Set for release on April 25, 2011, Inchworm is a long-awaited paint and animation app designed for the Nintendo DSi range of hand-held gaming systems. The price will be 500 DSi points (or $5.00).

Inchworm offers the following features:

• create multi-layer flipbook animations
• variable-thickness antialiased brushes
• use the camera for stop-motion & time lapse
• rotoscope by tracing on top of camera footage
• different layers can have different frame lengths
• circles, rectangles and polygons (w/ border)
• translucent color and pattern fill
• custom palette storage
• pattern editor
• individual animation frame timing
• onionskin
• 6 levels of zoom
• export to SD card (SWF, BMP sequence)
• work on images up to 9999 x 9999 pixels
• cut/paste to clipboard
• rescale clipboard images
• flip and 90-degree rotate
• undo

The best way to see what this app can do is to take a look at the Youtube demo video:

This software has been in development for three years, the last year or so being spent trying to get through Nintendo’s DSiWare submission process (and I thought Apple was strict!). If you or one of your children own a Nintendo DSi, DSiXL or 3DS, you’d do well to check out this amazing paint and animation program.

The Nintendo DS family of products makes for an interesting platform for the mobile digital artist. The two versions of the DS that are of most interest to the mobile artist are the original DS and the DS Lite. The reason for this is twofold. First, the original DS and DS Lite both have an undocumented pressure sensitive screen, which the latter models do not have.

Secondly, these two consoles started a wave of “homebrew” applications, designed by independent developers and not licensed by Nintendo. These homebrew applications required a special game cart and micro SD card, easily purchased over the internet, that allow programs to be installed and run on the DS as if they were fully licensed Nintendo games. Nintendo caught wind of this development and fearing widespread piracy of their games, tried to squash the ability to run homebrew apps in their latter DSi consoles.
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