Iphone 17 pro and Ipad 13" pro M5

 Well, my old iPod touch was getting old in the tooth and they stopped making them years ago so I found myself buying an iPhone 17 pro last weekend. I absolutely did not want to have phone I hate being available 24/7 and how expensive they are. The iPod touch and my 11" iPad pro pretty handled all my mobile needs. 

No to say having a phone doesn't have its positive points. I cycle long distances, sometimes to the states and having one is a safety feature. Also when I ride the bus I can call people ahead of time so they know how late I am (DAYS late the last time!) The camera is OK and will serve when I don't want to carry my real camera, a Nikon mirrorless Z 5II, around with me. I still don't like it. I hate having to have it with me when I am out so I can listen to podcasts, especially on long rides. I don't like the interface. I really don't like how dependent the world is on them... people walking aimlessly around looking into the palm of their hand for hours. Luckily I am not getting many calls these days so it isn't distracting me for a mice walk with the dog or anything like that. I'll get used to using it but I doubt I'll ever want to have it. It has a 33-hour battery life, which will last on the long bus rides to Boston and back.

On the other hand I replaced my 11" iPad pro and an older 13" iPad Pro (my brother gave it to me after he lost if for months, bought a new one and then found it and I love it! The screen is amazing, I didn't think it would make a difference but it does and it's powerful enough for whenever Blender comes to the iPad. I am waiting for Canvas to release their iPad version of their photo, vector and layout suite so I can do all my work mobile in one place. I bought a multi-purpose cover. One is a normal cover that can act as a mouse pad and if I want, there is a keyboard cover that can sit on top of that. I also got the updated Apple Pencil to draw with as that is what I plan to most along with adit photos once the Affinity app is available. I plan on taking some trips to take photos, hopefully to the east coast and other places, using the iPad in place of a laptop. 

I recycled my old laptop and a variety of other old, not really being used devices and now have these and the new Mac Studio as I slowly start my retirement. 

Review: Procreate Dreams

 Procreate is the go to drawing/painting program for me and many others, its clean interface, fantastic price with lifelong free updates and ever expanding features has made it the choice of pros and hobbyists and puts them all on an even playing field. Its been around I think 15 years and while it started out a little wonky the makers have been attentive to users and determined to democratize art. When they announced a new product only a couple months ago, it was a mystery what is might be. Well, now we know and it appeared on my ipad when i woke up one morning this week and i was very excited to try it out.

The idea is to democratize animation in the same way Procreate did for art and drawing. Simple interface, professional quality output at an affordable price and again, lifetime free updates. It sort of succeeded. The performance is beyond anything else, it supports infinite undos and canvases up to 1 MILLION pixels, plays 4 K video in real time and your animations also play in real time with no need to render them first. They have stated some of these features will be making their way into Procreate soon. 

With all that amazing stuff being true, it is also true that this is a 1.0 app and it’s missing not only some basic features in other apps already out there like Toon Squid, which is even cheaper, but crucial drawing features already in Procreate. While Procreate has an uncluttered interface it suffers from hiding features by making them available with gestures you need to learn that are not always intuitive and sadly Dreams has inherited some of that. The thing that surprised me the most was the lack of drawing assistance tools like being able to draw perfect lines or shapes and the lack of some effects like a glow or bloom which Procreate has. It doesn’t export to animated gif like Toon Squid. 

This sounds like it is a disappointment, but it isn’t really for me overall. I expected and they were pretty upfront it was missing some important features before the release so bitching that they are not there when I knew they wouldn’t be seems dumb. The company has a very good, well earned reputation for quick updates and adding features the users want and buying it now insured me I was getting a nice price that i would never need to pay again and to begin learning at the ground level before new more complex features are added. I did the typical bouncing ball test to try it out and it took a couple tries and some you tube videos to make progress and figure out how I might use this. Was a bit frustrating but I see a lot of potential. 

Animation is complex, and no matter how easy someone tries to make it, it will always be complex. This allows some simplification and will introduce new features over time that will streamline things but Procreate Dreams is made to encourage hand drawn, traditional animation techniques over other types of animation which might help keep the human touch in what you create with it. 

Illustration: Fierté 2023, danseurs sur la rue

I started with the top on, then moved on the the second that had more colours then put them together which I can't decide if that looks good or not. All 3 made with Affinity Photo on the iPad pro and I am getting more used to it. I do like things with material folding and bunched up in for some reason. It was always a big challenge when i was only doing pen and ink drawings and once I got a feel for it I just took a liking to doing it. The guy with the hat actually looks like him. maybe he will sue me! Not that more than a few will see these! 

review: WIWU 11" iPad Pro Keyboard case

 For the last many years I have almost always had a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad to make typing easier. I had one for the standard iPad and it was pretty nice and was part of the case. It had to be flipped out of the way if you weren't using it and that was a little sketchy, making it easier for the keys to be broken and wasn't comfortable to hold. After that I had separate keyboards I could set up in front of the screen separately. Sadly, the last keyboard I was using was cheap, fragile and hard to use. With the 11" iPad Pro now more powerful and having more professional apps on it like the Affinity suite and Davinci Resolve it is closer than ever than becoming a laptop replacement for me and I felt I needed a better keyboard option. 

With that in mind I bought this WiWu case/keyboard. The reviews were good, the price, about 100$CAD was in the range I could afford and the key set up very close to the keyboard that came with my iMac and included a track pad like my Pro laptop. 

