Facing a long stretch of social isolation, people around the world are resolving to use the time to pick up a skill. It can be a language, baking, musical instrument… or, if you’re new to it, animating.
If you choose the last one, you’re in luck: an Ipad app has launched, with perfect timing, to help you learn. Looom (with three Os) bills itself as “a new way to create hand-drawn animation”; really, it’s an unusually intuitive tool for making animated loops. The software is designed with beginners in mind — the creators compare it to bowling with gutter guards — but pros are also having fun with it (see below).
The creators are animator-designer Eran Hilleli and programmer Finn Ericson (known collectively as Iorama.Studio). The pair developed Looom in their spare time over the course of a year and a half, working remotely from Israel and Sweden respectively. Their immediate inspiration was an approach to animation that involves stitching together loops, as Hilleli explains: