iPad Pros

Transcript of the Interview

John Voorhees

(1m 35s) Tim Chaten:

> Welcome to the podcast, John.

(1m 37s)

> Yeah, I had Federico on, I think it was for episode a hundred.

(1m 37s) John Voorhees:

> Thank you for having me. It’s really great to be here.

(1m 42s) Tim Chaten:

> So we finally get the other side of Mac’s story.

(1m 45s)

> although you guys are expanding.

(1m 48s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, yeah, no, I remember that episode, that was a great episode, I really enjoyed it.

(1m 51s)

> I actually remember I was in Ireland at the time listening to you guys and it was a lot of fun.

(1m 56s) Tim Chaten:

> Oh, very cool. So for those that don’t know who you are, you probably don’t listen to other podcasts out there in this kind of Apple world, but can you share a bit on your background and what you do over there at MacStories?

(1m 56s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah.

(2m 10s)

> Yeah, sure. So, just to give you a little bit of my history at MacStories, I started out in 2015 at the site writing as a freelancer. Federico founded the site in 2009. And so, for the first several years, I was just writing there. And in 2020, we kind of mixed things up and we moved MacStories to make it a U.S. company, actually. And the two of us went into it for just a bunch of business, boring business reasons but, but I…

(2m 40s)

> that’s when Federico and I became business partners essentially so I’m actually one of the the co-owners of the company now and it’s you know Federico is based in Italy I’m based in the United States in North Carolina and my role is managing editor which kind of describes a lot of what I do which is a lot of the business end of things as well as the writing and the podcasts that we do like app stories and so forth but yeah we both just kind of Divide everything up between the two of us. We’ve got you know the site and the

(3m 10s)

> in-club Mac stories and a couple of podcasts like app stories and Mac stories unwind and it keeps us kind of super busy.

(3m 17s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, and the time zone difference, while Federer was sleeping, you can be doing things and yeah.

(3m 23s) John Voorhees:

> A little bit, yeah. Although you’d be surprised at how close our schedules are because he stays up very, very late and I get up very, very early.

(3m 32s)

> So we overlap almost identically except for about an hour difference in the morning and the evening.

(3m 37s) Tim Chaten:

> That’s funny. Yeah.

(3m 37s) John Voorhees:

> There are actually times when he is still up and I’m like, “I’m going to bed. I don’t know what you’re doing up.”

(3m 39s) Tim Chaten:

> So, um, as this is iPad Pros,

(3m 49s)

> we talk about Procreate Dreams,

(3m 51s)

> the big new iPad app that came out recently here.

(3m 53s)

> But I’m curious, what is your current iPad setup,

(3m 57s)

> and what kind of role does that iPad serve in your computing life?

(4m 2s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, so I’ve got two iPads. I actually just had an m2 iPad Pro recently but that was a loaner from Apple because I was testing Final Cut Pro and Logic, but my my core iPads are a fifth generation iPad Pro. So the one that came out in 2021 that’s got that’s got a ter Yeah

(4m 20s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay. The one right before the M1, it has the new cameras with LiDAR and the magic,

(4m 27s)

> the smart, um, the magic keyboard.

(4m 32s) John Voorhees:

> Right, so I’ve got that with you know, a terabyte of Storage and Wi-Fi and cellular and so that’s kind of it plays really the same role for me as a MacBook Air It’s my portable computer and I you know, I just kind of use it interchangeably with the MacBook Air And the other the other iPad I use is a sixth generation iPad mini which is much more of a consumption device. I use it a lot for you know, reading and watching YouTube and stuff like that

(5m 1s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, that’s a great combo Yeah Right. Yes I’m always tempted by that mini, but it’s it’s yeah, I have not yet pulled the trigger [laughs]

(5m 3s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, the biggest and the smallest [laughs]

(5m 12s)

> You can actually get work done on them too. I did a story not too long ago where I had it propped up in one of those airline holders in the back seat of an airplane where I jammed the mini in there. I had a Bluetooth keyboard and I was sitting there sitting there writing on the tray table because it had my little keyboard on it. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it really would be. I did miss I did miss the pointer for sure.

(5m 22s) Tim Chaten:

> Oh, nice.

(5m 23s)

> Yeah, keyboard.

(5m 25s)

> Yeah, someone needs to invent a Bluetooth keyboard with a little nubbin from the ThinkPads.

(5m 35s)

> That’d be a killer kind of on-the-go setup.

(5m 39s)

> Yeah.

(5m 39s)

> Yeah.

(5m 43s)

> So, iPad mini consumption,

(5m 45s)

> you’re kind of catching up on articles and videos and stuff on that.

(5m 49s)

> And then you’re on the go computing

(5m 52s)

> to a MacBook Air is the iPad Pro.

(5m 55s)

> How much of Mac stories can you interface on that iPad?

(5m 55s) John Voorhees:

> Right, right.

(6m 1s) Tim Chaten:

> Is the CMS friendly enough?

(6m 4s)

> I know Federico probably does some stuff

(6m 8s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, we I can do essentially everything that we do at Mac stories on an iPad because the CMS We use WordPress for the website and that’s just got a web interface So that’s that’s perfectly fine and it integrates with shortcuts if you want to go that route Which I know Federico does I use the website probably more than he does And then I do a lot of the production work for our podcasts. So I’m doing audio editing every week and that Logic is really good for that.

(6m 38s)

> But I don’t do it a lot mainly not because the iPad’s not capable But more because the bigger screen you have the better So if I am at home and have access to my studio display It’s much easier to edit a timeline on a on a wider screen than 12.9 inches Right, right, right

(6m 56s) Tim Chaten:

> Right. And you don’t have the M1 version where you just hook it up into your Thunderbolt dock or whatever.

(7m 3s)

> Yeah. Gotcha. Yep.

(7m 6s)

> And since there is no ferrite for a Mac, the Logic version on iPad is more of a music-based tool.

(7m 14s) John Voorhees:

> It is, and I’ve played with Fairlight in the past, and I like the app, but for me, as a person who works very much spread across Mac and iOS and iPadOS,

(7m 25s)

> I like to have as many of my tools be available everywhere as possible.

(7m 29s)

> And so for me, Fairlight is just another thing to learn and a different way of doing things.

(7m 34s)

> And while Logic on the iPad is a little different than on the Mac, there’s enough in common that I can move between those two a lot easier than I could learning a whole lot.

(7m 44s)

> It might, it might, because I mean, I know a lot of people who use Fairlight and love it, and the bit that I’ve done with it, it’s been really great, but it’s just like, it’s just one of those things, right?

(7m 44s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, yeah, and there is no ferret for Mac as of yet, and I don’t know if that equation would change if that happened or not, you know.

(8m 3s) John Voorhees:

> I haven’t felt like I wanted to cross that bridge, and I’ve got enough like mail apps in my life already, which is a place where I’ve decided I have to use more than one app to get what I want, but I don’t want to do that.

(8m 7s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah. Yes.

(8m 11s)

> With Logic, you have to use another app to add chapter markers and it’s like a set of tools for the final product.

