I feel like I’m back in grade school playing with KidPix, only the interface is far, far better.
It does one thing (drawing), but it does it fantastically well and the interface is so well designed that it’s worth downloading the trial version just to see it (even if you don’t need drawing software and uninstall it immediately afterward).
I’m a fan.
Looks fun. Will give it a blast. Now where did I put my secret supply of tracing paper? 
That is a lovely program. The interface is fantastic and it’s well designed. The only thing stopping me from snapping up a licence is that I found it lagged a bit - when I move either my cursor or my tablet pen, the drawing takes about a second to catch up. This is on a MacBook Pro with 3GB RAM, too… This makes it a little less than ideal for sketching out ideas. Hopefully they’ll speed it up in the future. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it.
Best,
Keith
I agree–other than the lag, this is the first time in a long time I’ve sat down at a computer and felt like I was in the future. I can’t wait to park my daughter in front of it this afternoon.
What a great little program! I’m running it on the iMac with two GB - no lag whatsoever. Oh dear, my poor wallet… 
I suspect there’s lag on some tools and less on others. The only slow-downs I noticed in my (admittedly short) trial run were when I zoomed or dragged and it had to redraw all the junk that I’d been drawing outside the viewport.
Full screen + tracing = !!!
I wish I had a tablet so I could try the program properly. As it is I don’t actually need a drawing program. I might have to buy it just to send the dev kudos for creating such an awesome interface, though.
Thought I’d give it a whirl as I have sometimes wished for a simple drawing app. It works well with my Rev. 1 MBP 17" 2.16G with 2G of memory, and with no lags. It also encouraged me to get out my Graphire 4 tablet, which I hadn’t used for some time, and install the latest driver. It works very well with the tablet.
It’s great fun and I’ll consider buying it in the end, but it has one enormous disadvantage for me and that is no eraser, including treating the eraser tip of the pen as just a nib. But I’m so ham-fisted, I need an eraser. The interface is brilliant, though.
Mark
Actually, that’s the one place I think where the simple interface could be improved, at the moment. There is an eraser - the ‘negative’ brush types are essentially a few different styles of erasers. However, it would be nice if these brushes could be assigned to the ‘eraser’ side of a tablet pen, to be sure. It’d be especially nice if you could pick the two types of brush separately.
No lag for me on my MBP 17" w/ 2GB RAM, although I haven’t made anything with more than a few layers yet. I like it. It’s great for doodling diagrams in lectures, and surprisingly good for actual line art.
I much prefer ArtRage 2, although I like the way Scribbles deals with layers. ArtRage has more and better tools, even in it’s free version, with seamless tablet support. Though it doesn’t have the “everything’s still smooth when you zoom in” thing, the way it simulates natural media is, I think, superb.
Weird about the lag… My MBP is of a high spec (2.16 GHz with 3GB RAM) but shows a definite lag in Scribbles. Yet Photoshop CS is as fast as you could hope…
Best,
Keith
ArtRage is nice, but you can get a full OEM set of Painter X for $35 on ebay, and the integration with Photoshop is nicer. (Of course, the interface has always been a bear, but they are getting better.)
I was at the Berkeley Mac User Group meeting when KidPix was first shown in beta. The dump truck/trash got a full standing ovation. 
KidPix was pure class. I remember there was some tool or other (an eraser?) that resulted in an explosion noise and pulsating target-style lines. I’d use the tool over and over because the sound and the animation made me so happy.
I was a weird little kid. 
You’re correct, it’s definitely specific to Scribbles. I didn’t notice it before, but when I took Scribbles to full-screen mode and activated trace (transparent canvas), the lag was noticeable on my 2.33GHz MBP.
There is a 1.0.1 release of Scribbles out that improved the lag somewhat on my G4. It’s still laggy, but not as bad.
The oddest thing about it is that the animation is still smooth…the way things draw stays silky…there is just 100ms or so of latency between moving the pen and seeing a result. Perhaps a Core Animation issue?
In case folks aren’t aware, version 1.1 just came out with the following features (among others):
Performance optimizations - should improve drawing on older computers.
Tablet pen eraser support (just flip your pen over to erase).
High-resolution output (for export, print, and copying). Allows you to create incredible, huge prints from any drawing.
Tasty.
Hey,
Scribbles dev here. If the drawing stays smooth, and all you notice is a teensy bit of lag behind your pen/mouse, I suspect that this is a by-product of the filtering happening internally. Scribbles applies a bunch of fancy math to all of your strokes in real-time to make sure stuff stays smooth (and you don’t get any jaggies or weird corners). In a nutshell, Scribbles can’t render the stroke of “where you’ve been” until it knows “where you’re going”. The good news is that this delay should stay really-really small, and as soon as you lift your pen/mouse everything will catch up.
There’s no good way around this, but in 1.1 as someone mentioned I did do a ton of work on drawing performance. This should help a bit.
If you have any other questions, I welcome you all to check out the Scribbles forum: atebits.com/forum/
… or just shoot me an email personally: contact@atebits.com
Oh, and thanks for checking out Scribbles 