Popular Drawing App Update Delivers Stroke By Stroke Video Replay

Apple Design Award winner Savage Interactive has released an update to their popular drawing app for iPad, delivering full HD video playback of each brushstroke used to create an image. The update to Procreate also provides support for Wacom’s latest stylus which promises to deliver extremely detailed precision to tablet graphic artists. Procreate has also opened up a portion of the library of brushes which was previously only available via in-app purchase. Version 1.9 is now available for $4.99 in the app store.

In a promotional video for the new update, app developer Savage Interactive shows exactly how three visually stunning images were drawn, stroke by stroke. These videos were stitched together using the Silica 2 engine, a graphics engine first implemented in Procreate version 1.7.

As an artist creates a painting, the app saves each line and each stroke, allowing them to go back in their work to correct any mistakes or add additional steps in their process. The Silica 2 engine uses the same stroke recording process and stitches these lines together to create the 1080p video in near real-time as the artist works. Each time the stylus or finger is lifted from the screen, the app stores the last stroke in a special file. These files are then stitched together to create the video.

Users can then export this video to the iPad’s Photos app, export it to iTunes, share it via email or even upload it to their dropbox folder. Savage Interactive says the entire process is “beautifully transparent.”
Procreate 1.9 also includes support for the Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus, a pointer which is capable of detecting 2,048 different pressure levels. This kind of sensitivity allows artists to draw lines ranging from incredibly thin to thick and bold, closely resembling the lines drawn by analog mediums like a pencil or paintbrush. This same level of precision is found in other professional-grade Wacom offerings from their Intuos and Cintiq lines.

The Intuos Creative Stylus communicates with the iPad via Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity and, when paired with Procreate 1.9 or another supported app also offers palm rejection technology. This means the stylus understands when the artist rests their wrists or palms on the iPad’s surface as they draw and does not record this input on the screen. Other styluses such as Ten One Design’s Pogo Connect also operate on Bluetooth 4.0 and offer palm rejection technology.

Savage Interactive has backed support for the Intuos Creative Stylus into Procreate early on as the Stylus won’t be available until this October when it will be available first in Best Buy stores.

Finally, Savage Interactive say they’ve unlocked a portion of their library as a “thank you” for winning the Apple Design Award during this year’s World Wide Developers Conference. Now those brushes which were once included in an in-app purchase are now included with the $4.99 app.

In addition to the Artery brushes, users can also find the artery shape and grain source images in the pro library. And just as they’ve been able to do in previous versions of the app, users can create their own brushes in the app and use these in their own pieces. They can now use the Artery source images when building their own brushes.