(8m 23s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, it really is. So I I use I use forecast which is like an app that Marco Arment created to do chapter markers and artwork on the podcasts and then I also use a series of post production audio Filtering tools, you know, I use like Adobe audition and something called hush which is on the Mac as well as

(8m 48s)

> Izotope which is a kind of an audio production suite that a lot of

(8m 53s)

> a lot of musicians use but it does things like you know gets rid of

(8m 57s) Tim Chaten:

> Gotcha, nice.

The state of iPad

(8m 59s) Tim Chaten:

> Any other general iPad thoughts before we dive in the Procreate Dreams?

(9m 4s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, the iPad to me, I love the iPad, and I’ve been very frustrated with the iPad because nothing happened in 2023 with the iPad.

(9m 9s) Tim Chaten:

[laughs]

(9m 12s) John Voorhees:

> And so to me, it’s like, it’s just been really a disappointing year because it’s been an interesting year for Apple in a lot of hardware respects, but not with the iPad.

(9m 27s)

> And I think it’s been too long. I mean, I don’t expect revolutionary new hardware every single year from the iPad.

(9m 34s)

> I do expect something more than what we’ve gotten, and I hope 2024 is going to be a big year.

(9m 40s)

> I mean, the rumors are that there’s going to be a lot more going on with the iPad in 2024, and I hope that that’s correct.

(9m 47s)

> I mean, fortunately, we have apps like the one we’re going to talk about today, Procreate Dreams, where companies are pushing the boundaries of what can be done on an iPad,

(9m 55s)

> which I think is fantastic and shows that there’s plenty of a market there for users who are demanding those kind of tools.

(10m 2s)

> but it’s really…

(10m 4s)

> kind of taken the back seat this year and that’s kind of a shame but as a result I’ve been doing things like experimenting with Android E Ink tablets because I need my tablet hardware fix and that’s where I got it this year.

(10m 14s) Tim Chaten:

[laughs]

(10m 16s)

> Yes, yeah.

(10m 19s)

> Yeah, it’s kind of a weird thing ’cause iPads generally, the mini and the pro are like 18-month cycles, even the Air.

(10m 29s)

> Then the regular one normally gets a 12-month revamp,

(10m 32s)

> but I don’t know if Apple’s like,

(10m 34s)

> we had that new design that’s really expensive,

(10m 36s)

> let’s sit to have margins be where they need to be or whatever it is, but it’s kind of a bizarre year.

(10m 42s) John Voorhees:

> Right It really has been yeah It really has been and especially with the pro the pro really hasn’t changed much at least the way it looks and a lot of what It does since 2018 and that’s a long time Yeah Yep, I hope so

(10m 44s) Tim Chaten:

> ‘Cause we’d only get something.

(10m 46s)

> Yeah.

(10m 47s)

> No.

(10m 52s)

> It is, yeah.

(10m 56s)

> And yeah, it sounds like we’re getting some exciting,

(11m)

> at least screen advancements soon,

(11m 1s)

> but how much more than that will be, yeah.

(11m 5s)

> And yeah, I’m glad Stage Manager is finally in a happy place for me, at least.

(11m 10s)

> Like that was the big thing.

(11m 11s)

> You know, this little tidy OS revision

(11m 14s)

> makes it so much more fun to use.

(11m 16s) John Voorhees:

> Yes, I think that that’s been really the breath of fresh air this year for me because I really got to the point when that first came out, I just abandoned it.

(11m 25s)

> It was just too hard to use.

(11m 27s)

> But with the changes, I’m now using Stage Manager all the time.

(11m 31s)

> And I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m considering abandoning it on the Mac because the Mac didn’t get the same love with Stage Manager.

(11m 39s)

> There are a lot of ways now to bring things onto your stage with the iPad that you really can’t do anything equivalent to on the

(11m 46s)

> Mac, which is a shame because there’s just too much setup involved on the Mac.

(11m 51s)

> You know, you can’t do things like spotlight search and drag something onto your stage or or shift click on the dock and get something into your stage. You know that there’s certain things that you can do on the iPad that don’t have an equivalent on the Mac and you end up having to like doing the song and dance of opening a new app then going back to the stage dragging something back from the stage onto whatever you’ve got on your current stage.

(12m 16s)

> It’s just a lot of back and forth that I wish Apple would look at and try to eliminate because the iPad has really come a long way.

(12m 26s)

> I think the iPad has room for more refinement there, but it really is, I think, a pretty good feature now.

(12m 34s)

> It’s where it should have been when it first was introduced.

(12m 37s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, definitely. And my big hope is we get an M1 iPad mini one of these years and then you just hook that up to an external display. Great desktop environment. Then you go on the go and get your little mini. That’s my dream.

(12m 45s) John Voorhees:

> That would be really cool.

(12m 47s)

> Yeah, I was thinking about that the other day.

(12m 50s)

> You know, I really could see it being like, there were rumors like years and years and years ago of of an iPod, not an iPad, an iPod that would be like a portable Mac that you would like connect it to a computer,

(13m 3s)

> to a screen and you would use it as a little mini Mac.

(13m 4s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah It could yeah and add add clamshell mode with The magic keyboard with touch ID. I’ve been waiting for touch ID support on the keyboard to come to the iPad for years Like come on, it’s right there, but no, yeah, but anyways It’s a procreate. This is an app that has been beloved for many years in the art world and novices like myself. I

(13m 6s) John Voorhees:

> And the iPad mini really could be that.

(13m 9s)

> With enough, you know, with enough power.

(13m 22s)

> Yep, yep.

Procreate

(13m 32s) Tim Chaten:

> Use it to create what I call abstract art.

(13m 34s)

> How would you describe your abilities as far as an artist goes?

(13m 45s) John Voorhees:

> I’m kind of in the same boat. I mean, I like fiddling around with the app and you know doing doodles and Creating little pictures, but I I’m not really an artist I mean I I always I find it very frustrating because I can talk to like our designer at max stories and say this I Know what I want and I know what I like, but I can’t do it myself and it drives me a little crazy But I still enjoy I still enjoy using apps like procreate because I find it relaxing to kind of have a creative outlet that’s not really a…

(14m 15s)

> It’s something that is going anywhere other than on my iPad.

(14m 18s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, yeah, and I do like you know using the pressure sensitivity of the Apple pencil in there It’s it’s it’s it’s it’s enjoyable activity for me. I’ll do calligraphy in the real world, but art itself

(14m 32s) John Voorhees:

> Uh-huh Yeah, yeah, and I think what’s really nice about Procreate and I give you know Procreate a lot of a lot of credit is that it’s a paid upfront app Which is fairly rare these days and I think that that makes it a lot more accessible to more people because like I Know for me like it wouldn’t make sense for me to have a subscription art app really

(14m 55s)

> Because I just don’t use it enough or get get enough out of it to make it worth a subscription

(15m 2s)

> Pricing model, but you know, I procreate is a one-time payment and I’ve certainly gotten the value out of it I I do wonder how How these paid upfront apps for a company like them supports. They have like a team of 80 people working on these apps and they’re working with like a big PR firm in London, and I I got to imagine that

(15m 24s) Tim Chaten:

> The brushes, you can buy those as add-ons like DLC, is that a big business for them? I don’t even know.

