Dominik Hoffmann wouldn’t have imagined in his wildest dreams the animation wonders which amateurs and developers would create with Vine, the basic iOS application. Saying this becomes even easier because Vine is actually somewhat ill-equipped to serve as a core animation production platform. However, after considering the masterpieces that are associated with this app, we are quite assured of the animating power relished by it. Only if Vine and parent company twitter could take these basic refinements into consideration, Vine would become an exponentially better animation platform for sure.
Exposure: Lighting is a fore running element in animation. A complete control over lighting is the key to successful animation. But wouldn’t it have been easier if a tap on the screen was all you needed to identify the area where exposure is a matter of concern? This native feature is already available in iPhone’s camera. But a toggle option within the app that facilitates ‘tap to set exposure’ and touch to record will make sense here.
Get Touch into Focus: Of course, the feature of touch and focus is already available in your iPhone but in Vine touch connotes record. This limits your creativity and adds to the requirement of a steadying tripod. Again a small on-screen toggle which helps easy switching from touch to record to touch to focus will make things better.
Thumbnail of Previous Image: While you are working a Vine animation, positioning or re-positioning either the frame or the subject can ruin the overall impact. The animation could look highly jerky or not come up like an animation at all. Again, you need a tripod for your rescue and if God forbid a tripod is not available, you need to rely upon your very own hand. Imagine how gruesome it would be to hold the phone in your hand and the reach out with another hand to shift the frame. And then the challenge of keeping the iPhone at the same position. One of the solutions could be to introduce a thumbnail of the previously captured image or frame within Vine. This would be just like the panoramic photo option. All you will need is an eyeball to focus the correct position.
Projects: Animation is a time-consuming process which needs proper planning and devising. As a matter of fact, you can’t do anything using Vine until a video is shot and shared. If the Projects feature is introduced, you can probably start working on some animation, put it aside, start working upon some other Vine and return to the original half-done animation again.
Cropping: Creative people like exerting control. Even after the completion of an animation, you might wish to do some last minute cutting and cropping. Here, having the option of adjusting the frame width, shape or aspect ratio as per your liking is a great feature to have.
Landscape: Having only portrait shoot as a video option can be quite limiting. Cinematic experience adds charisma to animation. Even at the length of five seconds an animation demands to be treated as a wide-screen movie. So, all Vine needs to do is to tap into the avenue of rotation options for every single iPhone existing, and it will be good to go.
Video Importing: we don’t expect a free app like Vine to incorporate all video editing tools, but it can at least let us edit the video elsewhere, iMovie for instance, and upload it back in bits later. Vine might overlook this suggestion because videos might be at times a bit shorter than six seconds. But, hey! If the images can go a second or a half beyond six-seconds what’s the big deal in keeping it shorter?
Only if Vine takes the aforementioned suggestions in consideration and implements reasonable changes, it is likely to rule the roost in the shareable animation arena and of course win over the hearts of several iPhone users out there.
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