Singing aside (not often how I start these posts, but Xmas cheer and all that), I full on caved in and treated myself to an iPad and Apple Pencil (1st gen). Not the iPad Pro mind (unfortunately they didn’t accept exposure /s), but the standard 10.2” 2021 edition which is currently at £319 (a pretty reasonable price IMO).
OK, so a bit of backstory here: I’ve been wanting to be able to animate remotely for a while as I often feel pretty trapped at my desk at home without a portable computer, so if I want to animate (like I do 99% of the time), then I have to go to my desk and are only able to work there. I can’t even animate in a different warmer room in my house, let alone on holiday/ travelling, on weekends away, coffee shops and other such locations. For a while, I’ve been trying to come up with a solution for a portable set up, to enable me to at least do some of the work whilst out and about and the finishing/ fine tuning and comping whilst home.
But, I wasn’t really able to find a suitable solution or animation app which would match TVPaint. Until, I finally found my solution: enter Callipeg. Fanfare please! Callipeg is a fairly new animation app on the scene (conceived 2020) which was built/ developed especially for iPad (all versions with iPadOS 13 or later) and Apple Pencil (both generations). The team behind it are all animators/ work in the animation industry and this knowledge is evident in the UI and usability of the app. As a professional animator myself, I can hardly fault it (especially knowing it’s still in development).
I’ve never animated on anything else beside a Mac/ MacBook, so I was pretty apprehensive going in. I mean all the videos I watched prior to purchasing my iPad made Callipeg look/ sound excellent, but I kind of thought there was something too good to be true about it (maybe I’m a pessimist)! Though there was something about it which I thought, what if it is as good as it sounded, so the iPad was purchased and the app was subsequently downloaded. As soon as I opened Callipeg, I was in love. It was perfect for what I wanted it for.
But, I wasn’t really able to find a suitable solution or animation app which would match TVPaint. Until, I finally found my solution: enter Callipeg. Fanfare please! Callipeg is a fairly new animation app on the scene (conceived 2020) which was built/ developed especially for iPad (all versions with iPadOS 13 or later) and Apple Pencil (both generations). The team behind it are all animators/ work in the animation industry and this knowledge is evident in the UI and usability of the app. As a professional animator myself, I can hardly fault it (especially knowing it’s still in development).
I’ve never animated on anything else beside a Mac/ MacBook, so I was pretty apprehensive going in. I mean all the videos I watched prior to purchasing my iPad made Callipeg look/ sound excellent, but I kind of thought there was something too good to be true about it (maybe I’m a pessimist)! Though there was something about it which I thought, what if it is as good as it sounded, so the iPad was purchased and the app was subsequently downloaded. As soon as I opened Callipeg, I was in love. It was perfect for what I wanted it for.
Here are some of my favourite features:
- The choice of brushes/ brush options and the fact that there was a ‘fill brush’ setting.
- The exporting: selecting ‘export with structure’ on the PNG option meant it created a new folder for each layer, rather than needing to do them separately. Please never remove this feature!!
- The interface- really easy to navigate and loved the frame forward/ backward buttons on the side panel- meaning I don’t need to keep going to the timeline to move forward a frame.
- Being able to make colour palettes for each project pretty easily.
- The ease of importing video layers.
I could go on…
Now being a bit picky, I’ll list some things I would have liked to have included:
- Firstly, an adjustment layer/ effect layer where you can change the colour of a layer by selecting all the frames. It would be so useful for adjusting colour choices near the end of the animation if something doesn’t quite look right, rather than having to go in and change them frame by frame. This is me being picky though, because I always had in mind to finalise the shots in TVPaint, which does allow me to do that.
- Another feature I wouldn’t mind seeing added would be an option when using the selection tool to delete what is inside the selection.
- Finally, the addition of clipping masks would be fantastic! These would be super useful, especially when shading.
Though if you check out their roadmap, you can see what they’re working on to add in the future, which I can see some of these features are. Also, their website has a comprehensive user guide in both written and video format, which was great for learning the app.
I also want to say that wow how good are iPads for drawing?! I have been using a trusty Wacom tablet (one without a screen) for all my animating since 2011. I thought having a tablet with a screen wouldn’t really make any difference, so never entertained using anything else before. But seriously, being able to draw directly onto a screen makes such a difference. It feels a lot more like drawing on paper, a feel I never had while using my Wacom. I honestly feel like this is such as game changer for my work. I can produce everything a lot quicker and create the brush strokes I actually want to create. I half wish I had bought an iPad Pro instead, if I knew I was going to like it this much! Next time, eh…
If anyone is unsure whether to get the app, I’d say just go for it. As far as my knowledge goes, it’s the best animation app available on iPad and I’ve not regretted it since. I'll be using it for my upcoming short film.
Below is the first clip I created on Callipeg. I finished it in TVPaint (changing the colours and adding the gradient background). It took 10 hours in total, for 61 frames, full coloured/ shaded- which I think is fairly quick...
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