As an aspiring animator Ive tried a fair number of 2d animation softwares and always find myself coming back to Sketchbook because the actual process of drawing feels better on Sketchbook than on any other software Ive tried. The fact that drawing feels great, the quality and variety of lines is undeniable and the software runs smoothly on most systems(something that a lot of other animation softwares are still working on) makes me feel like Sketchbook is in a great position to become an amazing tool for animators if a few features are added that will allow people to work on slightly more complex and layered animations. I know some of these features might not be easy to add but I still feel like these are changes that most animators would love to see and would also bring many more animators to sketchbook as these changes would make Sketchbooks Flipbook a more viable option for serious animation.
The features I would like to see are-
More Layers- The ability to add and remove layers would drastically improve sketchbook as a tool for animators. Being limited to 2 layers and a back ground layer forces animators to either add a lot of tedious steps to the workflow or forces them to have to move outside of sketchbook to finish animations, when adding more layers could potentially allow a lot more to be done within Sketchbook.
Edit an entire layer- The ability in Flipbook to edit every frame in a layer at one time. If there were a way to select a layer and apply transformations to every frame on the layer at one time it would drastically enhance the potential of Flipbook. It would be great if a layer could be selected and transformations applied with one action that would apply the same transformation to every frame in the layer. The ability to change opacity, scale up or down(size of artwork), apply rotations or even mirror an entire layer with one action.
Transparency Lock/ Alpha Lock- This is one of Sketchbooks best features and would be very useful if it were added to Flipbook. The ability to recolor line art or even other artwork or color/fill layers in animations, is something that would be extremely useful for animators.
Ability to import an audio track- This is probably the most difficult feature in my list to add to Flipbook. I feel like the ability to import an audio track into Flipbook would be useful while trying to do certain animations like lip syncing to dialog or trying to animate to a particular audio track or even animating to specific sound effects. If Sketchbook were to add this feature in a way that the audio tracks wavform could be seen below the frames it would be a very strong addition.
