Name: Animation Desk® Draw & Animate
Rating: 4.22727 (14102 reviews)

User Reviews for Animation Desk® Draw & Animate

4.23 out of 5

14.1K Ratings

3 years ago, Kendall. C

Great app, but lose the glitches

I have been using this app for a while, and the tools available from the start (without the pro version) are enough to create some decent looking art. The app does also offer optional layering for your animations, which will also enhance your drawing’s appearance. As a final pro for the app, it does pretty well tracking your finger and other makeshift pens, if you do not have pen device available for use and lag is rarely a problem. However, there are a handful of major problems with the app that should be looked at. First example, you may experience a bug that causes a section of drawing to be completely erased for no particular reason, and when the user tries to reverse the bug (with the back button) it does not work. This is a rare occasion, however it is still a major problem I have come across. To expand on the back button, I don’t understand why the button only offers a certain amount of times you may go back when it is pressed. This is a problem, because when you have a background already drawn, and you run out of back button uses, you have to erase the portion you don’t want. But, along with the erasing of the unwanted portion, it will erase the background portion as well. Please adress these problems, because I love to use this app.

5 years ago, RoiBRocker

Some REALLY helpful updates that can really improve Animation Desk:

I thought of some really helpful updates that would really help the drawing community. The first one is the pen. The pen which draws a circular line is to small at max size, and should be bigger at max size. Its hard to draw stick figures with such a small pen, and it would be amazing if it could be bigger. Also, the majority of animators who animate with this application animate on an iPad Pro, like me, and drawing with one hand on the screen and an Apple Pencil on it at the same time interrupts the drawing that were drawing. I think their should be a setting to make it so that the screen doesn’t sense my hand but only the Apple Pencil. Many other applications already have this and it would be great if this did to. Stabilizer: If you’ve ever used Paint Tools Sai, you know what I’m talking about. In Paint Tools Sai, they have an option called the stabilizer which makes lines more smooth by giving what your drawing a delay to make the drawing more curvier. In Animation Desk, my circles always turn out straight and not round. A circle looks lie 7 lines put together and if Animation Desk hade a stabilizer tool, that would be AMAZING! I really hope you read this, because it took me a long time to type, and if you did, please please please add these things to Animation desk in the next update! Thanks! 🙂

5 years ago, 😄😁😊🙂😀

Pretty good!

This app is pretty great! All though, I’ve only been using the app for a few days and have not discovered every feature about this app. I’m not sure if there are any tools such as a ruler, a circle maker, and maybe a cut-out. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough. (That’s probably the case.) But yes, I do recommend this app to anybody. Maybe even starters. I do recommend this app over FlipaClip. In FlipaClip, you can’t really draw straight lines. So basically everything just looks rough. Congrats to the developer(s) who made such a great functional app! You did so good! But, I do feel like this may be confusing to some people just by reading the reviews. Also, I’m glad you are commenting back to others in need of help. I was wondering if maybe you could tell me we’re the tools are if there are any. If you see this comment and respond, thank you for reading this. Once agin I do recommend this app. Please do download this if you are into animating and drawing. Thank you!

3 years ago, Unhappy Animator

Good for learning the ropes, BUT way too glitchy

I’ve encountered multiple issues while working on an animation. I’ve spent over a month working on an animation, and given that it’s my very first one, I’m extremely frustrated. I will only be talking about the most recent major problems I’ve had. Earlier today I was working on my animation and it was perfectly fine. These problems occurred after a couple of hours. First of all, while I was working on adding to each of my frames, the background for one of my frames became the background for all of my frames. I was nearly finished with the line art for all of my frames when this happened. This is incredibly frustrating because I was using the background as references for the character movements, and originally each of the backgrounds were the person in different positions. Secondly, soon after, I saw that the line art for all of my frames became a previous version. What I mean by this is that I spent the last week or so darkening all of my line art, but the current version is how the line art looked before it was darkened and before I added heads to the person I was animating. The last week or two of my work are now gone. I have also filed a ticket through the app and hope to receive a response soon. I have been working on this animation since December 22nd. It is now February 2nd. I have put countless hours into this and have gotten too far to see it go to waste.

3 years ago, chandrareeves

A little laggy but so far I love it

Honestly I Love it’s really fun and cute I love how it’s really calming to look at the only problem I have is that it is pretty laggy, I recently just saw that 3 days ago you guys had fixed the problem but in my case after literally after a minute the app would stop and freeze and I try to push random buttons but it would still be frozen. Other then that I do have a few suggestions I would definitely give this app 5 stars because I love how the canvas is small and cute it honestly makes me want to animate with big canvases it’s really stressful for me because it makes me feel like I have to add more to the Animation. But On This App I feel very comfortable and very chill when it comes to this app but the suggestions that I have is * stabilization* It would be grate to have a stabilization pen or tool so we can have more of clean lines as I do have shaky hands it would definitely be very helpful to have. *Vector* and last is vector it helps whenever I want to scale my drawing big or small without loosing any Resolution (won’t get blurry) every time I change the size of my drawing. Other then that I really love this app if these things get fixed and if my suggestions actually go into planning this will be total Five star!!!

