GDC08: Hands-on Inchworm

by Zack Stern { Feb 22nd 2008 at 1:00AM }

Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software behind A Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly wanted to draw and animate on his DS. So he wrote his own application, Inchworm. He says, "[It was] sort of a passion project, something we really want to see on the DS." In between his GDC meetings to find a publisher, I sketched through the latest build of the tool.

Even though Inchworm is closer to Painter than Mario Paint, it's still fun for dabbling. Artists use the stylus to scribble out stills or cels. Top-tier tools that I'd expect in Photoshop even filter down to this level, including layers, opacity settings, alpha channels, selections, and onion-skin animations. Sabiston also intends to add smear brushes to blend paints and sound effects for animations.

As small as the DS screens feel and with so many tools on-screen, I still intuitively navigated through all of Inchworm's options. I sketched on the touchscreen and used the move tool to drag the page for more room. I could also zoom in to tweak blown-up pixels, but I couldn't zoom out past the one-to-one size. The top screen keeps the entire view available at the same time, but a zoomed-out angle for drawing might be added.

Still pictures can be about as big as 1,024 by 1,024, although limits are being determined. Standard DS cartridges have little room to save, although users should be able to keep a handful of those stills and a few 256x192-pixel animations of about 100 frames stored at the same time. But when the room is filled, the DS can upload saved files directly to the Inchworm site. Users can also download files back to a DS for more work.

I was also interested in using full-quality documents in further production on my computer. But Inchworm should be a great art application for people who only want to sketch and animate on a DS. Here's hoping it finds a publisher soon.

Tags: a-scanner-darkly, art, bob-sabiston, ds-paint, gdc, gdc08, inchworm, mario-paint, paint, painting, sketch, waking-life

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

KiraXD @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:04AM

SWEEEEEEET this is the app ive been waiting for.... no more picto-chat artwork for me... PS on the go... nice.

chia @ Feb 22nd 2008 4:41PM

Isn't this the same as colors?

http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/

Zack Stern @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:24AM

Hey Chia. Colors was mentioned, and I haven't tried it myself. (I'm sadly without homebrew abilities, but those flash cards have been on my list for a while.) But it sounds like one of the biggest differences is that the Inchworm people are trying to get it published commercially.

Grumpyzrp @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:50AM

you cant animate on colors...

bm @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:24AM

Colors is nice, but it doesn't do a lot. No layers, no effects, just brushes and a single canvas.

They did, however, manage to get pressure sensitivity out of the DS screen. Yes, I didn't believe it either until I tried it. It's inaccurate but it works.

samfish @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:35AM

I'd buy it.

flYY @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:42AM

I'd tap that

D Grand @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:50AM

"Hands-On InchWorm"... pretty funny unintentional porn title.

ill trooper @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:59AM

This could be/should be amazing. I hope this becomes commercially released (aka "not homebrew")! This is a real strength of something as popular as the DS has become - unique niche products can be made and will likely sell enough to justify the effort.

I also just realized this is the guy that sort of got dissed by getting removed from the 'Scanner Darkly' film under strange circumstances, so it would be really cool to see him have success with this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly_%28film%29

TwEE @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:41AM

This sounds great..

waynski1457 @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:55AM

id buy it. my computer has been acting up recently anyway so i cant always rely on it to do some ps work.

ALH @ Feb 22nd 2008 6:22AM

1024*1024 sounds sexy, colours is very restrictive with only a 500*300 square. How would one send their images from inchworm to their PC though? Part of the value of colors is that you can use the thumbnails to create a bigger piece if you wish so later, by easily transferring it over to photoshop.