firstly, i am by no means an animator, i’ve done a few short animations but nothing big or frequent, so if you don’t think i have the authority to judge an animation based app, then that’s totally fine
(also i’m sorry it’s super long, i added a TLDR as compensation)
outline:
🔺Overview of Procreate Dreams
i will judge it on:
🔺Bare minimum (does it do the bare minimum as an animation app)
🔺Features (are the features it has good, are there enough, does it need any more, etc.)
🔺User-friendliness (can it be easily understood without using tutorials)
🔺Functionality (do the features function, in its current state are there any frequent glitches or errors)
🔺Money worth (is it worth the $20 USD spent on it)
🔺Final conclusion
🔺TLDR
review under cut:
-Overview of Procreate Dreams-
The UI is similar to Procreate but not exactly the same
once you click + to make a canvas you get this screen showing various presets of canvas sizes (if you press the … you can choose frame rate, a note to add is that you can’t choose the exact number, only from presets, and the lowest is 12 fps)
this is the main workspace UI with the animation timeline down at bottom and drawing on top
the drawing part works roughly the same as procreate (if you haven’t used procreate, well uh L i don’t have time to do an overview of that too) but some notable absences are no brush editing, no transform tool, no select tool, no flip canvas tool, and no liquify tool
the app is based primarily in gesture controls, so much so that there isn’t even an undo or redo button, to undo you have to click with 2 fingers and redo is click with 3 fingers
it also has 2 main forms of animation, one in which it favors
frame by frame, or as procreate dreams calls it “flipbook” and animation mainly by editing parts of existing art (such as tweening, blurring, warping, etc.)
this is what the flipbook looks like, you cannot x out of the flipbook without it going back to the split timeline/drawing screen (previous screenshot) you can move the flipbook around the screen but cannot enlarge or shrink it
in the alternative animation style you can set key frames and click and hold to open easing options, the default is ease in & out
along with key frames for move and scale, there’s also distort, warp, opacity, gaussian blur, noise, sharpen, and HSB (adjustment of hue, value, and saturation)
general notes:
procreate dreams has a “perform” button, which basically means that if you click it and press play, you can move a part of a drawing (or multiple parts if you select multiple or put them in a group on the timeline) and it will record how you move it and automatically add the keyframes which you can adjust afterward
you can adjust the canvas size by typing the exact pixel size, but unlike procreate it does not allow for as large of a size (it couldn’t reach 2000x2000)
-Bare minimum-
can you actually use it to animate??
i would say absolute bare minimum for frame by frame is have onion skins, able to choose fps, have it flip through the frames so it’s you know like an actual animation, have functioning, and preferably have layers
and bare minimum for the other style is have basic scaling options, have functioning export, and tweening with optional easing
procreate dreams passes bare minimum ✅ (wow what an accomplishment /s)
-Features-
it has the basic features such as onion skins, keyframes, etc.
it does allow for import of video, audio, photo, and text
the “perform” feature (explained in overview) is unique to procreate dreams from what i know
oddly enough the foreground and background feature that was in procreate animation was not added to procreate dreams
clipping mask, layer mask, and blending modes are there
BUT there is an extreme lacking of certain vital features
in frame by frame animation you can use many layers, but cannot re order them, and re ordering the actual frames is possible but rather difficult and i’m not actually sure how to do it intentionally and deleting frames is also a nuisance in the same way
you can also not re arrange the gallery images, i’m guessing this is because unlike procreate which stores art in the app, procreate dreams stores it in the files
there is no select tool and transform can only be done in the timeline which is just inconvenient, but to do any rotation you have to manually type a number of degrees it should rotate, you CANNOT rotate it normally
there is no physical undo/redo button, only the gesture for it, there is no brush editing, there is no physical import button for brushes (you can still import brushes but it is less convenient)
original procreate had a feature to hold down the pen after drawing a shape, and it would automatically make the shape but perfect and you could adjust points of it, procreate dreams does not have this
(there are of course more features but these are the major things i thought should be mentioned)
in features, procreate dreams is lacking, it has many good features but really important ones are missing ❌
-User-Friendliness-
i am a bit biased in this category because the UI and way it functions is many times very similar to procreate which i have been using for 4 years so take what i say here with a grain of salt
most everything in the app i figured out on my own without tutorials, and i did it rather quickly
i find it to be very easy to understand even for someone who has never seen the app ✅
-Functionality-
most of the features do function, but there are a few issues i should mention
occasionally on the gallery screen it just froze, but closing and opening the app again fixed it, and that didnt happen much
the brushes also look a bit more pixelated and not as smooth as procreate’s(??)
the import video and audio feature issues however, did happen much
i don’t know if this would be an issue for a newer ipad but any time i tried importing a video (even as short as 2 seconds) it said “this video exceeds your device’s capabilities” or if i tried importing too long a video it just crashed
purely audio files are a similar issue, except it COULD import a 2 second audio, but crashed at a 30 second one
in its current state, functionality is mostly passing, but audio is oftentimes such an important part of animation that i cannot truthfully give this a pass, but i won’t give it a fail either ❓
-Money worth-
in terms of money,
No.
$20 is an outrageous amount for an app that fails to import longer than a 2 second audio, having no select tool, an annoying transform tool, and many other missing features that even FLIPACLIP can do without even paying ❌
-Final conclusion-
i have full faith in the procreate team, i truly believe they can make this an absolutely amazing app, but right now, i would highly advise against buying it
i was really excited for it because i’ve been a loyal procreate fan for 4 years and go on about how amazing procreate is, but this is just disappointing
i will update you all on if it receives any major updates that fixes or adds features, until then, my conclusion is that procreate dreams is not currently worth your money ❌
-TLDR-
Procreate Dreams is missing a lot of really important features like a select tool, rotation, and the transform tool which it has but is inconvenient to use, and the audio import barely even works
i have full hope that the procreate dreams devs can and will fix it and make it a great app, but as it is now, you’d have better luck using flipaclip for free
it is actually painful for me to say that you shouldn’t get procreate dreams cause i love procreate so much, but i know that this is just BAD
go buy procreate instead, i have literally no complaints about that one it’s the best and i love it
also i’ve got art going up tomorrow!! so you get that at least
thinking about revan when i should be sleeping. as much as i enjoy sor revan i really really really really wish revans gender/face was kept ambiguous. i knowwww comics and books and whatever made revan a man before swtor and I think even before kotor2 but. :( its so fun to have ambiguous character...... and keeping revan masked could be something so cool to play with
man there are so many swtor short stories that exist on the swtor site....... i wonder if anyone has a nice archive or sorting/discovery system for them