4 days ago, a Really good reading

Look for other options

I downloaded this because I was on vacation at the time, heading to the airport, I didn’t have time to look at other options. But please- look at other options. The app is decent for drawing, they have some pretty good features, but first- the whole “going pro” thing. I don’t wanna sound like one of those people who’s like, “ don’t make everything pro” as if the app can’t try to make money, but they make too much pro. Like, ads are one thing, maybe a couple features are also fine in my book. But they only give you three layers and they only let you use ONE of each of the tools! It’s ridiculous. Also, this app makes me angry. First, sometimes, I think, depending on what you’re using it on, it just doesn’t work when you try to draw. You have to end up pressing down really hard! Second- this app crashes. Third, one time, there was another issue with this app (I accidentally clicked on one of the buttons and when I tried to click off I couldn’t press anything, my screen was frozen) I decided to double click, and swipe out. My progress? All the hard work I’d spent the last five frames? I think you can guess. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

2 years ago, annoyed dot maker

Liked it until it deleted 150 frames.

I was recently trying to do an experiment with animating on this app. For a while, things were going pretty well. My animation wasn’t more that a bunch of pink dots on a white background so progress went fast. I’m sure this isn’t the main purpose of the app but it actually came out quite cool. Over the course of about two hours, it made it to almost 185 frames. I was just about to stop when suddenly I noticed a bug. One of the frames got switched out with a frame further down. I thought that I would just delete that frame and recreate the old one. Then, the app crashed and nearly the entire thing vanished. I’m glad that I’m not like one of those guys who’ve been working on this for days but I wasn’t necessarily pleased with this to say the least. I’m not sure what caused that to happen but I believe that either it’s a problem with the app, like many of the other glitches I’ve discovered or if it’s something else. If you can, can you please try to fix this. I’m not the only one who’s run into this problem and it the app would be much better if you put some effort into fixing it.

1 year ago, Firefox99957

Horrible. Not recommended if you want to make actual animations.

My first complaint about the app is that you have to pay for everything. More than one storyboard, over 3/4 of brushes, ect. There are little packs you can try out for 3 days at a time, but I don’t want to have to change my brush set if i’m trying to create an animation for days or weeks at a time. The only thing close to a blend brush is a watercolor kit, which i’m not patient enough for.. the kid is called the patient artist kit. Literally just give me a blend brush and i’d be more happy. Also, you can’t upload audio. It’s so hard to line up dialogue by eyeballing it and adding it with an editor afterwards. Other than the fact you need to pay to even have a pleasurable experience, there aren’t any bugs that i could complain about. Other than the zoom in function being wonky (you needing to put both your hands on the frame in a very specific way and needing to try multiple times to get it right), there aren’t any bugs and the app runs smoothly. I just wish this app wasn’t just a method for quick cash and actually worked as a flexible option for beginning animators and experienced animators alike. If you want something better go look up Flipaclip, it’s way better overall.

4 years ago, SomeWhinyNerd

Change it back

I really liked this app a lot until the most recent update as of writing this, they moved all the buttons around in a way that I think is inferior the the previous layout and added s scroll thing that shows you all the frames on the bottom that takes up way to much of the screen. You used to be able to draw on the whole screen and could make the toolbars disappear if you needed to draw something there, but now you can only draw on a small section of the screen in the middle which really bothers me, this is somewhat remedied by being able to zoom in. Furthermore the interface is almost unrecognizable and I am having trouble finding all the tools again and instead things that I don’t need in my face while animating are taking front and center, for example the share button is now always in the upper right corner. You used to have to upload from the home screen which I thought was fine as you would be done by the time you did that, I am sure I will feel better as I get more used to it but if anyone knows if there are some settings I could change to make it go back to the way it was please tell me.

6 years ago, Seagull Squad

This is the best animation app you will find!

I have found many great animation apps, including FlipaClip, sticknodes, this one, and even more. After all that, Animation Desk is, and has always been-in my opinion-the best one out there, and the easiest to use. Thank you to the creators of this app. I might get Animation Desk ultimate one day. Though this is one of the best animation apps there is, I have a few suggestions; sometimes I want to loop one part of an animation, so I copy the frames, but each copy goes after the original frame. I would really like the copied frames to go to the end of the animation. This would make it much easier to do that function. Another thing that isn’t necessarily a drawback, but would be a nice addition would be a v-cam. One final suggestion would be to make all the animations arranged as thumbnails, and you could be able to scroll up and down, to find things more easily. Thank you for reading my suggestions, and I hope you consider adding them. All in all, this app is awesome, and I really recommend it. Sincerely, a really happy animator.

2 years ago, yeetmcburger

App is okay, but the bugs aren’t

I’ve been using animation deck for a hot minute now and it’s… okay, I guess. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it does get the job done. It also doesn’t so blatantly heckle you about getting premium like flipaclip or other popular animation studios do, so that’s definitely something it has over its competitors. However, the reviews aren’t lying. This app has a HUGE issue with deleting frames and it’s horrible for learning. It normally deletes the newer frames near the end, so it’s typically not the really important frames you need to worry about, but it’s not viable for making small animations (because the majority of the frames will go bye) and it’s not good for large animation projects like thesis films or feature length films, because the time lost working on the missing frames will make it completely unworth it. It’s hard to tell what target audience they’re trying to market to, when it’s both beginners and intermediate level animators that get held at the sword. They need to fix the app before I can feel comfortable coming back and animating, because I’m tired of losing the progress I made the night before.

