Improve a prior project

About my project

I recently got a new iPad and can now run Procreate Dreams. Procreate is a digital art app, and Dreams is their animation app. I have had my eye on Dreams for a while, wanting to recapture some of that Macromedia Flash glory from my high school and early college days.

Unfortunately I lost my Procreate files when I reset my old iPad, not realizing they were saved locally. It just works, right? I knew I wanted to test out some very light animation an improve an old project. I decided to work on my Autumn Silhouette project from a few months back and add some fireflies. We don’t really get them around here, but I loved seeing those little night lights glow while I was growing up.

How I made it

Procreate Dreams allows you to use “drawings” and “flipbooks”. Drawings are static and flipbooks have movement. I imported my previous project as a .png acting as a drawing in my project. Because I didn’t have layers access anymore I had to work with a flat image.

I then add a flipbook on top of the background image. This is where I added the fireflies. It took a few iterations of sizes, brushes, and speed before it felt right. I then randomly picked a few spots across the 5 second timeline and reanimated a similar pattern. I intentionally varied the size, movement, and length a bit, but tried to have them feel like they belonged together.

I remember fireflies mostly sitting still hovering and lighting up for a second or two. But I loved when you occasionally caught one it motion, watching it zip around before engaging stealth mode. I wanted to capture that so added my last firefly with a bit more zip in its flight, intentionally getting lost up against the skylight as it fades out.

I then exported the animation as a looping .gif.