Animating Is Child’s Play With This iPad App

Looom allows us to create animated loops on our iPad in a simple and intuitive way

Programs like Adobe After Effects or Adobe Animate have made it possible for everyone to create digital animations, and as a result, a new generation of artists has emerged. At the same time, apps like Procreate allow us to create basic animated sequences using the drawing tool, simply and quickly. Halfway between the two options is where we find Looom.

Finn Ericson and Eran Hilleli, better known as iorama.studio, are the creators of this app for iPad, and they bring us animation in its more basic expression while allowing us to be very creative. If you enjoy putting together simple animated sequences or you wish to have a go at creating GIFs, Looom will be of interest to you.

What does Looom do?

In a nutshell, this app drastically simplifies the interface of traditional animation software and, consequently, its workflow. The idea, inspired by music-making tools, is to bring animation within everyone’s reach.

The app’s interface offers a few simple options to start off. Basically, we draw frame by frame; each frame is linked to a small reel that we touch to go from frame to frame. We can create animated loops very intuitively, and add color, thickness, and opacity.

Another great feature of Looom is that it allows for infinite canvas: we can zoom in the canvas and manipulate the size of our shapes quickly and go as far or as deep as we want.

How does it fit in with other apps?

At the moment, the first version of the app gives us two exporting options:

- We can export our animations directly as .mp4 files, thanks to a basic screen capture function. This allows us to create the video immediately, but we will not be able to work on this animation in other professional programs.

- The second option, which enables us to process our work in Adobe Animate or After Effects, is to export our animation as a .svg file. We can import this file into Animate and then export it as .swf, and thus be able to import it into After Effects. It is still a somewhat convoluted method, which is bound to be simplified in a future upgrade of the app.

You can download Looom for iPad from the App Store.

You may be interested in:

- Introduction to Adobe Animate, 5 courses by Josep Bernaus.
- Introduction to After Effects, 5 courses by Carlos 'Zenzuke' Albarrán.
- Vectorial Animation Frame by Frame Style with After Effects, a course by Pablo Cuello.
- Animated Frame by Frame Illustrations, a course by Catalina Vásquez.
- Photoshop Tutorial: How to Cut out Images so You Can Animate Them