(15m 28s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I I have no idea

(15m 32s)

> I have no idea but I I suspect that they do a lot of enterprise in school licenses where they can where they’re probably signing up hundreds of people at a time as opposed to just onesie-twosies like you and me.

(15m 44s) Tim Chaten:

> Yes. Yes, that would make sense for them.

Tidbits from your briefing

(15m 48s) Tim Chaten:

> So, in your write-up about Procreate Dreams,

(15m 52s)

> this is a new animation app from Procreate.

(15m 54s)

> One tidbit I thought was pretty interesting is this is five years in the making.

(15m 58s)

> Did you get any other kind of background tidbits when you were getting briefed on this app we’re sharing?

(16m 3s) John Voorhees:

> A little bit. I mean, it was five years in the making, as you said, and I had a 4 a.m. briefing for this app, which was like just absolutely, absolutely brutal, because the people were spread out in Australia, London, and the U.S., and I got up and was very blurry-eyed, and they mentioned how they’d been doing it for five years.

(16m 28s)

> The other thing I think is very interesting about this app is that it leans…

(16m 33s)

> …very heavily on the Metal frameworks. You probably hear about Metal in the context of games most of the time…

(16m 40s)

> …because it’s a graphics framework that gets the most out of the iPad’s GPU.

(16m 47s)

> But it obviously also works well with imaging apps, animation apps, that kind of thing.

(16m 53s)

> And with Procreate Dreams, I think the target base iPadOS version is 16 for this.

(17m 1s)

> So it supports all of the iPads.

(17m 3s)

> that are out there, I believe, but by targeting 16,

(17m 8s)

> they’ve got the most, not quite the most recent version of metal, but you know, one generation ago metal and metal has come a long way over the last few years.

(17m 18s)

> And that allows them to do some pretty incredible things in terms of loading times, size of projects,

(17m 25s)

> all of that to make things possible

(17m 30s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, I noticed the trackpad if you like just hover over the timeline. I’ll just real-time play back the whole animation which is It’s nice. I mean because it’s rendering. This isn’t like you’re playing back a video it is something different it’s it’s animation it’s Computationally doing stuff versus just playing back a AV file So

Other animation apps

(17m 58s) Tim Chaten:

> Have you explored other animation?

(18m)

> Animation apps in the iPad family of apps, because I’ve been looking and there doesn’t seem to be a huge number of them.

(18m 11s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, there really aren’t.

(18m 12s)

> I mean, there are things that can do some of what Procreate Dreams is doing.

(18m 16s)

> There’s Loom with three O’s in it,

Looom

(18m 19s) John Voorhees:

> which is, that got an ADA a few years ago.

(18m 22s)

> It’s kind of a flip book tool for doing 2D animation,

(18m 26s)

> which is something that Procreate Dreams does too.

(18m 28s)

> It doesn’t have all the features,

(18m 30s)

> but it’s a good accessible beginner type of app that you can use.

(18m 36s)

> So that’s a good one that’s out there.

Adobe Fresco

(18m 39s) John Voorhees:

> Adobe Fresco does some of this.

(18m 41s)

> to you.

(18m 42s)

> You know, there are it’s interesting.

(18m 44s)

> There’s a lot of crossover these days between image and video apps and animation because there are a lot of video apps that will allow you to overlay some sort of animation onto a video and dreams has the ability to bring in video and images into your animations.

(19m 1s)

> But it’s first and foremost an animation tool, whereas a lot of these other ones are first and foremost image editors or video apps, right?

(19m 9s)

> Fresco.

(19m 11s)

> Fresco is a little closer to dreams in that Adobe Fresco is a painting and drawing tool and it has Animations built into it, but of course that you know, there are some free features I think of that app but to get the full thing you need to have a creative cloud

Stop Motion

(19m 28s) Tim Chaten:

> Gotcha. Yeah, and then I remember Boinks has iStop Motion, but I’m not sure if that’s still supported on later OSs.

(19m 35s)

> It’s an older app that I, that’s, that’s kind of a fun style of animation,

(19m 40s)

> especially I think for kids to just like play with their action figures, make them do stuff is like a fun thing.

(19m 46s) John Voorhees:

> Yep.

Stop Animation Studio

(19m 47s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, there’s another one called Stop Animation Studio that’s a little bit like that too, I think,

(19m 51s)

> where you can take like Lego figures and make little movies with them and stuff like that.

(19m 55s)

> Yeah.

(19m 56s) Tim Chaten:

> – Yeah, stop motion, it’s a whole different world and it’s more, yeah, versus where you’re actually drawing in Procreate Dreams, that’s more using your camera in the real world to make stuff move, which is lots of,

(20m 9s)

> yeah, which is fun.

(20m 10s)

> So for those that are big into Procreate,

Importing Procreate Drawings?

(20m 16s) Tim Chaten:

> is there a way to send over some of your artwork into Dreams?

(20m 20s)

> I couldn’t find like an obvious way to do this.

(20m 23s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I don’t think so I mean that’s a good question and I think one of the things that they told me during this briefing that I had was that The format for the procreate format underlying the drawing has been updated and I don’t know that it’s been updated in the main procreate app Yet or not and whether that might allow them to do importing into this into dreams Dreams is its own file format. It’s a dot dreams file

(20m 49s)

> So I you know, it doesn’t seem that you can which is kind

(20m 53s)

> of a shame. You can import things like photographs and movies, you know, videos, that kind of thing. But you can’t as far as I can tell, you can’t do the the actual procreate drawing.

(21m 6s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, it’s interesting. Maybe a future update enables that because you are drawing in layers and stuff in Procreate standards, so you’d think you’d be able to pick out certain layers you could animate and whatnot. But yeah, we’ll see if that comes over time. How much of the core Procreate app is there in Dreams? Are there any tools that are obvious misses that you hope make it into

(21m 18s) John Voorhees:

> Right. Right.

How much of Procreate is in Dreams?

(21m 35s) John Voorhees:

> Um, not from the standpoint of someone like me, who’s kind of a casual procreate user.

(21m 40s)

> It’s, you know, it, I think that the, that’s one of the strengths of dreams is that if you’ve ever used procreate before, you’re going to feel right at home because you open the app and anything you’ve created, you’ve got a gallery of what you’ve created very much, you know, you know,

(21m 55s)

> file provider type of interface where you can just tap on whatever you’ve created and pick up where you left off. But then once you’re in the app itself, there are the same tools that.

(22m 5s)

> You’ll have, you’d see from procreate, you’ve got, um, like a drawing tool, a layers tool,

(22m 10s)

> the brushes, the, uh, smudging tool and the, like the color wheel, which is unique to procreate.

(22m 18s)

> All of those things are in there so that if you create a timeline, cause you, you know,

(22m 23s)

> that’s the difference between procreate and procreate dreams is that here you’re creating,

(22m 27s)

> you’re drawing very much like you would in procreate, but it’s on a timeline as opposed as to just on a static canvas.

(22m 35s)

> And so if you there are various modes that you work in, and if you’re in the drawing mode where you’re actually creating the art, those tools are all exactly like you would experience them in Procreate itself.

(22m 47s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay, and third-party brushes can get imported into this app?