5 years ago, Meteorboy

Great fun until it deleted hours if work

Initially I was very happy with this app until after spending multiple days and dozens of hours on one animation, the app froze and when I reopened it, hundreds of frames were just missing without explanation. As you know, if you’ve spent any time animating, it is a very slow and tedious process so to have this happen after hours of work is totally unacceptable. Why would I ever commit to another project again knowing that at any moment all my hard work could just vanish? There are multiple other bugs too, that make this app annoying to deal with and obvious that it never should have been released yet, but the fact that hundreds of frames can just vanish from a project should be reason enough for any serious animator to want to steer clear of this app. I reached out to the company about this issue and wanted to give them a chance to explain before I wrote a review but their response, which came a week later was very dismissive and for some reason assumed I was using an old outdated version of the app, when I was in fact using this, their most updated version which I har only downloaded a couple of weeks ago. I very much regret downloading the app and especially laying for the annual subscription. Totally useless.

4 months ago, ipanda343

AMAZING

So I just got this app, bought the subscription, and it is AMAZING. Tysm developers for making this!! I did notice one thing, though. You can’t add text to the videos and leave it there. The second you touch anything else, poof. It’s gone. This is really annoying, but I just write it. It’s annoying to have to write, but this is still a really good app! 😊 I found another thing, too. It’s SO hard to save the videos to your photos on your device. Not to the app, to your device. Saving to the app literally takes nothing. You just exit your video and it saves. You just can’t save it to your photos. This is really annoying because I have to screen record, then crop, then I can save it. Other than those 2 things, this app is really spectacular!Btw I know everyone thinks the reviews are made by AIs/robots, but just to let you know, I’m not an AI. AIs are programmed to make no mistakes in grammar or anything. Just to show I’m human:kusydbfkvhysbrkufyvgliysdhfgulyerbflivyherfliy

6 years ago, Dooditz

Fantastic animation tool

I’m a professional artist that’s always wanted to get into animation, and I’d highly suggest this app to anyone looking to do any level of animating. It’s easily the best animation app I’ve found for iPad Pro. My only problems are superficial ones. Seems like I have to click back and forth to make the smallest changes. If you want to change layers, you have to click a couple menu buttons back, then click back over to the colors section, then click over to the brush section to adjust size, etc. If you’re used to a program like procreate, this will take a bit of adjusting, because the way it’s set up, everything is kinda all over the place. I look at this app like I’m trying to animate on a messy desk where I spend time trying to find my things - as opposed to an app like procreate where everything is just right there in front of you. Having said that, this app is so much fun. If you’re looking to scratch the itch of animating on your iPad, look no further. Thanks for such a cool app!

1 year ago, 😏no😒

Pls fix this

The glitches in this app when I was selecting my drawing to move it it kept deleting my selection and I got so mad and irritated like I’m tryna make an animation and when I don’t need the selections any more I can’t find a way how to uniquip the selection I try so many like clicking on the brushes so I can select another one instead of that one but no matter how hard I tried IT KEPT DELETING EVERYTHING this is staying a 2 star until you FIX it edit: it is me again and by this what I mean is that one of your tools ya know the selection tool that you guys have and I understood that you didn’t understand me because I was bad at explaining but so anyways when I was using your guys selection tool it wouldn’t let me move my drawing and I tried so many way to make my drawing move but it just end up deleting my drawing when I use your guy’s selection tool let me now if you need more information just let me know with another developer response but I think this is enough information just let me know if you are going to fix your selection because meanwhile I will continue working on flip a clip until you fix this

6 years ago, Avonette

Needs some adjustments

This app is very useful, when I first purchased it (for free) I was excited, then the app tried to show me how to use it which wasn’t exactly very helpful. It is very hard (at least for me) to use it because when I try to draw something I forget how to use it at times and I think..what do I do? It’s not like I have any problems remembering! I wish it was less complicated, but once I got the hang of things (kinda) it was a little easier to use (kinda) nowadays I don’t use it often I think I will delete this app. This app is useful and I would recommend it if you love to draw and it’s something your good at. You can make it a movie ish.. and that’s where it gets fun! I love to draw and it’s so fun also challenging, but I am a horrible drawer..so for me it’s stressful to use this app! Please just try and see how you like this app you never know! It could be a hoppy someday or even more! And I only rate it three star cause I wish it was easier to use and I’m horrible at drawing which makes using it boring and gives me a heart attack not that it will give you one I’m just saying...

5 months ago, RemmyGambit

good app but audio aspect is frustrating

[this review is for the iPad app, single device subscription] Convenient to be able to upload images from device as frames, so you can draw your frames in another app (like Fresco) and import them to put together in animation desk. However, adding usable audio has some glaring issues. Having to upload audio thru iTunes is an unnecessary chore, especially when the file isn’t music. It’s also extremely frustrating that the iTunes upload menu within the animation desk app has no search feature or playlist options - you have to scroll thru your ENTIRE library of songs (I have a LOT) to find the file. If you remove the one you have and need to import it again, gotta repeat that scrolling. It’s also frustrating not to have access to the audio while scrubbing thru frames for lip syncing to be able to add or remove frames as needed. Instead, it opens an export window when you go to add sound. This will let you see how the audio pairs w the video, but it won’t let you adjust frames in that window. If you don’t have enough frames already in your project, the audio will be cut off and you have to reupload the file - adding extra frames after the fact does not fix the issue. Being able to easily upload non-iTunes audio files and then scrub thru and edit frames with audible sound without having to exit to an export screen would make things a lot easier, especially for animating over voice acting.

2 years ago, PizzaFaceEater on PJ

great app, but can be frustrating due to a certain bug.

