OK!
So I was going to wait around and test out the free lite version of Flipbook, but I decided to just go ahead and buy the full version anyway, and I'm having
lots of fun with it!
Most of my suggestions have already been suggested by TimothyB, so I'll comment on his:
Some quick thoughts for future additions to the first Flipbook app:
1: Fill Bucket tool. I noticed double tapping the brush icon fills, but only the entire screen. Maybe while drawing, double tap will fill?
I definitely think a regular "fill bucket" tool is necessary, and is more useful than something that fills the whole page. I feel like filling the whole page is something that you would only ever do in the beginning -- and there's already a way to set that on the main page, when you edit a flipbook's name. If someone REALLY needed to fill the screen after that, they could always just set the brush to its largest size and draw over the screen pretty quickly. (What would be REALLY cool is if you fill the whole screen with one color, then draw on top of it, and then you can go back and "reset" that initial full screen color while keeping all the changes you've made -- and that color could maybe change globally over all your frames).
2: Option to hide layers like in photoshop. But, since you can rearrange the layers, a work around is to drag one you don't need to the bottom under other layers.
Layers are still super-tricky for me. I'm finding it requires a LOT of forethought to create certain animations -- because you have to think about what's going to be a fixed background layer
first, and then figure out how many frames will have that bg layer and create them all first, and THEN play with the other layers on top of it. It gets complicated when you realize you might need to add another frame, and then suddenly you need to go back and copy that bg layer again. It seems like the only way to do that is to go to your layers, click on edit, move that layer to the top temporarily, copy it, then move it to the back again, and THEN you can paste it on another frame. If there was a faster way to copy a single layer, without having to move it to the front each time, that would be wonderful.
Unless I'm mistaken, and I'm just doing something wrong, I've noticed that whenever you have any color OTHER than white as your background, that color becomes part of the layer -- so if you copy and paste a single layer in a new frame, it will completely cover up anything else in that frame with the bg color? Basically, here's what happened when I was playing around: I created a new flipbook with a white background, and drew a fixed bg layer of a house in black to be in each frame. I then drew a red stick figure on another layer, which I copied and pasted in each frame and moved around -- and the house could be seen in the background each time. However, I then did the same exact thing, but this time with a black background, and drawing the house in white. When I tried to copy the red stick figure layer into a new frame, it would
completely cover the bg layer of the white house to where you couldn't see it at all. Is there a way to make new layers that become ONLY what you actually draw, and NOT the background color too? That would be quite helpful in most cases...
Also, I noticed that if you delete a layer, it gets deleted in ALL the frames? Is there any way to delete a layer in just a
single frame, but keep it in others?
EDIT: I noticed when you MOVE layers it changes in ALL the frames too. That kinds sucks. What if you want layer 1 to be on top of layer 2 in one frame, but on the bottom of layer 2 in the next frame? Looks like you can't do that?? Yeah -- if there was a way to keep layer changes to JUST the frame you're currently working in, that would be amazing!
3: Transparent layers controls. Could be useful for certain effects like clouds, water, smoke, glows.
DEFINITELY!
4: Would be nice if you can reorder the frames. Say you change the entire scene for a while, but then want to go back to a scene from before. You could try to copy and paste each layer, great feature by the way, but it would be nice when duplicating an earlier frame to place it where you need it.
This would be my number one request. Can't tell you how many time I wanted to do this. Perhaps when you're in "Pages" mode, there could be a way to press and hold on a page, and then drag it to someplace else?
5. Rotate and scale. Already cool that you got a move layers feature. But an option to rotate and scale a shape would also be really cool for animation. Tough though, with two fingers already dedicated to zoom.
God yes!! But yeah, I can see how it might be difficult.
6. Maybe a burn and dodge tool, to add extra shading when you need it. Possibly with slider for hardness, size, strength, and even if the stroke will auto fade strength to simulate pressure. Seeing how this only done to painted areas, it won't create partial transparent areas.
I don't even know what burning and dodging is, so too advanced for me to want - LOL!
7. Layer transparency lock. Say you created a ball, now you want to shade one side, but you have to follow the edges or you go outside the ball. It would be nice to lock the layer transparency so all new drawing only appears in areas that have been painted, like using a mask.
Sounds pretty advanced -- but if it could be done, would be very cool.
8. For some reason, I prefer CMYK sliders. Just seems more natural to get the color I want, and the black slider is nice to quickly adjust the shade of a color. Any change of that showing up? Or maybe brightness, hue, and saturation controls along with the RGB sliders.
Too many color sliders could get confusing, though.
One other feature that would be quite nice, that doesn't directly have anything to do with editing your own animations, but would be still be
very useful: Some kind of built-in-the-app "viewer" for all of the flipbook.tv animations. Sure, we could just go to flipbook.tv in Safari -- but it's a pain to have to quit the Flipbook app, load Safari, find the page, and then do the required zooming around to navigate the site. It would be sooooo much cooler if there was a direct way to easily navigate and view the animations within the Flipbook app itself. But maybe not until a tags or ratings system is incorporated into the site. That way we could search/navigate by rating, tag, name, or whatever. I find it's REALLY helpful to be able to look at what others have done, in order to see what is possible.
And finally, a not-that-important-but-would-still-be-cool request that I mentioned in another thread: The ability to add music or sounds. I realize this might be too impossible, or would tax the memory to its limit. But even if it was something you could only do once you lock an animation as "finished," it would still be a nice addition. Just throwing it out there...
Looking forward to the other export options that are coming too. Some of my animations I don't want to to upload to flipbook.tv, but I still want to get off my iPhone.