(22m 53s) John Voorhees:

> They should. I’ve never used a third-party brush though so I’m not exactly that familiar with how third-party brushes work but I don’t think that they’ve changed the format for the brushes

(23m 3s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay, yeah, and then who is this app for as it you know novices like myself Or is it all the way up to professionals like would someone make a night even a feature film with this tool set?

Who is this app for?

(23m 15s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, it’s interesting. I think it works on a, I think it scales pretty well from simple casual use cases on up to professionals because one of the things that I think Procreate itself,

(23m 29s)

> the drawing app is very much like that because the number of tools that you’re managing at any one time is relatively limited, which I think makes it easier for someone to get into it.

(23m 40s)

> The thing that I find maybe a little hard with both Procreate and Dreams

(23m 45s)

> is the flexibility at times because they want to make sure that everything is just,

(23m 50s)

> they’re trying to minimize the toolbars, the buttons, the labels. And in doing that though,

(23m 56s)

> they rely very heavily on gestures, maybe more so than most iPad apps. And that is good because it’s really taking advantage of the iPad’s unique capabilities. On the other hand, it does require a little bit of a learning curve to explore the UI and really figure out what everything does.

(24m 15s)

> Because for instance, you might not think to yourself, “Oh, I want to do onion skinning,”

(24m 20s)

> which is where you draw a picture and then you move to the next frame and you see a shadow of the prior frame so you can kind of smoothly animate a character across the screen. If you want to get into onion skinning, you might not really figure out right away that you have to tap on the time code of the app in order to get a menu of options that include onion skinning,

(24m 43s)

> Which, okay, that’s a place to be.

(24m 45s)

> put it.

(24m 46s)

> I mean, you see it and you think, well, this was designed by people who are running out of places to put things at times because they’re trying to put, they’re putting, there’s, there’s really something behind almost all of these controls.

(24m 57s)

> You know, there’s long press controls, there’s tapping on various elements, and it just requires a little exploration to really figure out what is there and what you can do.

(25m 8s) Tim Chaten:

> It took me a couple minutes just to find how to get back to the title screen.

(25m 12s)

> Oh, I click on that little thing, the, I think the name of…

(25m 16s) John Voorhees:

> Right, yeah, it’s exactly and that I think is a little bit of a barrier but even so I think that it’s the app because it doesn’t overwhelm you with controls right out of the box it does make it easier for someone to just kind of sit down have the canvas in front of them and start drawing and then kind of think to themselves all right well I have I’ve drawn this person I want to move them from the left side to the right side.

(25m 46s)

> that you can do.

(25m 47s)

> So if you have that kind of curiosity in you and you want to tap around and figure out where things are, you can figure out how that works.

(25m 54s)

> So I do think it works pretty well for the novice.

(25m 57s)

> I mean, I have yet to explore every corner of this app because it is really very, very deep.

(26m 4s)

> I mean, you open it up and you think, "Oh, there’s not much to this.

(26m 7s)

> It’s like, here’s a place that I draw and here’s a little timeline below and there’s a few buttons."

(26m 11s)

> But you realize very quickly that, "Oh, yeah, the playhead, you tap on the playhead, here’s

(26m 16s)

> options you can get if you tap on the playlist."

(26m 18s)

> And, “Oh, and here’s if you do this, you got all these other options.”

(26m 21s)

> And there’s a lot of things you can do.

(26m 23s)

> So it does pay to explore.

(26m 26s)

> And based on the examples that came with the app, I think that there really is serious animation work that can be done like on a commercial level, maybe even a feature length film here because I was amazed by some of the stuff that Procreate showed off in terms of what is possible here.

(26m 46s)

> I know in their press release, they had a quote from someone who worked on the Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for Disney who was blown away by it and said that this is going to lead into a resurgence in 2D animation and film length stuff that people can create on an iPad.

(27m 8s)

> So in that sense, it really is opening up tools that probably would have cost tens of thousands of dollars.

(27m 16s)

> years ago for animation studios to someone working at home in the evenings, you know,

(27m 22s)

> as their side project, building their creation and animated and then distributing it somehow.

(27m 28s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, for 20 bucks. Not bad.

(27m 29s) John Voorhees:

> Right, exactly.

(27m 31s) Tim Chaten:

> And yeah, one of the sample projects I noticed, oh, they have different scenes and then you can open that scene and it’s kind of self-contained there.

Scenes

(27m 40s) Tim Chaten:

> How do you actually create these different scenes and kind of like, for these longer form projects that you can’t do in this project?

(27m 49s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I don’t think that there’s like necessarily a right or wrong way to use scenes in Dreams.

(27m 55s)

> I mean, I think what it allows an animator to do is to break things up into manageable chunks because you can create pretty complex animations here.

(28m 5s)

> Your timeline can be, you know, it supports layers.

(28m 7s)

> So you can have multiple layers.

(28m 9s)

> You’ll have an audio layer.

(28m 10s)

> You’ll have your drawing layer.

(28m 13s)

> You’ll have a keyframing layer.

(28m 15s)

> All sorts of different layers that can be added on to this.

(28m 19s)

> And I don’t think that there’s a way in the app itself to stitch them together.

(28m 25s)

> If that’s kind of what you’re suggesting or whether you would do that separately, like maybe export out a video and then stitch them together or whether you would take individual scenes and kind of then paste them end to end as you kind of completed each scene into a separate animation that’s longer if you follow me.

(28m 45s) Tim Chaten:

> Right. Yeah, if you’re looking in a studio, you’d want the ability to have a master file that you can add different scenes to from other files, I’d imagine,

(28m 46s) John Voorhees:

> That I think might be possible.

(28m 56s) Tim Chaten:

> with the team working on it. And then, what is the actual process of, “I drew this dog, and the next frame I’m gonna move his leg”? Do you have to redraw the entire dog, or is there a way to just, like…

(28m 57s) John Voorhees:

> Right.

How to animate a dog

(29m 15s) Tim Chaten:

> move that one aspect of the drawing.

(29m 19s) John Voorhees:

> Uh, they do have an onion skinning thing you can do or you can, but, but I don’t know that they copy one frame to the other and then allow you to make changes to it.

(29m 31s)

> That is something that came up during the, came up during the, uh, the briefing that I had, that it’s something that they’re, that they’re looking at, but there are a bunch of different ways to animate things here.

(29m 40s)

> You can, uh, do it by hand drawing.

(29m 44s)

> you can draw your creation and then use something called

(29m 49s)

> forming, which allows you to select an image and then use the apple pencil or your finger to move it through a scene. So, you know, the example they gave for us was they had a witch and I know this is in their handbook. They had a witch flying on her broom through the sky. And we got a demo of this where the artist just took selected the witch. First she selected the witch’s hair and move the hair with her finger as the animation played so that it gave it some, you know, movement as she flew through the air. And then she took the entire witch on the broom and her whole body and moved it up and down and then back and forward shrinking it through the scene because you can scale things just like you would in an image editor. You know, you grab the handles and make it smaller so it looks like she’s out in the distance and then make it bigger so she’s more in the foreground.

