Procreate Dreams 2: The Animation App That Listened to Its Users

When Procreate Dreams launched in 2023, it was the most accessible animation app on iPad. It was also missing features that users desperately wanted. No lasso tool. No selection tools. Limited export options. A Flipbook that felt constrained. Savage Interactive heard the feedback and responded with Procreate Dreams 2 in December 2025, a free update that added the lasso tool, 180 new animation brushes, a redesigned Flipbook with multiple tracks, GIF export, transparent video, and a reworked timeline with three dedicated modes.

At $12.99 one-time (the same price as Procreate itself), Dreams 2 is the best value animation tool on iPad. It is not a replacement for Toon Boom Harmony or Adobe Animate, and it does not try to be. It is an animation app designed for illustrators who want to bring their drawings to life without learning a professional animation pipeline.

What Is New in Dreams 2.0

The Lasso Tool: Finally

The most-requested feature since launch is here. You can now use lasso and transform tools to select, move, rotate, stretch, skew, shear, and warp parts of your drawings within Draw and Paint or Flipbook. This is not a minor addition. It fundamentally changes how you work, letting you isolate and modify specific elements without redrawing entire frames.

Redesigned Flipbook

The Flipbook now supports multiple tracks and properties within a single entity. You can layer several frame-by-frame animation tracks, modify frame timings, and adjust blend modes and track order independently. This means you can have a background animation track, a character track, and an effects track all within one Flipbook, which was not possible in version 1.

180 New Animation Brushes

Kyle T. Webster (the brush legend formerly of Adobe, now at Procreate) and the team created 180 new brushes specifically for animation. These are not repurposed Procreate brushes. They include rough and sketchy brushes for energetic expression, painterly and textural brushes for backgrounds, line work brushes for detailed inking, and boil brushes for that jittery, hand-drawn animation look.

Brush Search and better organization are also included, and you can sync brushes with iCloud Drive and drag-and-drop import entire libraries.

Three Timeline Modes

The timeline now has Compose, Perform, and Keyframe modes. Compose lets you position and edit content without disrupting keyframes. Perform is for recording motion through touch. Keyframe is dedicated to creating and editing keyframes. This separation keeps each workflow focused rather than cramming all functionality into one timeline view.

Advanced Export

Dreams 2.0 adds GIF export (built from scratch, with proper frame timing control) and transparent video import and export using HEVC and ProRes 4444 with alpha channels. For motion graphics and compositing work where you need to overlay animated elements on other footage, transparent video export is a significant capability.

Other Additions

• Luminance Masks that mask or reveal content based on luma values
• Brush Size Memory to mark consistent size and opacity points
• Layer merging by pinching Drawing Layers together
• Multi-Select on the Timeline for bulk edits to multiple tracks, keyframes, and content
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts for faster workflow
• Snapping in Compose Mode for precise alignment and 15-degree rotation increments
• Advanced Warp Mesh with a more detailed grid
• Additive and Multichannel Noise for the Noise filter

The 2.0.2 Patch

The current version (2.0.2) added Automatic Selection (tap a color to select it and similar bordering colors), Reverse Keyframes (flip all keyframe positions with the center as the flip point), Flipbook Track Names and Highlights (color-code your tracks for organization), Alpha Lock for layers, Separate Audio and Video tracks, and Transform Nudge for pixel-precise positioning.

Frame-by-Frame and Keyframe: Two Approaches, One App

Frame-by-frame animation in Dreams works through the Flipbook system. You draw each frame individually using any of the 180+ animation brushes or any Procreate brush. Onion skinning shows transparent overlays of adjacent frames so you can maintain consistency. The Flipbook supports multiple tracks now, so you can separate foreground, character, and background animation into independent layers.

Keyframe animation lets you define start and end positions and let Dreams interpolate the movement between them. This is better suited for camera movements, background pans, scaling effects, and other smooth transformations that would be tedious to draw frame by frame. The three timeline modes make keyframe work more focused than in version 1, where everything happened in one view.

Most professional animations combine both approaches: hand-drawn character animation frame by frame, with camera and background movements handled by keyframes. Dreams 2.0 supports this hybrid workflow naturally.

Procreate Integration

If you already use Procreate, the integration is seamless. Procreate artwork imports directly into Dreams for animation. All your Procreate brushes are available in Dreams. The drawing experience is identical, because Dreams uses the same Valkyrie graphics engine as Procreate. You can start an illustration in Procreate, decide to animate it, and open it in Dreams without changing your brush settings or workflow.

This integration is the strongest argument for Dreams over competitors. If your illustration workflow is already in Procreate, adding animation capabilities for $12.99 more is a no-brainer. If you use Clip Studio Paint or Krita for illustration, Dreams is less compelling because you would need to switch illustration tools to get the integration benefit.

What Is Still Missing

Savage Interactive is upfront about what Dreams does not do. No vector brushes. No bones animation system. No 3D objects. These are features that users have requested, and Creative Bloq's review of Dreams 2 noted their absence explicitly. If you need skeletal animation for character rigs, you need a different tool. If you need 3D integration, you need a different tool.

Dreams is for 2D hand-drawn animation and motion graphics. It does that very well. It does not try to be a full-featured animation studio, and judging it against Toon Boom or Blender for features it was never designed to have misses the point.

Insider Tips

• Upgrade your v1 files carefully. Version 2 requires a file upgrade. Tap on a file to upgrade it, and it should convert cleanly. If it does not, Savage Interactive has a help guide for troubleshooting.
• Use Compose mode for layout, then switch to Keyframe mode. This keeps your keyframes intact while you position content, avoiding accidental disruption of animation data.
• Try the boil brushes for organic animation. The boil brushes create that jittery, hand-drawn quality where lines subtly shift between frames. It is a signature look of traditional animation that is hard to achieve without dedicated brushes.
• Export transparent video for compositing. Use ProRes 4444 with alpha to export animated elements that can be overlaid on footage in video editing software.

Final Verdict: Who Is This Actually For?

Procreate Dreams 2 is for iPad artists who want to add animation to their illustration workflow without learning a professional animation pipeline. At $12.99 one-time, it is the cheapest capable animation tool on iPad, and the 2.0 update addressed the biggest gaps that held version 1 back.

If you need skeletal animation, vector tools, or 3D integration, look elsewhere (Toon Boom, RoughAnimator, or Blender). If you want to bring your Procreate illustrations to life with hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation and keyframe motion graphics, Dreams 2 is the right tool at the right price.

Download it at procreate.com/dreams, and explore our animation courses to learn the fundamentals.