers? Only a vertical cue sheet? It appears to be so which makes it pretty much useless for me. I don’t feel I’m working on a film but in a sketch pad. All popular NLEs have horizontal layouts. I also miss more cursor designs; just two of the kind I least like is another turn off for me. I’m sure this will become a popular choice for many budding animators and there are a lot of nice things to say about the way tools are dealt with (pencils, tilt, things like that). I can see how much work you have put into this and wish you all the best which I feel will come to you deservedly.