Watch out! There’s a serious bug in which when you duplicate frames, theres the possibility of those frames duplicating over other frames, deleting them from existence. There is also one where sometimes if you cut a drawing and try to paste it, it will say its saving and to not exit, when you go in to paste it will then show it as if you never copied it,essentially erasing your drawing. these two bugs are detrimental to the overall experience of this app. I’ve deleted this app many times throughout the months out of frustration over these two bugs. This is a great app, the communication from the developers are very communicative, which shows their genuine care for the community, and never once have they been overly intrusive on their users. I really hope they read this review and fix it in later times. This is a great app for people trying to learn to animate, but it can be improved. I think the best way to start is fixing this main bug.

3 years ago, topi DA corgi

Honestly, it needs improving but i love it

So first of all, it's not fair that you cannot make more than 3 sequences. It's always asking you, "Get infinite sequences" or someting along the lines of that, it gets really anoyying having to delete my animations and export them to my photo library so I can make more. Second, it is laggy. Whenever I copy and paste, it lags a lot. And it gets to be annoying because then I have to duplicate the frames and erase the parts I don't want. Third here it comes...the offer again, the brush types! Oh we have to be pro...I MEAN this is also annoying because I want other types of brushes TOO and the fact you have to be pro is just so inaccurate. I am sorry if I am offending you, I love this game, these are just my opinions. Bye bye! -your friend ( I am using a 10.3.4 IOS update thing but I need a new iPad for it to update, also a two year old I also don't know the model but I think it's an Apple iPad)

5 years ago, JustChessPlease

It’s not bad....

I’ve been using this app for a while now, and overall, I think it’s pretty good. It’s not an app for professionals, (which I am not,) but still gives you a wide variety of tools to work with. The screen isn’t always responsive though, which makes it difficult to draw a single frame. When I draw, I have my pencil, (or whatever drawing utensil I’m using,) in a sideways position, to where the side of the graphite is pressing down against the paper instead of the tip. However, when I use this app, the screen doesn’t always react to the side of the pen when it is pressed down against it, and it just makes digital drawing quite frustrating. I know you get a lot of 1-star reviews from little kids who rage on you because they’re just mad that they can’t draw, but I’m not trying to be one of those people. Actually, everything negative said in this review isn’t really even your fault. I just wanted to let you know the problems I was having. If there is any way you might be able to fix this please do. Thanks! :)

4 years ago, Alex Kotsifas

Kept deleting frames

I really loved this app, and used it as my primary place to animate for a while. Granted when I wanted polished drawings a would draw them on a different app and just move them over, but either way I liked it a lot and it was a solid workspace. However a bug arose where I had a set amount of frames that I would be moving through and tweaking. Suddenly one of my frames would double, and delete another one in the process. It would leave me with the same number of frames as before, except two were the same. I would delete one and be left with less frames. It did this at random and made my working more stressful as I knew I was losing random frames the more I worked on a file. I ended up deleting the app. I might download it again and see if the bug re-appears, because I really do like this app and I haven’t found another one I’m happy with. Please look into whatever’s caused this bug or how to fix it. Thank you!

3 years ago, lizie123456890

It’s an okay app PLEASE READ THE EDIT

this was the first app i used for animating and it’s a pretty good app but i have a few suggestions. 1. maybe try to make an option to import a video background. when i was working on an animation the background was no longer there and i couldn’t import it back. i had to start it all over again. 2. can you make it so that we can zoom in more. that’s really all the things that you need to fix. but overall its an amazing app and i would recommend it to beginners :) (edit) Hello i would just like to ask if you can update the app soon as i said before my background got deleted and it has happened again when i was at least 80 frames in (all that took about 2+ months btw) and i would like to get it back so i won’t have to start it again for the 3-4 time :)

3 years ago, Wøłvíê

Hah! This is a disgrace!

Developer(s), Hello. Your game has completely ripped me off. This is my first time animating anything, and I’m so disappointed it had to be this app. I’m just learning the ropes, of course, so my animations are not perfect, but your game is definitely not satisfactory. I can only make three scenes, unless I PAY. I cannot add subtitles or sound unless I PAY. This is what I’ve feared. Another ‘pay-to-play’ app. And even worse, it’s an animating app; one of my dream jobs. I think you have possibly crushed my dreams with this app. My first animation was a dump. Thanks. Maybe I should just become an author when I grow up, instead, so I don’t have to deal with crappy animation games. I’m so very sorry if you took this personally, but PLEASE don’t make pay-to-play games. My mother won’t allow me to get Procreate because it costs money, and I’m sure that app is much, much better than this rip-off. Please do not take this personally, just please try to make an animating game that DOESN’T crush the dreams of an aspiring animator by making her pay for every little thing. Thank you, Catelyn the Warrior Cats Fan

6 years ago, Harelow17

Things Always Change...

Hey, I just wanted to say that I remember 2 years ago I was still a crappy animator, and a furry, that wasn’t good at animating until I got this app, it was a great thing! But as soon as I starting drifting away things changed, in a good and bad way... There are now multiple brush options which I do enjoy... but there are now things I find annoying (or always have.) the 500 zoom isn’t that good.. I wish we could rotate the frame around so if your doing a upside down picture or animation, you can turn it 180° degrees so you can draw it. Just a suggestion.... Now there’s only 2 frames (not including the background) that you can animate with. Maybe it’s just for the phone version but I found this annoying.. and so far those are my only complaints.. thank you and good day. P.S. Thanks for adding the paint bucket to the phone version!