(30m 49s)

> And she did this over a period of time over the length of this animation. And it’s really kind of amazing because what the app does in the background is it’s adding key frames, which are I mean, I’m no animator. So I’m probably going to butcher the explanation is other than it’s like points in the timeline that define movement from point A to point B. And then the app smoothly animates from A to B. And so instead of you can do those. Yeah, you could do those things manually.

(31m 19s)

> Like you could go in and say, I want this to be a key frame.

(31m 22s)

> So I have maybe I have the dog on the far left, and then I want the dog in the middle.

(31m 26s)

> So you put it to go to the beginning of the timeline.

(31m 28s)

> You make a key frame with a picture of the dog on the left.

(31m 31s)

> And then you’d go to the middle, put the dog in the middle.

(31m 35s)

> And that would be, you know, maybe at second five.

(31m 37s)

> And then the app would take care of getting the dog from A to B from the left side to the middle.

(31m 42s)

> And with this witch, it was the same kind of thing.

(31m 45s)

> It was more complex than that because it wasn’t just a linear movement.

(31m 49s)

> up and down and scaling too.

(31m 52s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, and if you’re doing like an arc, you need that middle keyframe to know,

(31m 57s)

> hey, I’m making a halfway circle thing versus just going left to right.

(32m 3s) John Voorhees:

> Exactly, and that’s kind of the power of performing is that if you’re doing that manually, you’d have to create a lot of different keyframes to make sure you’re following the arc the way you want it to go, but by being able to do this by hand with the Apple Pencil, the app just picks up what that curve is that you want, which is pretty cool.

(32m 22s) Tim Chaten:

> And something I noticed really nice as a touch is when you remove your finger from the screen or Apple Pencil, it pauses the performance, which allows you to change from, say, moving the character to changing the size, because those are two different points your finger would be positioned to do that.

(32m 42s)

> So that’s kind of a nice touch.

(32m 42s) John Voorhees:

> – Right.

(32m 43s)

> Yeah, it works really well that way.

(32m 45s)

> I mean, I think that’s a really, a really cool thing.

(32m 47s)

> And I think that performing really is one of those things that sets us apart from maybe animating with other types of devices,

(32m 55s)

> because it really does show off what’s possible with something like the Apple Pencil,

(33m 1s)

> because a lot of the, it does such a nice job of interpolating what your intention is without you having to go through and manually pick pixel positions, you know.

(33m 12s)

> Picking from like a pixel grid on a graph where you want an object to be,

(33m 18s)

> you just do it in a very natural way,

(33m 20s)

> manipulating the actual image with the Apple Pencil and let the computer do the work to figure out what that means from a key frame standpoint.

(33m 28s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah. And you can also do things like animate text. You can put text in this app and you can move that text around, resize the text. You can overlay it with real-world videos and photos.

(33m 42s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, which I think is an important point because I think that this shows what this app is for.

Real world assets

(33m 49s) John Voorhees:

> I mean, sure, you can make animated short films with this, or I can do my doodles and make them move.

(33m 57s)

> But there’s room here for YouTubers to add text overlays on their videos or other images, kind of animating in and out of their videos.

(34m 8s)

> There’s room here for people who are social media managers

(34m 12s)

> A static image. I know I’ve played with that a little bit where like sometimes we’ll release some sort of a link to an article we did on max stories and I can do it as audio and I can have a static image of Related to the article but then to make it more interesting maybe add some sort of animation to it You know, there’s a lot of little little use cases here. I think that that are possible

(34m 35s) Tim Chaten:

> And when you start a project, there are social ones that are optimized.

(34m 40s)

> Yeah, there’s a square one, I noticed, and then the pure social one, which is, I guess,

(34m 44s)

> the TikTok kind of size and all that.

(34m 45s)

> Yeah, I’m curious if they’d ever add this feature of, “I want to start with this video I made for YouTube and say, ‘LumaFusion,’ import that whole video and have that be like…”

(34m 46s) John Voorhees:

> Yep, yep, absolutely

Starting from a video?

(34m 58s) Tim Chaten:

> Because right now, you could say how long your video is from the get-go.

(35m 3s)

> I wonder if they’d ever consider.

(35m 5s)

> Adding link import this video as a starting point and go from there

(35m 11s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, that would be interesting.

(35m 12s)

> I mean, I think that there’s definitely a place for that kind of thing.

(35m 16s)

> I think it’s partly a perspective because this is first and foremost an animation app,

(35m 21s)

> not a video app, right?

(35m 23s)

> And so I think that that’s why it’s not like that now,

(35m 26s)

> but I do think that that would be a nice thing to add.

(35m 28s)

> I mean, you can figure it out though.

(35m 31s)

> I mean, you bring in the video and then just manually manipulate the timeline to fit over the length of the video and then add stuff.

(35m 39s)

> So it’s doable.

(35m 41s)

> It’s just not, I don’t think, it’s not, there’s not like a video starting point.

(35m 47s) Tim Chaten:

> Right. Now, you have an iPad mini and an iPad Pro 12.9, the mini, I believe, has a funky aspect ratio that’s not 4 by 3, and the 12.9 is the standard iPad aspect ratio. I’m curious,

(36m 5s)

> did you play around when you create a new project, one of the options is your iPad’s screen size. Is that always 4 by 3, or if you have a mini, will it do the mini’s screen

(36m 17s)

> Okay.

(36m 18s) John Voorhees:

> I will admit I have not tried it on the Mini,

(36m 19s)

> so I’m not entirely sure.

(36m 21s)

> I hope so.

(36m 22s)

> I sure hope it works that way.

(36m 23s)

> I mean, the Mini just struck me as like,

(36m 25s)

> probably a little small of a small canvas to work on for this, but yeah.

(36m 27s) Tim Chaten:

> Probably a little bit, yeah, yeah, okay.

12FPS vs 120FPS

(36m 32s) Tim Chaten:

> And then they have options to go as little as 12 frames per second all the way up to 120.

(36m 38s)

> 12 seems easier to create longer stuff with, but how much of a tradeoff is there with reducing

(36m 48s) John Voorhees:

> – I haven’t really noticed any difference in terms of like performance or how any of it looks.

(36m 54s)

> I mean, what I’ll say is, what I’ve done is,

(36m 57s)

> I haven’t created a long form animation myself,

(37m)

> but I took some of the ones that come with the app and created a new project and then imported those animations into mine and varied the frame rates.

(37m 11s)

> And they were completely smooth and seemed to work perfectly well either way.

(37m 16s)

> I mean, I think that there’s–

(37m 18s)

> There are speeds that are more natural for certain kinds of animations.

(37m 23s)

> I mean, and I think the app kind of acknowledges that ’cause they’re labeled things like for television versus anime versus handheld, like a mobile.

(37m 31s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, yeah, I didn’t know anime was 15 frames per second. That’s kind of an interesting tidbit. Yeah

(37m 33s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting.

(37m 37s)

> That was new to me too.

(37m 39s)

> And they had, I don’t,

(37m 40s)

> I actually am still looking at the beta.

(37m 42s)

> I don’t know if they had,

(37m 43s)

> there was like an anime example in the beta.

