Inchworm Animation

Genre: Art Application

Players: 1

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Review:

Inchworm Animation is an Art Application originally released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2011 and also released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. As the word “animation” in the title indicates, this Art Application is intended to let players create their own animations.

First things first, I should warn you that when you fire up this Application, it tosses you right into things without any sort of introduction, and there are so many options here that it will likely seem extremely intimidating. Do yourself a favor and press “select” to go to the main menu, and take the time to go through the interactive tutorials. Once you do, I think you’ll find that the multitude of options here is actually pretty user-friendly.

So, what do you get in this Art Application? Well, there are three different brushes with adjustable sizes and transparencies, as well as a pencil to edit pixel-by-pixel. You can zoom and turn on or off a grid. There’s a copy-paste function (with transparencies and the ability to squash and stretch). There are layers, a full range of color to choose from, as well as the ability to save preferred colors to a pre-selected palette. You have a few simple shapes, a fill bucket, and all of this is before we get to the animation options.

When it comes to animation, this software only allows for 60 distinct frames, but you can see an “onion skin” preview of prior or latter frames, you can copy from one frame to another, you can change the timing for frames, and you can even draw on frames as the animation is running.

What’s more, when you’re done with all of this, you can transfer your finished work to the MicroSD card to bring to your PC to continue editing on your PC software.

For a piece of software on a handheld platform selling for only $5, Inchworm Animation is a surprisingly robust Art Application. The 60 frame limit is a bit disappointing, and there’s an extremely lacking presentation here that can lead to those just starting the Application to feel overwhelmed by all the options available to them. However, after digging into the tutorials, I think most aspiring animators will find that this is an exceptional pint-sized animation suite, well worth a purchase.

tl;dr – Inchworm Animation is an Art Application that enables players to create animations on their Nintendo 3DS. While the bland presentation and wide array of options can make for an intimidating initial experience, and the 60-frame limit is disappointing, once you go through the tutorials I think you’ll find this to be an outstanding animation tool given the Nintendo 3DS’s limitations and the tiny $5 price tag. At that price, consider this a must-have for art lovers on the go.

Grade: B+

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