3 months ago, gyfgggghhhb

Idk man

You know like, I’d rather use Flipaclip and ibis paint x than this for a bunch of reasons Reason 1: The toolbar for the undo and stuff is so confusing to the point where I thought that you had no undo button Reason 2: When you import a video it will play in reverse as well as some animations that come with the app and stuff (Idk if it only happened to me but it’s only with a few) Reason 3: You can’t even really make anything good with the limited options you have and the god awful brushes it comes with Reason 4: The animations you can make are choppy and sketchy (I’m not saying I don’t like sketching I’m saying you can’t even make a decent drawing worth finishing in this app) and you have a weird limit to frames, why 36 why not just limit it to 30 or smth like Flipaclip, they made it so the max frame rate was 30 even tho nobody uses more that 24 (Or at least I hope not) Wow that’s a lot of reasons I really don’t like this app Well that’s my review, maybe you can make the interface a bit better, as for so on thank you for reading the biography that I wrote For developers: I think that if you made your app more like Flipaclip or ibis paint x people would like it more, and I feel like this app had potential but it wasn’t what I Imagined, also I came back to this app after like two year or smth and I came back as a great artist, I thought maybe the reason I didn’t like the app before was because I wasn’t used to animating yet, but no the app just is bad

3 years ago, Bbbbbbbsbsxacbad

Not good for actual projects

I need to be able to merge layers and change settings on brushes to get things done really. I spent 30 minutes on a frame that could’ve been done in 5 because the bucket is a million worlds of broken and had to very carefully fill in a detailed area. I don’t have enough layers and can’t merge them to get more so I have to do 5-10 layers of work on 4 without the ability to make more room. I also can’t zoom in far enough to work on small detailing and things of the sort. It would take the help of multiple other apps to get anything done on here. It’s got some really good potential I think if some of the smaller details were added or changed up a bit it would be really useful for me and my colleagues. It’s really easy to navigate and would be good for beginners and all that. But it needs some work. I feel like after a few bug fixes and updates, it will probably be one of the best animation apps I can use on mobile.

5 years ago, Paung19

Very Buggy

I like this app a lot, but I am very deterred from purchasing any upgrades because the base app loses frames, layers, and is very inconsistent in exporting sequences. I use the iPad Pro 2018, so I know my hardware is capable of far more complex operations than exporting 100 frames of lineart into a video. If the weird bugs were to be gone completely, I would probably give this app 4 or even 5 stars (the learning curve is high but it’s a very capable free app), but with the time I’ve lost redrawing simple frames and losing layers/toolbars (the left toolbar started disappearing and I can’t bring it back, even closing the app. It might come back on a hard restart but it shouldn’t be an issue in the first place), the effort to make even a simple animation warns me that trying anything more detailed will cost me far more time. I will update my review if the stability issues are resolved, but as it stands I cannot recommend this app for anyone besides those learning the fundamentals.

2 years ago, Gmi40

Not very good

For a while I’ve been looking for a nice 2D animation software for iOS and this isn’t the one for me. A big problem I have is the fact that turning is kind of weird, often one of my fingers is outside of the box and I create lines instead. Also whenever I push undo theres a 50/50 chance it will or will not work and is very frustrating. The lack some basic features is pretty irritating for me also, like the fact that there isn't a stabilizer tool as far as I know. There are also tons of small things in the app that annoy me like when you play your current project and end the playback, it brings you to the last frame you watched during playback and when I turn most of the time a line appears for example. Overall I dislike this app due to what I’ve listed, it’s too finicky and doesn’t certain basic art features, maybe given some time and maybe my opinion may improve but for now, not very good.

5 years ago, gearnut animations

A good app but just one kind of big issue...

This is the first animation app I have ever used to make cartoons and its good but there is one problem that is kinda big camera panning with all the cartoons I have made they all seem kind of lifeless with how stiff the camera is like in cartoons like on TV the camera can move like when a character moves the back ground moves with them like even when there is a fight the camera shifts you know what I am talking about? But with this app I can’t seem to get the background to move and with the cartoon I’m planing to make if I cant figure that out I may have to switch apps but I have seen you can do that from looking at the cartoon in the tutorial on animated story boards and the horse cartoon they show but there is nothing I can do to find a guide on the internet so if someone can clear that up it would be a HUGE help.

6 years ago, veel a weasel

Could be better

Ok so it has potential however it does not cover the basics. 1st: The canvas!! I can’t stress this enough but how you have it set up does not work. I find it too small and the when you zoom in it is nearly impossible to move, and it is clearly not meant for details. You also can’t rotate the canvas which I personally like to do when I draw. 2nd: You don’t have a nice fine liner. This is a basic thing. You have a pencil like thing with texture, you have a brush which has an uneven flow to it, you have the calligraphy pen looking tool which can be used as a fine liner however you can not make it very big, and then you have the chisel thing which can be funky, none of these are very good for outline and other things. You need a flat and versatile marker which can be big and small. 3rd: This is the last problem I have found with it. On smaller screens some do the controls are too small to press easily. It is more of an inconvenience then anything however. Hope this helps.

4 years ago, Megrg34

Disappointingly awful.

