Bunny Bouncing (Patreon)

Procreate Dreams was released a few weeks ago. It's Savage Interactive's animation software for the iPad, based on Procreate which is their really fantastic drawing software. Every piece of art that I do is done in Procreate on the iPad Pro.

So a lot of people were really excited about Dreams. Unfortunately after watching quite a number of reviews on YouTube and watching some process videos, it seems like it was released pretty half-baked. Even at only $20, a lot of people are waiting to see if it'll be improved with patches before buying it—including me.

However, nearly everyone was comparing to a new iPad app called ToonSquid. Everyone was talking about how strong its animation tools were and how its drawing tools were similar to, if slightly simpler than, Procreates. It was also only $10. 

So I bought that one to try out. And it's great! This animation was done in ToonSquid. The drawing function is nearly as good as Procreate's, the animation tools and timeline organization is light years ahead of Procreate and even Dreams—more more on par with professional tools. It has more features, weirdly. And it's cheaper! 

It's kind of a cliche that a bad workman blames his tools. I'll be the first to admit I'm not much of a traditional animator and yet I always found Procreate's animation tools to be too clunky to do much with. It always felt like I was fighting it. But I was able to do this loop in a fraction of the time in ToonSquid as it would've taken me in Procreate. It also offered me the flexibility to try things that I wouldn't have even bothered with in Procreate because it would've been too cumbersome. So in this instance, having the right tool really made a humongous difference! It's amazing how much more fun and fast animation becomes when you've got the right stuff for it. x) I'll probably end up doing more of these little hand drawn animation loops since I've got a fun and powerful tool to do them with now.

Anyway, if you're interested in trying out animation and you've got an iPad + Apple Pencil, I absolutely recommend ToonSquid for $10!