[Niels]

Animation Paper, and other drawing apps, are getting the input through a driver. I am not a programmer, so I am not able to go into details 😉 It should be pretty straight forward though.

I hope this gives you a small hint.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi James,

Yes, it is highly recommended to use some kind of drawing tablet. You will never get any satisfactory results using a mouse or similar input device. Go for a tablet and stylus with pressure sensitivity (which most of them have). Very important, so you can draw lighter/thinner or darker/broader depending on how much you press down with your pen.

Get one that fits your budget. You don’t necessarily need a large one, but don’t go too small either. The large ones can take too much space on your desk or force your arm to do too much movement. But it is all up to individual preference of course.

Wacom’s are high quality and highly recommended – on the expensive side too. Huion tablets are good too and a little cheaper. And there’s other brands as well. Having a tablet with a build in display is the greatest, because you are seeing what you draw right there at the end of your pen/stylus. But those are the most expensive. Having a regular (no display) tablet is great too. You will quickly get used to drawing in one place while looking at another place (your monitor). This is even preferred by some, because your hand will not obstruct your view as it naturally will on one of the display ones.

If you are on Mac and already have an iPad with pencil, you can hook those together and use the iPad as a drawing tablet for your desktop software. I guess something similar is available for Windows and Android.

Let me know if you have further questions. Good luck with it all!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hello Aditya! Sorry for not being so fast! 😉

As you might have seen above, I do not have an explanation as to why this happens for a few people. However, in all instances it has worked when people just try again. So can I get you to just try again? You don’t need to register – just paste your activation key into the box – hopefully it works now.

Please let me know how it went.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Dean,

Sorry for my delayed response!

This seems to happen for a few people once in a while. We do not find any problems with our server. So far, we have just asked people to try it again – and it has always worked by then. So, I will just ask you try again. 😉 Let me know if you are still having any problems!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks for your comment!

Did you try the “Slide Mode”? The default mode is “Add Clones Mode”, where you drag to add (or remove) clones (held frames). But you can change the mode to Slide Mode, where you instead are dragging your original (white) drawings up/down through the “sea of clones”. This way you can easily adjust your local timing without destroying (offsetting) your timing later down the timeline.

Find Slide Mode in the X-Sheet menu.

By the way, you can not accidentally change the order of your originals, they will be pushed like carriages on a train.

If you WANT to change the order and, say, move a drawing to somewhere else in the x-sheet – just use cut/paste. Ctrl X while standing on the drawing, go to the new position in time, Ctrl V. Cmd X and Cmd V on Mac.

To adjust the size of your X-Sheet frames (thumbnails), go to the menu X-Sheet -> Thumbnail Size – you can set it to Tiny, Small, Medium or Large. Use the shortcuts Ctrl < or Ctrl > to go smaller or larger respectively. Cmd < or Cmd > on Mac.

If you find you still need more control, please let me know. I am all ears. 😉

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Well, yes. But our priorities changed a bit last year, so as I wrote about somewhere in the blog, we wanted to focus on getting AP out – and then first thing after, we will release an update (free) which includes the finished coloring features.

[Niels]

OK, I like that very much! To make sure I have it 100%:

You hold R, you double tap with your pen – your view is reset to 0 degrees. You let go of R.

Correct?

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

I totally follow you Russ. I will make sure we add that shortcut!

[Niels]

Sorry for my slow answer. I’m away from my computer (vacation) – which means I can’t verify what I’m telling you 😉 But look in the Edit menu. There’s something called “back-delete” or something like that – that should do the trick.

Only thing is that it will delete Originals too – so be aware of that. Of cause if that happens by accident, you can always just Undo.

I hope this helps!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Luke, thank you! I want to confirm this on our computers, but we are away on vacation. It certainly sounds like some kind of bug. The correct behaviour is that is works like you say with the mouse too.

Thanks for your clear explanation! We’ll take a look and fix it when we are back.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Sorry, no. We might do tutorials and guides in writing for the final version, but for the alpha versions we don’t have that I’m afraid.

You might get value from looking at the various alpha release blog posts, because new stuff is described there for each release. Also check out the keyboard shortcuts descriptions.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

As far as I know, Animation Paper does not run on Chromebook. I do not think any Linux apps will just install and run on ChromeOS. Have you ever succeeded in installing regular Linux software on your Chromebook?

[Niels]

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your suggestion! I don’t think I get it though 😉

Sorry, would you mind rephrasing your explanation? I need to understand it fully.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Cool! Glad it worked 🙂 I am relaxing, thanks 🙂

[Niels]

You should be able to just move it to the display you want to have it on. You may need to exit the full screen mode to get to the window and then just drag the window to the right display. It will remember the placement next time you open it.

If I remember correctly you can double click inside the full screen view to make it a window. Sorry I am not able to verify this – I am on vacation and only on my phone right now. 😉

Best, Niels