Shack Animator 2D Indie · published
This is the biggest update so far. The headline: vector layers that you can draw, fill, light and animate like hand-drawn art — plus import straight from Illustrator. Reference: Klaus (2019). © The SPA Studios / Netflix. Used for comparison only; not affiliated with or endorsed by The SPA Studios or Netflix.
Draw with clean, editable shapes that stay sharp at any size, and still look hand-made.
Draw your way: Pen, Freehand (your pen pressure becomes line thickness), Rectangle and Ellipse. Every shape stays editable: move nodes, pull handles, add or remove points.
Fill tool: click inside your line art and the enclosed area becomes a clean filled shape, like a paint bucket that leaves vectors behind. Small gaps in the lines are closed for you.
Inbetweening: draw two key drawings and the app creates the frames in between. It works even when the two drawings have a different number of points, and you can tell it which shape turns into which.
Eraser: swipe across lines to cut them.
Liquify: push, pinch, bloat and twirl your shapes like clay. Hold Shift to smooth them.
Transform box: scale and rotate what you selected; Shift keeps proportions, Alt works from the centre.
Better selection: Ctrl adds, Alt removes, Shift toggles. Lasso mode. Click a fill to grab its shape. Selection steps can be undone one by one.
Copy, cut and paste shapes: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V. Paste lands in the same spot, so moving a shape to another frame or layer is quick. Copying whole layers works as before.
Inspired by the lighting in Klaus — flat 2D colour that catches light as if it had volume.
Shapes with volume: every filled shape can generate its own lighting surface (bevel, soft cushion, sphere or a simple direction). The scene lights then shade your flat colours with real depth, so you paint far fewer shadows by hand.
Surface texture: add noise or a height map on top, for skin, cloth, paper or rough materials.
Soft edges: give any edge a soft falloff and drag its width right in the viewport, point by point. Shape the falloff (where it starts, how hard it is) and break it up with noise for a torn, painted edge.
Living edges: that noise can "boil" or flow over time, so even held drawings feel alive.
Nicer light overall: more natural reflections that respect roughness, no more glassy patches.
Expressive strokes: varying thickness along the line, tapered ends, round or square caps, brush-stamp lines and paper grain.
Draw vector lines with your real brushes: any Tool Preset can paint a vector line, and the line stays editable afterwards.
Line boil and write-on: lines that wobble like redrawn pencil, or draw themselves on over time.
Vector line presets: save a line as a preset (marked "V" in Tool Presets) and reuse it.
Drag in an .ai, .svg or .pdf file (or use File > Import). Each Illustrator layer becomes a layer, shapes stay editable, hidden layers stay hidden.
Illustrator files are read whole, including art outside the artboard.
Text comes along: as editable text layers, or as exact outlines — your choice. Fonts are matched to the ones installed on your computer.
Clear report: after the import you see what was simplified (for example, gradients become one colour).
Liquify now has Pinch, Bloat and Twirl modes.
Fill tool shows a crosshair that stays visible on light and dark areas.
Color window paints the fill or stroke of vector shapes directly.
Tool Settings are simpler: Basic and Advanced views, only what each tool needs.
Inspector and Tool Settings: tidy rows, no more text running off the edge.
Hotkeys window: reorganized, with search and categories.
Pen / tablet: no more delay when you touch the interface, no Windows press-and-hold circles, and floating panels respond to the pen right away.
Timeline: clicking between two frame cells grabs the playhead too.
Vector drawing is 3–6x faster at 4K.
Smoother playback: the frame cache now works in every view, and inbetween frames stay cached.
Fixed a crash when dragging the colour wheel.
Undo during a drag now cancels the drag cleanly.
Deleting a mixed selection of whole shapes and single points removes both.
Fixed the first click after moving the window being ignored.
Fixed the Move / Rotate / Scale gizmo buttons getting stuck.
Fixed shapes mixing up after reopening a project.
The default scene now shows your layers and lights them properly from the start.