3-APPS-A-WEEK, issue #4: let’s get creative
Hello everyone, Sofya from Aaply here. Welcome to the new edition of 3-APPS-A-WEEK, where I review cool UI interactions from various existing apps. This week is all about creativity, let’s dive in.
Today I review an app for visual inspiration, a helpful tool for people who draw people and my all-time-favorite drawing app. Btw, there is a cool bonus for 3-A-A-W readers in the end of the story ;)
App #1: Getting inspiration with are.na
You can get are.na on App store and Google Play. Available for free with in-app purchases.
How are.na describe themselves:
Are.na is a platform for creative thinking and collaborative research. Collect anything, organize your thoughts, and develop ideas over time.
Save and organize any kind of content into collections.
It is mostly used on desktop, but they also have an app to give users ability to collect ideas on the go.
What I loved about are.na is the endless creative inspiration feed from all users who shared an inspirational piece publicly. You don’t have to follow the right people to get content, but get inspired by the community. Also minimalistic and utilitarian UI is always great.
All of the functions and scenarios are pretty linear. For example, you found some content you like. You can connect this found content to your own channels or discover many other collections with similar idea and aesthetic. All powered by the people!
What also cought my eye is the simple navigation. There is no disctracting tool bar following you everywhere, just a little menu on top with very few options. You guys already should know, I am a sucker for apps having as few functions as possible. I guess I’m easily overwhelmed.
Are.na had a paid account option, but if you just like to scroll though and save stuff, free account should be all alright. I find the content posted there to be pretty good.
App #2, strike a pose with Manikin
Get Manikin on App store or Google play. Available for free with in-app purchases.
Create scenes with multiple characters, manipulate simple 3D shapes or add predefined objects like: bicycles, furniture, weapons and much more to visualise your ideas. Now you can quickly develop storyboards to plan your comic books and mangas.
There is a shift in the artists community for more efficiency. It’s not shameful anymore to use tools to make your work more productive. Minikin is one of the tools that can help out with that.
On the free version you get several human models that you can pose however, choose a desired angle and screenshot or export the outcome to later use for your drawing, I will show that process below in the next section ;)
I will primarily focus on their onboarding because I found it to be very good. They show you how to set up a scene first and how to manipulate the dummy parts.
The part orientation and position control is what amazed me. There are 3 little sliders for different correlating cones that show directions. You simply swipe your way to desired outcome in the small section of the screen, so are still able to see as much of the scene as possible.
You can do everything by hand, but you can also use presets within the app and slide it to the point of the frame you want to keep.
It’s extremely easy to use and I already put it in my artistry stack.
App #3, I’m fangirling over Procreate Pocket. Business as usual.
*Only available on iOS for 4.99 USD
Powerful enough for creative professionals. Simple enough for everyone. Award-winning Procreate Pocket is the most feature packed and versatile art app ever designed for iPhone.
Procreate is a famous app for artists, it started off as a product for iPads. Many professionals use it in day-to-day work. I too use it almost daily.
Savage Interactive released Procreate Pocket at the end of 2014 and it gets updated to this day. It’s basically iPad procreate with some functionality limitations.
I think it deserves a separate article to descibe all of the amazing funcitons, I’m here to show you a few.
Let’s take a screenshot of the Manikin dummy and use it as a base. I inserted an image as a separate layer and easily toned down it’s opacity.
Procreate is amazing with utilizing the touch-screen devices mechanics. For example, I draw some ugly shapes at first, then hold on for a sec and they become straight right away.
To fill a shape out or recolor something you just drag the color indicator to the place you need. Just like that. And then you can some cool effects on a layer.
You can make many kinds of adjustments in Procreate and it is all well put with the drop-down menus and sliders. Copious amounts of settings and options are easily navigated through.
It is very intuitive especially if you have background in other graphic softwares. Take this size and opacity brush controls as an example.
This was my final result ↓ yeah, you can get some text on there too!
The lovely bonus from Endel.
They offer a free subscription for 1 month for 3-A-A-W readers. Click this link to get it. Man, I guess I’ve become an influencer :D If you haven’t checked out the issue where I‘ve written about them, here you go → 3-APPS-A-WEEK, issue #2: music
This was 3-A-A-W-#4. If you have any app recommendations for me to review, please DM me on twitter (or just follow, I would love that). Tune in next week to see which 3 apps I will review. Have a good one!
