Yesterday, Senior Software Engineer at Walt Disney, Paul Hildebrandt shared
a video on Twitter, where Pixar artists get hands-on with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, and share their thoughts about the new tablet and stylus.
The iPad Pro, available in November, was announced early last month at the
Apple “Hey Siri” keynote event in San Francisco. The bigger form factor introduced for the new iteration of the iPad is set to target creative users, with a range of new apps designed to take full advantage of the Apple Pencil stylus, which is sold separately and is only compatible with the iPad Pro, at least so far.
The feedback from Hildebrandt seemed very positive, in regard to responsiveness of the Pencil, as well as some of the features discovered during the course of the demo, such as the ability to tilt the pencil, and use it as a “smudge stick” to create smoky effects when using it as a pencil.
Some of the users watching the live demonstration have asked how the Apple iPad Pro compares to the Wacom Cintiq tablet. The two devices are certainly different, and according to Apple, the iPad Pro’s objective is not to emulate what Wacom Cintiq tablets do, but rather showcase its own technology and user experience, in the form of 3D Touch, and the way it interact with Apple Pencil.
One interesting comment was made in regard to how the Apple Pencil features a certain “roughness”, when drawing, which, while it may or may not be intentional, adds a certain dimension to the experience, in a sense that drawing on an iPad Pro feels as close as it can get to drawing on an actual sheet of paper.
While testing the capabilities of ProCreate, during the first portion of the demo, the iPad Pro received praises on its palm-rejection capabilities, which prevents the touchscreen from reacting to pressure from the palm of the hand while using the pencil.
The second part of the demo, featured a different app, 53 Pencils, in which different drawing instruments were tested, such as brushes and ink pens.