Over the last couple of months I’ve been making a small and simple animation tool in Godot as a side project. It’s inspired by tools from the past that are no longer as easily accessible or supported as they once were. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out so far! I wrote a devlog which is available here: Flipdot Animator Devlog #1 • Ezcha
It supports streaming data to/from a file, a (theoretical) limit of 9223372036854775807 frames, four toggleable layers, up to eight colors (no layer limitations) and exporting to multiple formats such as avi, mp4 and gif (even on web!)
I really love the idea! Takes me back to the time when I was playing around with Flipnote Studio on my old DS. Such a fun way to get creative, no matter if experienced artist or beginner. ^^
What’s your plan for the target platform? The UI is designed in a very mobile/touch friendly way. I would imagine switching screens every time you wanna change pen color or drawing layer could be tedious though. Perhaps keyboard shortcuts could help?
I’m planning on releasing for pretty much all of them, desktop, web and mobile. The UI being tedious is something I’ve thought of and while I’m not sure how to remedy that on mobile yet, I have already added some keyboard shortcuts.
N: Pencil tool
B: Brush tool
E: Eraser tool
K: Bucket tool
V: Nudge tool
CTRL+S: Save
CTRL+Z: Undo action
CTRL+Y: Redo action
Up arrow, Escape: Open/close menu
Down arrow: Close menu when it's open or starts/stops playback
Right arrow: Next frame, or creates a new one when the last one is selected
Left arrow: Previous frame
Backspace: Clear the current layer
Delete: Delete the current frame
Insert: Add a new blank frame after the current one
CTRL+D: Duplicate the current frame and insert it directly after
CTRL+SHIFT+D: Duplicate the current frame and add it to the end of the animation
I have yet to work on mobile support but desktop and web are fully functional. The next devlog will cover the process of how I got it all working in the browser.
Keyboard shortcuts are definitely gonna help with the fluidity so they sound great. ^^
For mobile, perhaps gestures could help? Swipes, double/tripple taps, two and three finger gestures. Like a double tap could automatically bucket fill with the current color. Some drawing apps already use three finger gestures to copy and paste. Maybe you could scroll through frames by dragging the finger or pen along the bottom side of the screen, kinda like a YouTube video.
Not sure how much effort you wanna put into specific touch controls as I don’t even know how one would implement gestures in Godot. But just throwing out some ideas. Hope they help. :> Or at least inspire. ^^’
But just throwing out some ideas. Hope they help. :> Or at least inspire. ^^’