(37m 45s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. And I think back, it’s like, “Oh, that’s probably pretty accurate.” Yeah. The blended modes, do you know what these do? They can be applied to like an

(37m 46s) John Voorhees:

> I don’t know if it’s in the final,

(37m 48s)

> I think it is kind of running at a lower frame rate.

(37m 50s)

> Yeah.

Blend modes

(38m 2s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, so my understanding is this is from,

(38m 6s)

> coming from Procreate.

(38m 7s)

> And this kind of goes to your question a little bit about whether there’s anything missing from Procreate.

(38m 11s)

> And the answer is kind of no, I think,

(38m 13s)

> because blending is one of the ways to edit layers in the Procreate drawing app itself.

(38m 23s)

> So you can do things like multiply the colors or darken the scene and that kind of thing.

(38m 28s)

> and those same tools are brought over into.

(38m 32s)

> the world.

(38m 49s) Tim Chaten:

> And then the other option I noticed in that same area of the app was this ability to apply a clipping or a layer mask.

Masking

(38m 58s) Tim Chaten:

> Do you know how the masking works?

(39m) John Voorhees:

> It works pretty much like you would expect in any image editor I mean it you can apply you can apply masks so that you can edit just Regions of an image of a layer as opposed to you know, the entire thing at once so again, that’s kind of a thing coming over from the procreate drawing app is it’s got the same concept of clipping masks and that sort of

(39m 23s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay, and then something I noticed right away when I was starting out my first animation,

Drawing outside the frame

(39m 28s) Tim Chaten:

> not a great one, I was just like playing around with some text and stuff,

(39m 32s)

> but you have the screen size, or the animation size,

(39m 37s)

> you get the little frame border,

(39m 39s)

> and you can keep drawing outside of that,

(39m 42s)

> is the whole concept of that is stuff outside the frame will, in a couple frames, enter the frame and leave it,

(39m 47s)

> and you want that space as a buffer.

(39m 49s) John Voorhees:

> Yep, yes, I mean, that is the concept of the stage versus the actual frame itself.

(39m 56s)

> And so, and this is one of the things I think is very,

(40m)

> it takes a lot of getting used to when you’re doing animation as opposed to drawing because, you know, apps like Procreate,

(40m 7s)

> when you start a drawing or a painting,

(40m 9s)

> you’re thinking about a canvas,

(40m 11s)

> you’re thinking about a defined space.

(40m 13s)

> Whereas with animation, it’s a lot more like filming a play

(40m 19s)

> on a stage where the characters are coming from offstage onto stage and then leaving, and it’s changing over time what you’re seeing in front of you.

(40m 27s)

> And so what you can do is you can start your character,

(40m 31s)

> you can have your initial character all the way off the screen.

(40m 36s)

> And you can see that it’s kind of a semi-opaque view on the iPad.

(40m 41s)

> So you’ve got your bright white square in the middle,

(40m 45s)

> which is your actual stage,

(40m 47s)

> what is actually being animated.

(40m 49s)

> and filmed, but you can have your character just off to the left or the right or wherever or up or down and slowly come on to the stage.

(40m 57s)

> And the example that they gave us during the quick demo during the briefing was they made a scene with mountains and the sun in the sky.

(41m 7s)

> And then off the stage below the drawing was the moon.

(41m 13s)

> And then they animated it so that it would, you know, switch.

(41m 17s)

> So the sun would set and the moon would rise.

(41m 19s)

> And that was just a pretty simple animation of rotating that layer from the moon being low to the moon being high and switching spots with the sun.

(41m 30s)

> And it, as simple as it is, it’s really effective because it looks fantastic as the moon starts coming up above the mountains that are in the foreground.

(41m 41s)

> So you can do, it requires, I think,

(41m 43s)

> a new kind of thinking when you’re drawing.

(41m 46s)

> is where do you want things?

(41m 49s)

> to be over a period of time and how do you do that and with Procreate Dreams that could be having the moon below the below the frame and rising above into the frame or it could be having a character on the left and moving right it could really be just about anything.

(42m 7s) Tim Chaten:

> – Yeah, something I was just thinking about,

Asset Library

(42m 10s) Tim Chaten:

> I’d love an ability to have,

(42m 13s)

> you can import brushes and stuff,

(42m 14s)

> I’d love to have some just like,

(42m 16s)

> a place to throw these like,

(42m 19s)

> an image of fire that I can animate,

(42m 21s)

> and like, these different like effects almost.

(42m 24s)

> So like I was thinking of Upgrade,

(42m 26s)

> Upgrade could throw their little video socials into this app and like,

(42m 29s)

> animate Jason’s head on fire or something like that.

(42m 31s)

> Like, something that’s quicker and easier than drawing fire every single time.

(42m 32s) John Voorhees:

> – Yep.

(42m 37s) Tim Chaten:

> It’s, there’s no way to like,

(42m 40s)

> save off just like,

(42m 42s)

> an image, like fire drawing and.

(42m 43s) John Voorhees:

> Like yeah, like individual assets or something like that like an assets library. I don’t know. I don’t think that there really is I mean, I think the best you could maybe do would be to have a bunch of little projects and maybe copy things out from one to the other maybe but

(42m 58s) Tim Chaten:

> Because you can copy from one project to another if you need to.

(43m 1s)

> Yeah. Okay. And then the whole mixing the real world with animation, we talked a little bit,

Mixing in the real world

(43m 10s) Tim Chaten:

> but I do think that’s a cool thing, like who framed Roger Rabbit, you can kind of make it 2D.

(43m 15s)

> Well, yeah, I say 2D, but the person would be in 3D still. Yeah.

(43m 17s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah Right, no, that’s true. I mean and it’s like there’s some good tutorials online Already, which I think are worth looking at because one of the things you could do for instance is say you have a photo You can long press it and use the you know, the select subject feature of iPad OS and just pull in

(43m 43s)

> Just the thing that you want with the background transparent and then you

(43m 47s)

> can draw it that way it’s like overlaid on your drawing and it looks like it’s part of the drawing so they know that is an option for you to do it’s a good way to add photos to the to your animation you can do the videos and then draw over them or you could even bring in maybe other art assets you know other drawings overlay those over a video and then move them around the scene using the various controls and the keyframing to move, uh, you know,

(44m 17s)

> drawing across and behind the people. Cause one of the,

(44m 19s)

> that was another demo we got was, uh,

(44m 21s)

> it was a short video of a woman dancing that looped and just to show how you could do it.

(44m 27s)

> The procreate artist created like a little,

(44m 33s)

> it was just a simple brushstroke that looked like a moving flame across the screen.

(44m 39s)

> And so it would kind of circle around and it would come in and look as though we’re going behind her and then a cup.

(44m 47s)

> emerging from in front of the dancer and then kind of move across the screen and then loop back around behind her.

(44m 54s)

> And it was really just a very simple animation, but because she was able to use do it in onion skinning and doing just like a little bit of the line at a time and then procreate dreams was taking care of the key framing.

(45m 10s)

> It all kind of came together very smoothly.

(45m 12s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, if we were still in the iPod era, this would be a total Apple ad of “We made this iPod ad with Dreams.”

