10 years of Procreate: new animation app teaches pictures to walk
The successful art app "Procreate" is celebrating its 10th anniversary in a special way: It is getting a sibling. "Procreate Dreams" is designed for animations and allows all the steps for this in the app itself.
In London, the company Procreate presented its latest creation: The "Procreate Dreams" app. It makes creating animations as fun and flexible as drawing pictures with Procreate. At least that's what CEO and co-founder James Cuda said during a video conference for media professionals.
"Procreate" has sold over 30 million copies
Procreate has been working on the iPad-only app for ten years. By limiting itself to iPad OS, the company can concentrate fully on one system and adapt all functions to the iPad and Apple Pencil. With great success: the app has already been sold over 30 million times worldwide.
Source: Michelle Brändle
Now Procreate has set itself a whole new challenge. James Cuda is following the motto of Walter Disney:
We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.
Cuda doesn't want to programme software to make money, it wants to make money to make more software. Users praise the relatively constant price of the software: "Procreate" currently costs 16 euros or 12 francs in the app store. One-off. Without a plan, without in-app purchases.
The benefits of Procreate continued
The ease of use of "Procreate" is one of the things that makes the software so successful. The company has therefore adopted its handling in the new app. The interface is similar and familiar gestures also work here. For example, you can zoom in with a double tap and move objects with your finger.
If you already have a whole range of brushes that you like to use in "Procreate", these are also available in Dreams.
"Procreate Dreams" - one app for everything
Much more important, however, is the overall concept. Animation requires moving images, video cuts, colour adjustments and the creation of backgrounds and characters. You should be able to do all of this directly in Procreate Dreams. One app for everything.
In order to process so many complex steps in one app, a high level of computing power is required. Cuda promises perfect cooperation between the iPad's CPU and GPU. This requires an iPad with an M1 or M2 chip. The developers at Procreate have worked on a "real time engine", which should enable smooth and latency-free work. A suitable audio engine also helps out. As soon as I have been able to try this out in the app, I will report on my experiences with it in an article.
Source: Michelle Brändle
So you can edit audio directly, create effects and use keyframes for backgrounds. If you have videos and photos that you want to edit, this is also possible. It should even be possible to add drawings to a created video.
New file format and absurd resolution
Common image formats such as JPEG and PNG can contain a resolution of up to 16K. A new technology allows a much higher resolution. A file in "Procreate Dreams" should therefore be able to contain up to one million pixels squared.
Source: Michelle Brändle
According to Cuda, there was previously no suitable file format for saving all of this in a single file. So a new one had to be created - appropriately with the abbreviation ".dreams". The file bundles video, drawings, photos, audio as well as keyframes and various settings. The file should be able to be opened very quickly. There is no time to make a coffee while loading a file, he said at the presentation.
Not least, and in keeping with the Apple ecosystem, the files are automatically saved in your iCloud and provided with security protection.
Too good to be cheap?
Of course, you should be able to see for yourself. This will be possible very soon and at a reasonable price, in my opinion. The app will be available from 22 November, in 18 different languages and at a one-off price of just under 20 US dollars. That's the equivalent of around 18 euros or francs. November can come!
Cover photo: Michelle Brändle
In my world, Super Mario chases Stormtroopers with a unicorn and Harley Quinn mixes cocktails for Eddie and Peter at the beach bar. Wherever I can live out my creativity, my fingers tingle. Or maybe it's because nothing flows through my veins but chocolate, glitter and coffee.