Lines is a minimalistic animation program that was inspired by the words of Norman McLaren

“My militant philosophy is this: to make with a brush on canvas is a simple and direct delight, to make with a movie should be the same.”

Norman McLaren, 1948

Lines is meant to be the equivalent of a sketchpad for animators. Its minimal interface enables extremely fast creation of rought animation sequences. It is designed from the ground up to minimize delay between an artist’s imagination and the moving canvas.

The most unique feature of the program is to enable real-time collaborative creation of animation sequences. Think Google Docs for animation. Any clip can be shared over the network and an arbirary number of artists can connect to the clip and start drawing anywhere, independently from the others.

Lines can be used in small private groups, but also in public performances, where an additional computer is typically connected to a projector and plays back the clip in a loop, showing the evolution for the audience.

Lines was created and developped by Simon Drouin.