(45m 18s) John Voorhees:

> Oh, yeah Yep, yep, that’s a great. That’s a great example Yeah, that would be exactly the kind of thing that you would do with this sort of thing because you know, it supports audio we haven’t really talked a lot about the audio but but you could have an audio track and the I you know, it supports a lot all the kind of common audio file formats like wave and mp3 and whatnot and it You with that not only can you have music but you could do voiceover for instance

(45m 20s) Tim Chaten:

> Because, yeah, they totally do that, where they had all this.

(45m 48s) John Voorhees:

> You could like you could do for this podcast. You could have the podcast art in a short video you could lay a track of like a clip from this episode behind it and Then you could create some sort of animation with the goat, you know played over top your show art for instance I mean just to kind of make it visually more interesting than just a picture of the show art a static picture of the show Art in a mastodon post for instance, you know, you could do that and that’s

(46m 18s)

> Something that I’ve been playing with and experimenting with a little bit because I think it’s One of the things that I and this is like a like a philosophical marketing thing as somebody who does this for up for a living, but I feel like There are a lot of way like we write and not everybody reads and some people like their thing Every bit some people like video some people like audio. That’s why we do podcasts That’s why we write articles and I think if you can meet people where they’re at and give them something interesting you’re more likely to…

(46m 48s)

> Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

(46m 53s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, absolutely Yeah, it’s interesting some people don’t want to listen they just want transcript so they can read what was talked about yeah, yeah So the Apple pencil How is this used like is it just standard stuff? Is there double tap in this app in any way or is it just standard?

Apple Pencil

(47m 15s) Tim Chaten:

> Drawing and then some interface elements you can use it with as well

(47m 20s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, I think it’s fairly standard.

(47m 22s)

> I mean, it uses the Apple Pencil in a lot of ways that Procreate also does.

(47m 27s)

> And as I mentioned with like things like perform,

(47m 29s)

> it can be used to drag the characters around the screen to create the automatic key framing.

(47m 36s)

> So it’s about what you would expect from a drawing app, I think.

(47m 39s)

> I mean, I don’t think there’s anything that’s like particularly unique with the way the Apple Pencil is used.

(47m 45s)

> But I do think that having the ability to,

(47m 48s)

> you know, with a lot of,

(47m 50s)

> a lot of iPad things, I mean,

(47m 51s)

> where the iPad really shines is when it’s with a project that you can actually manipulate the content that you’re creating,

(47m 58s)

> where you’re closer to what you’re working on as opposed to the indirection of using like a mouse or a trackpad or a keyboard with a Mac.

(48m 6s)

> With the iPad, you’re actually in there touching what you’re working on and moving it around.

(48m 11s)

> And I think that it works really well.

(48m 13s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, as far as audio, we talked about voiceover, but lip-sync, I have not seen in any examples from Procreate.

Lip Sync?

(48m 22s) Tim Chaten:

> Is that probably a challenge that is pretty hard to accomplish?

(48m 29s) John Voorhees:

> I think it might be. I think that the way you would accomplish that probably would be to animate it first and then have someone voice it over while watching the animation, you know what I mean?

(48m 39s)

> And then layering them on top of each other because I don’t think that there’s any… there’s no like built-in voiceover tool per se, but you can accomplish it other ways, I think, by doing it in stages.

(48m 55s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, I don’t even know how it’s done in like, you know, when Lion King was made It was animated then they brought in the voice actors or did they perform the voice first and animate to that?

(49m 4s)

> Yeah, I don’t know the whole lineage of how that

(49m 9s) John Voorhees:

> – Right, and it might be that it would be potentially a combination of both where if maybe someone did the voice acting and it was off a little bit,

(49m 18s)

> you could use maybe the key framing to adjust how the mouths of the characters and things were working as the words were being spoken.

(49m 27s)

> So you kinda do a little bit of both.

(49m 29s)

> You have somebody maybe voiceover a rough cut of whatever you’re animating,

(49m 35s)

> and then you can go back and kind of adjust animation a little bit to…

(49m 39s)

> match what’s being said if it’s close.

Procreate Keyboards?

(49m 41s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, and then something that this app we’ve talked about before is it’s very touch first But I remember with procreate there was this whole marketplace of Third party like keyboards with all the the hotkeys programmed in there. Are there some hotkeys for this app?

(50m 2s)

> Do you see like it could the same procreate keyboards for that app work here? Or are they different?

(50m 7s) John Voorhees:

> – I, yeah, I don’t know.

(50m 9s)

> I think that that’s, to me,

(50m 11s)

> that’s a really fascinating market.

(50m 12s)

> That’s like one of those accessories,

(50m 16s)

> ’cause I’ve seen them like, you know,

(50m 17s)

> you’ve got like, they’re a little bit like a Stream Deck or something, I suppose.

(50m 21s)

> You know, you’ll have like various input devices for Procreate.

(50m 26s)

> I don’t know if they work with this.

(50m 28s)

> They, there’s not a lot of keyboard shortcuts for this app itself.

(50m 32s) Tim Chaten:

> No, I tried even Command Z to undo, it’s like, that does not work.

(50m 36s) John Voorhees:

> No, and I think–

(50m 37s)

> that’s because I don’t know that this app would be great for working within a keyboard. Maybe in the later stages where you’re editing it, there might be room for more keyboard driven editing, but in terms of the creation and the drawing, I think it’s very much intended to be an outside the keyboard case type of app sitting on an easel or on a table where you’re actually doing the drawing. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of that kind of thing

(51m 7s)

> refined to refine the app, but right now it really doesn’t.

(51m 13s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, and then as far as exporting your final project, there’s video and then there’s a couple others, I think.

Exporting

(51m 21s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, you can export a series of PNGs, for instance,

(51m 25s)

> which I assume that that’s so that you can do things like generate GIFs,

(51m 29s)

> because GIFs are really just a series of still images.

(51m 33s)

> I don’t think it actually exports GIFs itself,

(51m 37s)

> but you can do a series of PNGs,

(51m 40s)

> which maybe that could be just for storyboarding purposes,

(51m 44s)

> or maybe you could stitch them together into a GIF or something like that.

(51m 48s)

> but yeah, it’s primarily a video export.

(51m 51s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay. Yeah. I’m so curious how apps like Procreate will tackle Vision Pro when that comes out next year. Will we get some crazy Dreams app where you have your timeline on a separate screen and some way to draw? I don’t know.

visionOS

(52m 5s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, no, and I think that that’s one of those things with Vision Pro that’s very much an unknown, which is what degree of control are people really going to have over the software they’re using?

(52m 17s)

> How rough are the controls, right?

(52m 19s)

> I mean, is it because, and this is an issue for things like video games, too.

(52m 25s)

> I mean, you know, you buy a Meta Quest 3 and you’ve got controllers and a lot of games require or really, really need controllers to be precise.

(52m 35s)

> Not all games do, but a lot of games do, and that’s not going to be the case with the Vision Pro.

(52m 40s)

> So are those games just out?

(52m 43s)

> Is the hand tracking good enough that they can be used?

(52m 45s)

> Is it a different type of game?

(52m 47s)

> Which is, I think, one reason we haven’t heard a lot about games is because they’re not going to be great.

