Butterfly: Inchworm Animation II

Genre: Art Application

Players: 1

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Review:

Butterfly is an Art Application released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016. As with its predecessor, this Art Application is intended to let players create their own animations.

Paradoxically, Butterfly is both more accessible and less accessible than its predecessor. On the one hand, players are given the option to see a brief overview of the Application’s features, and the various options available here are more clearly labeled. On the other hand, I felt like the tutorial this time was far more rushed, far less interactive, and skipped over a lot of this software’s features.

There’s a lot here, but I honestly couldn’t tell you for sure if anything’s been cut out from the first game, or how to access some of those same features if they are here. Players will have to do a lot more toying around with this software to explore its ins and outs. Personally, I feel like the first game’s approach, while flawed, was far more preferable.

However, it’s clear that there are a lot more bells and whistles this time around. The ability to create 3D animations, the ability to import media including sounds recorded on the Nintendo 3DS’s microphone, and the ability to make animations that are more than 60 frames (shocking, I know). And this is on top of the fact that the Nintendo 3DS’s higher screen resolution than the Nintendo DSi means that the image quality is capable of being much better here.

Ultimately, while Butterfly: Inchworm Animation II clearly has more features than its predecessor, it’s a tossup which of the two I think is better. Butterfly clearly has the edge in terms of options and features, but it’s also much harder to get into and actually learn how to use all those features. If you’re absolutely looking for an excellent Animation Application on your Nintendo 3DS, this is clearly the one that offers the most to work with, all for the extremely affordable price of $8. But expect to take a lot of time learning its ins and outs.

tl;dr – Butterfly: Inchworm Animation II is an Art Application that enables players to create animations on their Nintendo 3DS. Compared to its predecessor, this software offers better image quality, the ability to create longer animations, and a whole slew of new options and features. However, it also does a much worse job explaining how to use all of those features, making it harder to dig into, and requiring some time up-front learning its ins and outs. It’s still an excellent tool for creating animation on the go, but it’s not without its flaws.

Grade: B+

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