Pros:

• The keyboard attacks magnetically and can come off if you don't need it. 
• The trackpad isn't bad at all.
• It is very sturdy the stand allows for many positions including, portrait which is great for video chats. 
• The keys light up, a gimmick for sure (you can change the colour) but it's cool looking and helps if I am typing in a dark place. 
• It works like the keyboard on the iMac so I don't have to know weird FN key combos to do normal functions. 
• Its solid but soft and should last awhile.

Cons:

• The placement of the apple pencil is badly thought out. It had slot for it, but that slot doesn't give it contact with the charging side of the device so you have to move it to the other side to charge. The plastic on the charging side, even thought it is supposedly made to allow charging..... blocks it instead with thinner strip of plastic where the pen would charge but not thin enough to allow the current to pass through.  I had to cut out a space to allow the Pencil to touch the metal charging area. (See image below.) Doing this does not seem to weaken the case. 
• 
  It's a little heavy but as it's so solid, that doesn't bug me. 
• There is no way to know how much charge is left on it. There IS a button on it that indicates that function should be there but it doesn't do anything and if you look at the Bluetooth devices, it doesn't show up on the widget that lets you know how much energy they have left. It will blink shortly before dying but that is not really an acceptable solution for a modern device. 

Overall:

I do like it quite a bit. It works well typing is comfortable and the stand in back is the best I have used so far. Between the track pad and the Apple Pencil I shouldn't need a mouse anymore. I have been a little scared to go without that but it's just me being overly cautious, I think. I also bought a new glass protective screen cover that including a piece that protects the camera in back. The Apple Pencil stuff is annoying but not a deal breaker for the price. My goal is to not have to take a laptop with me on trips from the studio. I can draw, do all my graphic design and photo processing, writing and more now. The restriction on my work are no 3D animation software and Apple needs a better font handling, none of which has anything to do with the new case. So hardware wise, this gets me where I want to be for a third less the price than an Apple Magic Keyboard would be. 

Illustration: Tobias Blaine Allen

 

Click to see larger version.

I have been trying to do portraits of these close to me lately and it isn't always easy. For one thing, almost no one wants me to do them. They seem to like the finished artwork and you might think after a couple of them get good response my other friends would be more open to it. Nope! So asked my good friend Toby who is an artist in New Mexico to pose, but wasn't sure how I could get to see him to take reference photos. He offered to take them himself and while I'm not usually good with that, he has done enough self portraits and I was able to look at what he did and request changes. A good photo often does not make a good drawing for some reason so there was some back and forth and I finally settled on what I wanted to do. 

Another advantage is he is a better artist than I will ever be and gave really solid feedback as I worked on it. He is the first and likely the last to request "more wrinkles please".  The portrait looks better the more you enlarge it, I think. The stipple work gets lost on smaller screen images. 

I went further with shading than I have wanted to at Toby's suggestion and it does work. It's mostly stipple and line with some solid greys and white pencil for the beard and hair. Drawn in Sketchbook Pro this time. 

Illustration: Beetle (Affinity Designer iPad)

I started this months ago and couldn't get very far. The interface for Affinity Designer was really throwing me off and it took a while learn what was what on it. I still have a long way to go finding features I know are there but harder to find than on the desktop version. I hadn't really done anything this complicated on Designer on the iPad before and I am surprised how detailed it looks. Once I had figured out a few things, it suddenly came together really quickly and was mostly done while waiting for some baking to come out of the oven. A butterfly image might be a good candidate for this sort of illustration one day.

This is all done in vectors, no pixels. I think this could be simplified into a flat logo like image as well. 

iPad IOS 15 announcement : did it live up to the hype and rumours?

 

One of the problems with Apple announcements is all the hype and speculation about them months ahead of time. This time was no exception and while iPad IOS 15 didn't fulfill all the dreams about it, it probably did more than anyone should have really anticipated. 

It's a solid upgrade with new features in multi-asking and interface improvements adding some much needed and much appreciated (by me) functionality to the devices. I look forward to using them and they will without a doubt help me make the iPad Pro more useful in my professional work. 

The biggest disappointment have little to do with the the IOS itself it seems. Many people wanted and were predicting a slew of professional apps to be released along with it. It's no secret the iPad Pro is far too powerful for any of the software on it and can handle what any of the new M1 chip devices handle. Those apps were not to be seen. I personally don't see myself editing any of my movies on the iPad Pro anytime soon, or coding on it etc but I know some people do. Procreate did an interview and made users aware that Apple throttles all the Apps with a 5 gig RAM limit and that restricts what can be done with any app. The porting of professional desktop apps directly to the iPad is not happening anytime soon. 

I am sure there are reasons to limit RAM on the devices, some good and some not so good but I was happy enough with the update. My big disappointment is that Affinity Publisher for iPad is still not released and no idea when it might be. THAT is the app I need to work from the road much more than Final Cut Pro. I would love to see Blender on the iPad or Krita but these things depend as much or more on what the coders of those products want and can accomplish and less on what Apple does at this point. That hardware is ready and the IOS might not be totally there but I don't think Apple is deliberately hindering them from getting it done for nefarious reasons. 

In short, I'm not disappointed with what the fall update is bringing to device but I am impatient for some apps that will put a little more "pro" into the iPad Pro.