Project Dogwaffle Pro 4

Project Dogwaffle Pro 4 is the unlikely name for a natural media drawing program that wins you over the first time you do anything complex by displaying its progress bar along with the friendly phrase “computer stuff happening”. This is, you’ll soon realise, one of those rare programs written by an author who is writing to solve their own problem rather than to fill a perceived market need.

Project Dogwaffle takes quite a loose approach to its features, combining the image filters you’d expect to find in Photoshop with natural media drawing and painting tools plus the ability to paint frame by frame onto AVI files or create cell animation. Animation can include keyframed motion of brushes along a path or brushes that change over time, and there’s even an exposure sheet to help you work on complex animation such as lip-synching.

A full range of customisable brushes for standard painting and drawing media are included, as are Particle brushes. Particle painting allows you to spray complex objects from your brush in ways that can be controlled by its direction and speed. In other words, you can grow hair, sprinkle forests or add fire to a scene with a single stroke. It’s both intuitive and controllable, with a large range of built-in presets as well as the ability to add your own. Customising brushes can be a complex business, but here you can play around with the controls until you get something you like.