Animation Desk® Draw & Animate Reviews

by Wøłvíê

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 AnimationDesk. 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 AnimationDesk. 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

by Unhappy Animator

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 AnimationDesk 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.

by Luvga

If you’r looking and app just for fun and practice the basic principles of animation, this may be AnimationDesk for you. On the other hand, if you are serious about learning drawing and enhance your animation skills, this is definitely not AnimationDesk for you.
After two years using AnimationDesk, came across serious frustration. The poor brushes offered with bold tick doesn’t allow you to create a smooth sketches. The palm rejection need to be enhanced, every time you touch the screen with your finger either to skip the frame or increase the tick of your pen, a line is recognized in the canvas. The limited interface withdraw you valuable time of your creativity, related but not limited to flip your canvas, add a photo, sort and organize you frames. The most thing I struggle with, was that for reason if you close AnimationDesk in the middle of a running of an animation, when you came back it delete randomly delete frames, so your force to number your pages and keeps back up in case the program delete or sort the frames.
I have reported this issues severely times and supporting team bring no corrections. Also I won competition several years ago and for some reason they delete all my projects from their webpage. This only speak of the poor supporting team behind AnimationDesk. A good recommendation, try procreate instead. You’r welcome in advance!

by Meteorboy

Initially I was very happy with AnimationDesk until after spending multiple days and dozens of hours on one animation, AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk. 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 AnimationDesk , 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 AnimationDesk and especially laying for the annual subscription. Totally useless.

by Xebrax124

When I first downloaded AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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?

by Gmi40

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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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.

by Bbbbbbbsbsxacbad

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.

by Paung19

I like AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk . 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 AnimationDesk for anyone besides those learning the fundamentals.

by Chandrareeves

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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk I feel very comfortable and very chill when it comes to AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk if these things get fixed and if my suggestions actually go into planning this will be total Five star!!!

by SomeWhinyNerd

I really liked AnimationDesk 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.

by Avonette

AnimationDesk is very useful, when I first purchased it (for free) I was excited, then AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk. AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk! Please just try and see how you like AnimationDesk 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...

by JustChessPlease

I’ve been using AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk, 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! :)

by 😄😁😊🙂😀

AnimationDesk is pretty great! All though, I’ve only been using AnimationDesk for a few days and have not discovered every feature about AnimationDesk. 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 AnimationDesk to anybody. Maybe even starters. I do recommend AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk. Please do download this if you are into animating and drawing. Thank you!

by RoiBRocker

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! 🙂

by Lizie123456890

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 AnimationDesk 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 :)

by Alex Kotsifas

I really loved AnimationDesk, 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 AnimationDesk . I might download it again and see if the bug re-appears, because I really do like AnimationDesk 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!

by Topi DA Corgi

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)

by Dooditz

I’m a professional artist that’s always wanted to get into animation, and I’d highly suggest AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk 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, AnimationDesk 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!

by Seagull Squad

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 AnimationDesk. 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, AnimationDesk is awesome, and I really recommend it.

Sincerely, a really happy animator.

by Harelow17

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 AnimationDesk, 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!

by Daleigna

AnimationDesk 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 AnimationDesk . 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.

by Veel A Weasel

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.

by Nymphlodes

After some welcome fixes to a bug that deleted many images in my animations, there are just some big workflow issues remaining. If you make a lot of sequences, the only way to specific ones is to scroll through them. For some reason, the oldest ones are in the front. Since I make animations every day, this takes several minutes of flipping every time I open a newer animation. I do pay for their cloud services, but it takes too long to upload each one. Since AnimationDesk crashes regularly on my iPad Pro, it’s especially annoying to have to re-open AnimationDesk and then, again, spend several minutes finding the one I was working one. Also, you can’t make a simple loop. If you want three frames to loop, say, 4 times, you would have to copy each of those frames and then drag all 12 frames into order, one by one. Both of these problems are unnecessarily time-consuming.

by Gearnut Animations

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 AnimationDesk 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.

by Gato_feliz

I don’t know if i am supposed to be using AnimationDesk in a iPhone 7 (LOL). But it is lots of fun. But i have many problems. I dont know how to use images. Like, if i take a picture and want to use it in my little stupid cartoon short thing, but I don’t know where the button for putting the picture on it. Another problem is the color copy option. It, it’s just broken. When i use it it puts a random nearby color instead of the color i am pointing at. Making it very hard to use the same color. The undo button does not work when i change frame. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but sometimes I accidentally use the fill button and change frame accidentally or confuse the undo button with the change frame button and i have to start over. Also the change frame button is SOOOOOOOOO SMALL! I can barey use it and it is very hard. Also i would like you to change it from FPS to a bar like the one Flash uses. I would also live to be able to add sound recordings and sound effects to tge animations.

Overall good app but very buggy.

gato_feliz