(52m 52s)

> But drawing is another thing, and some drawing is imprecise, but some of it is also very precise, just like you would probably want with a controller.

(53m 3s)

> That’s why you have an Apple pencil after all.

(53m 5s)

> No.

(53m 7s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, and Apple has not really shown someone just looking down at their desk with the virtual paper.

(53m 16s)

> I don’t think they want you looking that close in Vision Pro or also probably your neck down looking down might be uncomfortable.

(53m 24s) John Voorhees:

> – Right, which is why it feels like more to me,

(53m 28s)

> like the kind of applications that will work best will more likely be things that you would think of on a screen of a computer that’s a distance away from you.

(53m 37s)

> Like whether it’s an iPad in a keyboard case or a Mac with a screen on a desk,

(53m 43s)

> be more like, you know, text editors,

(53m 46s)

> I think would work fine.

(53m 47s)

> Maybe Safari, Mail, you know, that kind of stuff.

(53m 50s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it’ll be interesting to see how that market develops and what kind of experiments just don’t work It’s like oh, this is not comfortable over anything more than five minutes. Yeah Yeah, well anything about dreams. We haven’t covered yet. They’d like to

(53m 54s) John Voorhees:

> Right, right, right, exactly.

Anything else?

(54m 8s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I would suggest that if people are curious about this app, I would take a look at Procreate’s handbook because they have a very nice, in their support pages, a very nice handbook that has kind of step-by-step how you do certain things because there are multiple ways to animate your things, whether it’s manual keyframing, perform, onion skinning, you know, flipbook,

(54m 31s)

> all these different things.

(54m 33s)

> So check that out.

(54m 34s)

> It’s a good starting point.

(54m 35s)

> But also there’s a lot of great YouTube videos here too.

(54m 38s)

> Obviously this is a visual medium and it really shines in the hands of a good artist who can show you how to do things.

(54m 45s)

> So I watched a couple of those and I’m, you know, this app’s only been out, what, like a week and a half.

(54m 51s)

> It’s already got a big following on YouTube and there are a lot of great videos out there showing you how to do everything from just simple, like taking a photo of a, I saw one of a guy who took a Fanta bottle and he animated it from the left and it was, you know, bulging out on the sides and going in.

(55m 8s)

> and you know, just little stuff like that, but it demonstrates kind of like what’s possible once you have the assets into the app and what you can kind of do with them once they’re there.

(55m 18s) Tim Chaten:

> – Yeah, there’s such a thriving procreate creator ecosystem.

(55m 20s) John Voorhees:

> Yes.

(55m 23s) Tim Chaten:

> Like there are entire people that they,

(55m 24s)

> all they do is procreate.

(55m 26s)

> And if you want to learn, just, yeah,

(55m 28s)

> subscribe and watch their stuff.

(55m 30s)

> Yeah.

(55m 31s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Yep.

(55m 31s) Tim Chaten:

> And play along at home, yeah.

(55m 32s)

> One thing I just remembered, I want to ask about,

(55m 36s)

> is there a way to like anchor,

(55m 39s)

> anchor some drawing to, say I drop in,

(55m 44s)

> as you mentioned from like the eye message where you can remove the background.

(55m 48s)

> Like attach that flame to that,

(55m 50s)

> where I’m moving the person,

(55m 51s)

> the flame kind of goes with that person.

(55m 55s) John Voorhees:

> Yes, because you could have, you can group layers.

(55m 59s)

> So I think that you should be able to do it with a combination of grouping the layers and then animating them as a group as opposed to individually.

(56m 8s) Tim Chaten:

> Okay, yeah, because I saw the example of the skateboard and it seems like it’s like how is how’s the skateboard not losing that?

(56m 15s)

> That logo that they painted on to it. I guess it’s probably attached

(56m 19s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, and that’s that’s kind of where I start getting a little lost like I look at these like oh well how would you even do that and then but there’s there’s a lot of tools in there and I think if you’ve used Procreate you probably have a better idea than I do about if you’re an expert at it that how to do that but yeah there are there are things in there.

(56m 38s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. There’s a lot to learn, but it is a fun app just to just play with.

(56m 43s)

> And just as I’ve always learned, all the apps that I love is you start using it, you find a new challenge, and then you find the video or tutorial on how to do it. And then I know how to do that now. And then you just kind of build up from there.

(56m 55s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, exactly. It’s just like a back and forth. It’s like figure out something you want to do,

(56m 59s)

> try to figure out how to do it. If you can’t, go look for a tutorial or maybe just watch a few tutorials and that gives you ideas of things you can do and how you would do it your own way and then use your own assets or drawings and do it that way.

(57m 12s) Tim Chaten:

> – Yeah, well, awesome.

(57m 13s)

> Thank you so much, Sean, for your time.

(57m 14s)

> This has been a great learning more about this,

(57m 16s)

> this wonderful app that Procreate just dropped on us at the end of the year here.

(57m 22s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, no, it’s been great to talk to you.

(57m 24s)

> I mean, I really, I think Procreate Dreams is a fantastic app.

(57m 27s)

> I plan to spend more time over the holidays playing around with it.

(57m 32s)

> That’s one of the things I like to do in the holiday season is take a little time off,

(57m 37s)

> dive into some more complex apps like this that I haven’t used enough and really learn more about them.

(57m 42s)

> And at $20, I mean, I think it’s, you know,

(57m 44s)

> it’s $20 may seem like a lot for the app store,

(57m 48s)

> but I think given the depth and complexity

(57m 52s)

> of this app, I think it’s a real steal actually.

(57m 54s) Tim Chaten:

> Yeah, it’s it’s funny. I back in 2006 when I was really into buying all my Mac apps and I was a new Mac Person, it’s like 50 bucks 200 bucks. Yeah, no big deal. It’s like nowadays. It’s so different. Yeah, I Know right Yeah, it’d be yeah, it’s such a different world growing up today with iPads and stuff I can’t imagine having like procreate dreams as a kid trying to like learn how to do animation

(58m 6s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, I know. I know today you tell somebody $20 and they’re like have a heart attack.

(58m 24s) Tim Chaten:

> It seems like a fun time, you know.

(58m 26s) John Voorhees:

> Yeah, absolutely.

Where can people find you online?

(58m 28s) Tim Chaten:

> So where can people find your work over on MacStories and your other musings online?

(58m 34s) John Voorhees:

> – Yeah, so just visit maxstories.net.

(58m 37s)

> Federico and I do a couple of podcasts too.

(58m 39s)

> We have AppStories at appstories.net and MaxStories Unwind, which is like a weekly media.

(58m 46s)

> It’s really just an excuse for me and Federico to have a fun conversation where we talk about strange differences between Italy and America and then have some media picks as well.

(58m 56s)

> And of course, I’m like on Mastodon,

(58m 58s)

> we have little dedicated pages to ourselves.

(59m 1s)

> Mine is johnvorhees.maxstories.net.

(59m 4s)

> Which actually will open up my profile on Mastodon. There’s a file. You can follow me from there I’m on threads to John Voorhees at John Voorhees. So that’s that’s another place that people can go Thank you enjoyed being here to talk about dreams it’s been fun

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