After reading all the comments I decided this would be a great way for me to get into animation. Once I actually got started I got the hang of it pretty fast but it was very clunky and slow. Which isn’t really surprising and wasn’t a huge deal to me just as long as it got the job done. Well after spending three hours working on a short animation towards the end something randomly glitched and corrupted every single frame erasing a large portion of it. This ruined the whole Animation and I just immediately gave up. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t have anything to do with an actual function in the app itself that I accidentally miss used and I know it’s not my iPad considering it’s a new iPad Pro and procreate runs just fine. I’m letting future users know that if you’re looking for reliability this is not the place to go. Honestly there aren’t really any good animation apps available right now so your best bet is pc. I hope this is a good warning to those looking to download this app.

4 years ago, MAISIE J R

Good, but could be better

So I love this app. It’s useful for making tiktoks, and just fun animations. But there are some things that I think could be better. For one, I think you should be able to zoom in more. It’s so hard trying to color inside of the lines (I have really shaky hands so that doesn’t help). Also I think you should be able to make the pens/brushes bigger. It would make it easier to color in backgrounds. Third, I think that you should make a tracer, so you can not worry about filling in the blanks (which is a struggle for me). Lastly, I think instead of having to tap the color button and then tap the select color button (the one with the drop icon I don’t know what it’s called) I think you should be able to just hold the screen, and then boom. The brush turns to that color.

2 years ago, The Ultra Aura

Deletes my work after every single update

As fun as this is, there is a Huge flaw in the updating system because every time this app updates all of my work is erased into a single frame which is very heart breaking because I was making something because it’s the end of the school year here and I wanted to do something to so the memories of that class will still be there and so when I went to download it onto my iPad and the app updated by the way and every frame was gone and all that was left was a single blank frame and I was very heartbroken and it took me a long time to create that and I got the audio for that animation and I was planning on surprising my class too with some of those people in my class going onto high school Until the company that created this fixes this major flaw everyone’s work will be erased after every update.

5 years ago, Daleigna

Disappointing

The app seemed very promising at first but it really is just a let down. Note that I've only tested it on the iPhone and was surprised to see how well it is rated given how bad it was. The number of frames is only adjustable upon the creation of a project which makes it annoying since you probably won't know in advance how many you'll need. All of the import functions (expect for video) are broken which ruins it for me since I won't be able to import my art. Using it pulls up an empty menu which doesn't nothing at all. The stylus support is also glitchy and will crash the app. The button assignments will not apply your changes either although there's only 2 options. There are annoying ads in the home view. Overall, it feels that this is a poor port of the iPad version which could be convenient for those who use both device but just isn't usable at all. I won't be buying the $20 version to see if it is any different. I cannot trust this product based on my experience with it.

4 years ago, Xebrax124

REALLY Annoying to use

When I first downloaded this app as someone who just wanted to make simple flip a clip animations for free time, I thought this game was okay. It had most if not all of the basics of what I need to draw, and the options and buttons to select stuff weren't all over the place. But as I played with this app a little further, it began to crash way too much and would make me lose a lot of my work. Sometimes, many of the frames would replace eachother for no reason and would overwrite a lot of the animation. After exiting an animation, the drawings get a little blurred out, which is irritating to work with with I'm trying to make accurate stuff. And this app doesn't let you use shapes for free; they only give you pens and markers. If the crashing were fixed and they added shapes, maybe I would rate this for more then two stars. Edit: The computer version is a lot better, but you can send mobile animations to computer but not vice versa?

7 years ago, Happy me !! :)

Good! But....

So far I love this app! It works just as it should, except for some reason on my iPad Air 2 I have a different version from what is shown in the AppStore. I’m not sure if this is because of the version of my iPad is old or what but it’s a bit disappointing. I think it would be so helpful to have a setting to sketch and have the ability to copy and paste it on a different piece of paper so that I can create my animated characters without having to redraw it all. This also would be easier to do if I was able to flip my drawings, like the eyes so that I don’t have to draw the eyes two different ways while trying to keep it all even which I struggle with. It occasionally lags but it’s the least of my concerns at this point. I would love it if you would take into consideration my ideas and help out us character animators.

5 years ago, LukeTheAnimator

A Frame of a Bug

Hi. I just wanna say you’re app is AMAZING and I always use it for my animation. But it could use some adjustments. Usually when you complete one frame and move on to the next, it usually shows a faded but clearly visible image of the last frame so you know what to draw next. But when I made one frame and moved on to the next, there was no image of the last frame at all. So let’s say there was a white background and I’m animating a Pikachu walking. I finished one frame, but then when I go to the next one, there is just a white background and no faded image of Pikachu what so ever. This bug really gets me and I’m hoping you could fix it, because I’m getting tired of having to delete the app when it happens and then re-download it and do it over and over. So can you please fix that? Sincerely, Animator Luke.

3 years ago, Ideas for the Gamre

Could be a lot better

Alright, first of all, the video in the App Store is misleading. It doesn’t show what the app actually looks like. Also, it is hard to find everything. I have yet to see the option to insert text. I apologize if it IS in there and I just can’t find it, but if it isn’t that needs to be fixed. It’s annoying having to write in my terrible handwriting in my animations. Another thing I dislike is the fact that you can only have three layers. Three! I can’t get anything done with only three layers, and I’m not about to pay money for them, even if there are other things included in the subscription. Maybe a limit of at least five would be better? If the developer(s) are reading this, I apologize for complaining. But I would really enjoy the things I talked about to be added/fixed. Thank you!

1 year ago, Luvga

Procreate instead!!

