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Good luck to them. In my view, Paper is more of a toy than a useful tool but it's not all their fault. Some will spin this more charitably with something along

by rsl7 13y ago

Good luck to them. In my view, Paper is more of a toy than a useful tool but it's not all their fault. Some will spin this more charitably with something along the lines of 'limitations foster creativity' or something like that. Attempting to really use Paper made me realize something that's been sort of but not really bothering me since the iPad was introduced, and that is I like the tools but the application as a whole sucks. It doesn't make sense to buy a some canvas or a drawing notebook at the art store but be limited to the tools that are bundled with it. That is crazy. Not just crazy but it makes zero sense. I can make a picture on a real piece of paper with literally anything that makes a mark, from coffee to dirt, blood, fruit, chemicals, bricks, burnt sticks (if I want to be classic), water... not to mention folding and crumpling. the digital tablet equivalent to this will require two things. 1. complete separation of the tools from the "paper". And I mean complete. BYOT. Whatever that means. 2. a connection between physical tools and software tools. I am TOTALLY FINE with having five different physical objects to draw on my virtual tablet if it means not having to mess around with someone's idea of a genius menu and tool selection system. Really. I would actually love this so much. Look at a real artists studio: they often look like explosions happened. nobody thinks that fewer tools is better. I can find a physical tool without looking or thinking about it or messing up my train of thought. Menus and gestures and commands and even alphabetization ffs, all that "left brain" stuff is a real drag. 3. stretch objective, not really critical today but maybe 20 years from now, I'd like to have full, realistic multitouch. The day I can, for instance, make a handprint on my virtual tablet is the first day it's going to be able to reproduce detailed human expression. I might be off base on this particular one but I want it. yeah, yeah yeah limitations and all that. digital stuff is totally different. whatever.

interpol_p 13y ago
> Paper is more of a toy than a useful tool but it's not all their fault. Some will spin this more charitably with something along the lines of 'limitations foster creativity' or something like that. I have a distinctly opposite experience to you regarding Paper. It was the first app that actually made me start picking up my iPad and using it to get my thoughts down. Part of it is the lack of tools and choices — it's not that they foster creativity, it's that they reduce friction. Paper ships with a few tools that feel very nice, and a few colours that are very well-chosen. Stuff looks great and you don't have to make many decisions, you just focus on getting the idea in your head on the screen with as few obstacles as possible. I believe that's the goal of the app and I think they achieved it. I have many pro drawing tools on the iPad (such as Procreate, which is awesome) but using these is as much an exercise in learning and configuring the tool as it is in generating the content. Sometimes this is useful — when you want to do a piece of final artwork that you have already designed. But Paper to me feels much more like your image of an artist's studio. A disorganised explosion of content where you don't care where it goes so long as it goes out of your head. You don't care about the tools because someone else has made all the right choices. You only care about getting the lines onto paper. I'd prefer it if Paper removed the organisational "sketch books" from the app and simply had it present me a blank piece of paper each time I opened the app. That's all I'm usually looking for when I go to the app. I don't even care if my work is saved because that's irrelevant to working through an idea. These aren't limitations, and I think it's wrong to see them as such.
codemac 13y ago
A friend of mine has been building an app for a while now called infinite sketchbook[0]. It actually has a different goal for what "paper" means. It's a surface you can infinitely zoom in and out of. I don't think it's necessarily an artist's application, but I certainly feel like I'm doing something more than simple drawing when I use it. When the limitations and functionality of the drawing surface changes between apps, I think it'll be difficult to have a separation from tools and "paper". Though I guess the abstraction between paper and tools could go through some decent enough translation to make them all effective on any style of canvas. [0]: http://infinite-sketchpad.com/ http://infinite-sketchpad.com/

by rsl7 13y ago

interpol_p 13y ago

> Paper is more of a toy than a useful tool but it's not all their fault. Some will spin this more charitably with something along the lines of 'limitations foster creativity' or something like that. I have a distinctly opposite experience to you regarding Paper. It was the first app that actually made me start picking up my iPad and using it to get my thoughts down. Part of it is the lack of tools and choices — it's not that they foster creativity, it's that they reduce friction. Paper ships with a few tools that feel very nice, and a few colours that are very well-chosen. Stuff looks great and you don't have to make many decisions, you just focus on getting the idea in your head on the screen with as few obstacles as possible. I believe that's the goal of the app and I think they achieved it. I have many pro drawing tools on the iPad (such as Procreate, which is awesome) but using these is as much an exercise in learning and configuring the tool as it is in generating the content. Sometimes this is useful — when you want to do a piece of final artwork that you have already designed. But Paper to me feels much more like your image of an artist's studio. A disorganised explosion of content where you don't care where it goes so long as it goes out of your head. You don't care about the tools because someone else has made all the right choices. You only care about getting the lines onto paper. I'd prefer it if Paper removed the organisational "sketch books" from the app and simply had it present me a blank piece of paper each time I opened the app. That's all I'm usually looking for when I go to the app. I don't even care if my work is saved because that's irrelevant to working through an idea. These aren't limitations, and I think it's wrong to see them as such.

codemac 13y ago

A friend of mine has been building an app for a while now called infinite sketchbook[0]. It actually has a different goal for what "paper" means. It's a surface you can infinitely zoom in and out of. I don't think it's necessarily an artist's application, but I certainly feel like I'm doing something more than simple drawing when I use it. When the limitations and functionality of the drawing surface changes between apps, I think it'll be difficult to have a separation from tools and "paper". Though I guess the abstraction between paper and tools could go through some decent enough translation to make them all effective on any style of canvas. [0]: http://infinite-sketchpad.com/ http://infinite-sketchpad.com/