[Niels]

Thanks for this Ezekiel!

When you say “cut and paste” – do you mean using the lasso?

I suspect both of your issues to be about the lasso. You see, because of our line engine (which is great in so many ways), it has this limitation, that if you “overuse” the lasso – i.e. copies a lot of parts in the same drawing, it will eventually build up the data and therefore slow down the software. I believe you must have gotten a warning about it in AP? As it says in that window, the remedy is to trace over your drawing on a blank sheet and delete the old one.

However, as we speak, we are actually working on a better general solution. Hopefully this will be part of the next update.

Please let me know if it really was the lasso/stamp thing you meant? 😉

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

I don’t think this has anything to do with your Mac. It must be something in the way we encode the video. We’ll investigate further…

Thanks!
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for sending your files over. I have tried them on two of our test computers. They work on both without failing the export.

It’s funny though! When I play the resulting mp4 videos they look perfectly fine – however, when I scrub the videos (using the native Quicktime player on Mac) I get glitches similar to the ones you got. And when I play again – the glitches are gone.

Strange.

I’m curious, do you get the same? I mean, when playing the mp4’s they look fine, but the glitches happen when scrubbing?

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

My email is niels at animationpaper.com (writing it cryptically so bots will hopefully not find it – probably will though 😀 Anyway)

Cheers,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Rosy – 4 minutes between your posts! That was quick 🙂 I’m glad you figured it out. 😉

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Mario,

No problem – PAP is still here. Here’s the download link: https://animationpaper.com/files/pap_v4_0.exe

You can have both installed at the same time. No worries.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Rebecca,

Your post only just now turned up for approval for some weird reason – I see it is many days since you submitted this. I am truly sorry that it took this long. I have no idea what happened.

But to your question! Yeah, as a work-around you could export as mov or a sequence of png’s and use iMovie to convert to mp4 (if that is the format you need it to be in). However, it is of course not meant to do that – it aught to just work without the glitches exporting directly as mp4 from AP. Would you mind sending me your .ap file, so I can try it here and see if I get the same problem? If I do then this will help a lot when we hunt for and fix the issue.

My email is the one you got your activation key from.

Thank you! And once again, very sorry for the delay!
Niels

[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!