[Mike Stumbo]

Totally—I can’t wait to see what features Alpha 8 will bring! I hope its release is imminent! Haven’t had an update since June, hope Niels and his team are able to get it out before the holidays!

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[Mike Stumbo]

Hey Niels,

So my thoughts on a round/circular stencil is very similar to the lasso tool. How once you’ve made a lasso, only what’s inside can be drawn on, masking basically. However, with the circular tool you can use it to draw around the edges, much like Sketchbook’s circular tool. I use circles/rounds on most of my drawing, as I’ve educated my and others, round lines give organic results while straight or flat lines give a mechanical result.
Nudging will be super helpful, and probably used a lot by myself! Maybe having the nudge tool set to a hot key like ctrl, cmd or alt would be nice that way users don’t have to switch tools or open up menus. That be cool. Sounds awesome though.

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[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

[Mike Stumbo]

Hello Taiwan Coleman,

I believe you mean 0.5 and 0.7, because lead is measured universally by milliliters and the biggest lead I’ve seen professionally used is 2.0mm which I actually use professionally. Steadtler make great lead holders btw. Mechanical pencils are simply that, they’re lead holders. Animation Paper has a great system for traditional pencils, so you can set the size which is already set by millimeters and on your art tablet/display you should be able to turn tilt off. Turning tilt off will allow the pencil stroke to stay at a 45° point. This will allow the mechanical pencil effect you want. I hope this has helped you. Have fun animating.

Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[Mike Stumbo]

Hi Sam,

This is Mike again. I hope this answers your request.

First though, are you using a drawing tablet, such as a Wacom or XP-Pen? This will greatly help you if you don’t have one already! There’s some that are relatively cheap too! Amazon has the Wacom Intuos starting at $64.99 USD.

Anyways. The hand tool is accessed by simply holding down the H key, zoom is Z, and you guessed it, rotate tool is R key, respectively. The space bar is set as the combined tool, which I actually like and prefer because it means I have two less hotkeys I have to have programmed on my drawing tablet. Also with Alpha 6, you can now zoom in/out with your mouses scroll wheel, and pan with the hand tool by middle mouse clicking and holding, like in apps such as Photoshop.
Hope this helped, fellow Alpha tester, and

Happy Animating.

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[Mike Stumbo]

Hi Sam,

I’m one of AP’s biggest fans and have been a tester since Alpha 1! Anyways, to hopefully help with answering one of your questions/inquiries, tool opacity. I say tool, because there’s brush opacity and even eraser opacity in other softwares, and also in AP! Opacity can be changed in each individual tool. Simply click one of them to set the minimum and maximum size and opacity. And if that doesn’t help you can also change the layer opacity at the bottom of each layer tab, on the left or right, depending on which side you have the xsheet set. I hope this helps fellow Alpha tester[Sam], and keep animating!

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo

Animation Generalist

[Mike Stumbo]

Sweet! Any ETA as to when we can order, or pre-order AP 5.0? Thanks for listening Niels!

Cheers,

Mike

[Mike Stumbo]

Hey Niels,

Yeah, so what I see in having a library availability is like a window similar to the x sheet or dopesheet, where important assets an animator may want or have need of can be stored. This allows the user to stay just in AP and not have a ton of files opened to different assets. Things like color cards could be stored there, character mouth charts and model sheets. I’m just one of those that hates juggling between apps and folders and plugins and multiple windows opened. I do see where your coming from though, being it’s a traditional animation app, it’s not necessarily needed, but it would be cool!

Cheers,

Mike

[Mike Stumbo]

Hi Kirian and my buddy Niels!,

If I may jump in. In regards to setup of Clip Studio, the UX is very PS or Synfig. Actually I’d say Synfig has a better setup. First thing Niels, you should know this— Clip Studio is a Painting App, not and animation app! It has a setup similar to Sketchbook where you can open an “animation” document and it has a secondary setup for traditional animation. But where it lacks, is in tools! One thing Sketchbook has above all other drawing/painting apps is a transparent brush, where you can literally go from drawing/painting to cutting out with the same brush tool, it just turns off the color. It’s handy for those that like to draw manga or comic book style, like myself! I actually wish PS had an option to key the color box on/off! Instead of having to use white and then have the white removed afterwards; also Sketchbook has a great symmetry tool, and stencils, such as circle, ruler, and now a curved ruler!
Anyways, enough of me rambling. Hope that I helped. Cheers!

~ Mike Stumbo

 

PS. Happy New Year Niels!!!

PSS. Any update on Alpha 6? Really looking forward to colors!

[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.

[Mike Stumbo]

Hey Niels,

Oh I already have it keyed on my Wacom Cintiq. It was really just a question of timeline or plan as to when user customization features will be implemented?

I really am enjoying the use of Animation Paper, and am using it to create my animated title card for my Animation Showreel. Will share once completed!

~ Respectfully,

Mike Stumbo