If you’r looking and app just for fun and practice the basic principles of animation, this may be the app for you. On the other hand, if you are serious about learning drawing and enhance your animation skills, this is definitely not the app for you. After two years using this app, came across serious frustration. The poor brushes offered with bold tick doesn’t allow you to create a smooth sketches. Palm rejection need to be enhanced, every time you touch the screen either skip the frame or increase the tick of your pen. The limited interface waste your valuable time and steal your creativity. It’s also buggy, randomly mixed the frames of your animation. You can go from frame 1, 2 and 3 to 3, 1 and 2 and so on. It force you to maintain a track of each and every frame and frame specific order. I have reported this issues severely times and supporting team bring no corrections. Here’s one good advise, try procreate instead. You won’t regret it!!!

4 years ago, 6413326379

Amazing!!!

I loooooove this app! I love how you can still use a lot of helpful tools on the free version! A few thing I recommend to make this app even better, though, are: -able to undo a mistake you made on a frame after you leave that frame. It is annoying sometimes when I have to delete a frame because I left the paint can tool on and I accidentally paint something and then I go to fix another frame and I can’t undo the mistake. -automatic line fix. It would be lovely if, say, I tried to draw a circle, but it comes out sloppy. It would be soooo easy and less hectic if it just automatically fixed and became a circle. It could be added to the settings? -no hand. It would be nice if there was a tool in settings so when I placed my hand on the screen (except for zoom) it didn’t make and marks. -back to zoom... more zoom. The zoom only goes up to 500% but sometimes I need to zoom more than that!!! -screen turn. It would be nice if I could turn the screen without having to turn my device. Other than those things I would add, ten out of ten would recommend, especially for new animators like me!

5 years ago, Dragonaiis

Best App for Tablet/Mobile

Of all the animation apps I have tried, Animation desk is hands down my favorite. The interface is user friendly, especially for beginners, there are layers and a pretty solid set of brushes. You can get more out of this app than most other apps. My only complaints are that 1) the fill tool has a very high tolerance. If there is even a tiny little gap in your lineart, the fill tool will fill up the entire canvas. 2) (this is an important one) you can’t add sound, at least, not while you are working on animating. This is really crucial to many animations and it would be the only reason not to download this app. I hope the devs add sound capabilities to Animation Desk so that people don’t have to consider that as a setback. Please consider adding sound capabilities to this program. It has so much potential!

3 years ago, Har1ey503

Love the app.. BUT...

Every time I go to watch one of my animations I have to go through and delete a ton of randomly out of place frames that seem to just jumble themselves up every time I start drawing new frames. This is super frustrating especially when I go to show somebody my work and any smooth transitions between frames are interrupted by some random out of place frame. And then when I delete them I’m not sure if they just make duplicates of themselves and then just jump to a random spot in my animation or if I’m actually having to delete frames that I worked on. Please fix this because it’s honestly ruining this app for me as it happens so frequently and is such a drastic time consuming problem that I have to fix every single time I want to watch my scene from beginning to end.

5 years ago, Boltfinger

Not Bad

It isn’t bad. I like that the Apple Pencil 2 is integrated. It sometimes doesn’t register the pencil input when I make a stroke. So I have to make multiple strokes. I don’t know if that’s app or pen related. Also the onion skinning is still rather dark. I wish there was a way to lighten it a little more—I can barely see the drawings I’m making on the overlay. I’m drawing using the paint brush cus the line quality is nicer. However I am limited to size 12 as the smallest. I’d like to go even thinner if I could. The video is also exporting in low quality. The lines I drew look twice as blurry on the video output. Not sharp at all. The only way around this is to use my phone to record the video playing back on my iPad. Pretty ghetto though. Anyway, it’s an okay app. I’d rather buy the app and have these robust features included than have to subscribe and pay monthly since I’m a casual user.

2 years ago, LightlyToastedBread

It’s not great, but it’s not horrible.

I’m not a fan of this app, it is very difficult to use, and it’s not very good quality. I’m not very happy that most features (circle tool, layers, ect) are hidden behind a paywall. I believe that this is a fairly decent animation app for someone who is just getting into animation, but it can be very frustrating to use at times. It’s not particularly good quality, but I do appreciate that it does have the necessities to create something great. My other issues are how laggy the app is, it is ungodly laggy and I have also been having issues with the laso tool, I'm not sure if that’s a glitch or not. It’s not horrible, but it’s not that good either. I honestly do hope that it improves with time and ages like a fine wine, This is still a fairly new app and there is likely only a small team working on this. I hope that this helps you improve the app.

1 year ago, worthikids no 2

Great! Best thing ever. Can’t use it though zoom tool needs redesign

The zoom tool should be an on screen button you press and hold to drag around, and then when a second input hits the canvas the zoom/scroll/rotation begins. Instead of how it is now, where you need to press and hold two canvas inputs within a very tight window of time. If your too slow the zoom/scroll/rotation doesn’t happen and instead the tool starts sketching between the two input locations. The floating draggable button idea I mentioned above is the best way to fix this problem as it would not require the user to adjust the way they hold they’re device (needing to use the index and middle fingers) but instead would allow for the zoom/scroll/rotation process to be done with your thumb and stylus. Plus it would solve the (having to get your timing perfect) problem which starts that sketching between two spots glitch/feature I’d much prefer to use my phone for animation then getting a laptop with blender on it. so please contact me if you have questions! Im willing to put time and energy into optimizing what you guys have here

2 years ago, rustybutton

Good, but could be better

I agree with all the top reviews, I just have to complain about the glitches. When you do even a simple pen stroke it automatically saves. Even if you exit the app randomly, the drawing or animation saves. Sometimes for no reason at all, it decides your hours of work should get randomly deleted. It’s some weird bug. I’ll be drawing and it randomly crashes and the animation is gone, not even a frame saved. Other times, it won’t let me zoom out, and I have to pray it saves and am forced to exit the app and go back in. These are detrimental bugs/glitches that make or break it being an amazing beginners animating software, basically my only complaint. Other than that, extremely easy and simple to use, with amazing animations that can come from it.

