Pencil

Pencil
Download(s)	openhandhelds.org Download
Developer(s)	Pascal Naidon, Patrick Corrieri
Porting developer(s)	sebt3
Version	0.4.4b
Status	Available
Webpage	pencil-animation.org
Pandora, Linux, Windows, MacOS

Pencil is an animation program ported to the Pandora by sebt3. It allows for the creation of traditional frame-by-frame animation using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

Using Pencil

To use Pencil on the Pandora, open it in Xfce, Do not make it fullscreen, keep it in a separate window. Do not detach any of the tool tabs inside it. Widen the corners of the window until they fill up your screen. Then, navigate the program using the stylus, and press L (left shoulder button) when you want to move the window around (which is taller than the Pandora's resolution). In this way, your right hand is holding the stylus, while your left is free to press L when needed. (L is mapped to shift by default) If you're left-handed, it would probably be better if you switched around the default mappings of L and R in Xfce, so you can hold the stylus in your left hand.

The official user manual for version 4.4b of Pencil is here. Other general usage questions can be asked on the official forums.

When you've finished something, you can save your animation in the default /mnt/utmp/pencil directory (anything saved here will actually show up in the /media/[your SD card]/pandora/appdata/pencil directory (see Basic Linux Guide).

Known Pandora-specific bugs and problems

• Pressure sensitivity does not work
• exporting of animation is disabled; only the palette can be exported. So you need to save your animation, then open it in one of the home computer versions of Pencil to export it as a movie or a series of PNG images.
• Showing the previous & next frames in vector animation has bugs, even though it works fine for bitmap images. The previous frame is shown to be about half the screen diagonally down-right from where it should be.
• The program hangs if you make a large number of short vector strokes in a short time
• "Open recent" in the file menu doesn't work.
• If you change the brush settings (width/feather), they don't always actually change in reality, only sometimes. A possible solution is to make sure that your stylus is still on the horizontal slider when you release it, not above or below it.
• Pencil can't be used in Minimenu except as a painting program, because it's impossible to move the window around in Minimenu; therefore, the animation part of the program is off the screen.

Examples of animation made with Pencil on Pandora

Feel free to edit this section to add anything you've made here.

Name	Date (YYYY-MM-DD)	Creator	Notes
Abstract cell	2011-02-03	Esn	19 frames
Face	2011-02-20	Esn	7 frames
Face	2011-04-30	Esn	16 frames

See also

• Software projects

External links

• Discussion thread on GP32X
• Pandora version thread on the official Pencil forum