Just Messing Around

Well I was playing with a new program I downloaded recently called Pencil. It's free, open source, and the code is available (in fact I think they are looking for programming help). The main thing that attracted me to Pencil is the fact you can draw & animate both bitmaps and vector shapes. I think this is one hell of a feature, especially for a free program.

I really haven't spent much time playing with it yet, but I can say I'm a big fan of the drawing tools, particularly on bitmap layers. The pencil tool itself serves different functions depending if you're drawing on a bitmap or vector layer. On bitmaps layers it behaves beautifully like a pencil, & is one of the most natural feeling drawing tools I've come across yet. On vector layers, the pencil serves much like the stroke tool in TBS, it draws invisible lines that make borders you can fill in with the paint bucket.

The coloring tools in pencil are limited but ok. The palette is very basic to start, but you can add custom colors and save palettes as well so it's no big deal. I didn't do much coloring in Pencil, but I did find a look I really like by sketching in Pencil on a bitmap layer, then exporting as a series of PNGs. I then imported these into TBS & added a drawing layer underneath where I added color. The animation is very simple, just 3 drawings, & the eye itself could be better for sure, but the overall look is very pleasing to me & I think I'll be attempting more stuff in this style.

I'd love to hear what people think, so feel free to leave crits & comments.