2 years ago, Horrifying horror

Love this app, have some suggestions

I love, love, loovvveee this app! It’s the best app for animation in my opinion but I have a couple suggestions. The tools offered are great! I just wish there was a brush that was completely smooth and did not shrink if I move it fast and a normal opacity. I also would like some spray paints for shading. There has been this glitch that keeps happening to me when almost every time I zoom in, a dot appears and it’s a little annoying because I have to hit the undo button. This glitch just started recently and I would love if it was fixed. Anyway, thanks again for this app its really helpful and easy to use! Keep it up! :) Edit: ok I will let you know if it continues! Thanks have a good day! :)

2 years ago, ImNotHerr

Great for beginners but has one main issue..

One of the reasons that I love this app is because it is so easy to use! I had never animated a thing in my life before I got this app. It had great reviews, so I got it. There are only a few features you have to pay for. The app works perfectly fine without paying anything too though. There are some glitches when it is saving and has kicked me out several times, losing my work. This isn’t a very big issue because most of the time, I am just playing around with the features. For people that wish to use this every day or for big projects, I suggest another app. Don’t get me wrong though, this is a great app and I recommend it to all beginners.

5 years ago, befonzy

Frustrating

Every decision in this app is designed to get you to spend money and frustrate the user so they look at tutorials. Developers have to make money. And users want to make sure they aren’t wasting their money. Professional apps that deserve to cost a lot should have reasonably impressive trial periods so that users can decide if the app is worth it. Limitations can be set up so the user can discover the cool things that paying for the app would bring. This app does a terrible job of conveying every little thing and doesn’t focus on the core experience but rather shows you all the tertiary things that don’t make for a compelling app. I was happy with something I animated and was looking to export it but when I went to my projects it was blank. I lost 3 seconds of animation I was proud of and I still have no idea what went wrong. There was no save button I missed or warning when I went back to the home screen. The basics of this app aren’t here.

5 years ago, biinarycode

Wonderful app! +advice on the UI

This app is probably the best animation app I’ve ever used! It’s super easy to figure out the controls, and the few pens it has are precisely what I need for what I’m doing. The difference between frames and layers is genius! When I use firealpaca, I often confuse my final layers for my sketch layers, but Animation Desk is like totally different art pieces overplayed instead of just sheets of paper. My only critique is on the user interface. The buttons and tools are really easy to find, but it’s a bit difficult to draw. Another app I have, IbisPaint, lets you zoom in to pixel by pixel levels and lets you rotate the canvas just by touching it. Overall, the zoom precision and rotating canvas are what keeps me drawing on IbisPaint. Another bit of advice is to add a way to undo/redo using your fingers instead of finding the undo button and then the place you were drawing again. IbisPaint used two finger and three finger taps to undo and redo, respectively. I don’t mean to say that you should make your animation app like a different drawing app, but the UI for IbisPaint is so smooth and clean, it’s hard not to take notes. Even the greatest artists reference other art to make theirs better. I hope my review was helpful!! Ari

Description

Have fun exploring the world of animation. Learn how to make cartoons and animations, and share your videos on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. Check out the video tutorials in the app, or get animation tips on our website. AWARDS - Recommended by EdTech Impact, Edshelf, EducationalAppStore.com, All about apps in YOUR classroom, iPad Educators - Featured by Apple on iTunes Home Page - Featured by TechCrunch - Featured by Yahoo Tech HOW TO CREATE FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION Animation Desk works like a digital flipbook. You can start from the first frame or a keyframe. Use the brushes or selection tool to complete their work. CREATE ANIMATION WITH VIDEOS & PHOTOS Import video and photo, and add fantastic animation effects. MANY EDITING TOOLS • Draw with different brushes or customize your own • Add captions or subtitles for your animation • Setup color palettes for characters or scenes • Other editing tools: rulers, selection tools, and more PLAY WITH FRAME & LAYERS • Trace the motion with onion skinning • Easily manage frames in the frame viewer • Duplicate or repeat a frame, set up FPS to control the speed • The basic version includes 3 sketch layers and one background layer Export • Export animation as a video, GIF, and PDF sheet! • Export animation into Photoshop and make advanced editing • Export individual frames as images PLEASE NOTE Animation Desk is free to download and use, and more features are available in the subscription plans. The basic version includes ads. For more information, please refer to the Term of Service below. SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS • Kdan Cloud 500GB • Animation Desk Pro with 500G Kdan Cloud storage • Animation Desk Pro for students and educators • Creativity 365 with 1 TB Kdan Cloud storage" Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable. Subscriptions will be charged through your iTunes account at the confirmation of purchase. Your subscriptions will automatically renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current subscription period. Your iTunes account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period, for the same duration and at the current subscription price. You may manage your subscriptions in your iTunes Terms of service: https://kdanmobile.com/en/terms_of_service Privacy Policy: https://kdanmobile.com/en/privacy_policy CONTACT US Email: [email protected] Helpdesk: http://support.kdanmobile.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animation_desk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/animationdesk