Mobile Mode: The First Professional Animation Editor for Touch

Most animation tools treat mobile as an afterthought — a stripped-down viewer, a “basic mode” that insults professional artists. Brinimate was designed differently.

Canvas-First is our mobile philosophy: the canvas is always king. You draw on a full screen, and everything else gets out of your way.

📱 What Is Canvas-First?

On a standard desktop editor, panels surround the canvas on all sides. That works fine on a 27” monitor. On a phone or iPad, it means you’re drawing on a tiny sliver of screen space — unacceptable for real work.

Canvas-First flips this model:

The canvas fills the screen — always, 100% of the time.
Panels are on-demand — they slide up from the bottom when you need them and collapse when you don’t.
You are never interrupted by panels obscuring the thing you’re drawing.

📋 Bottom Sheet Panels

On mobile, all six major panels open as bottom sheets — interactive panels that slide up from the bottom edge:

Panel	What’s Inside
Timeline	Layers, keyframes, playback controls
Inspector	Fill, stroke, opacity, pathfinder, symbol edit
Outliner	Object list and renaming
Assets	Symbol library and browsing
Quick	Fast actions (duplicate, delete, reorder, opacity)

To open a panel: Tap its button in the toolbar or header. To close a panel: Tap the X button in the panel’s header.

↕️ Resizing Panels with the Drag Handle

Need more space to see your timeline layers or inspector options? Every bottom sheet has a drag handle at the top.

Grab the handle (the horizontal bar/indicator at the very top of the panel).
Drag up to expand the panel and see more content.
Drag down to collapse it back (or close it if dragged far enough).

This gives you precise control over how much canvas space you sacrifice for panel visibility at any given moment.

🤖 Auto Collapse Mode

Auto collapse is Brinimate’s smartest mobile feature. When enabled, it automatically hides the open panel the moment you touch the canvas to draw — then brings it back when you lift your finger.

To toggle Auto Collapse:

Find the Auto ON/OFF button in the header (or panel control area).
Tap it to enable or disable.

When it’s great:

You’re in a drawing-heavy phase and panels keep interrupting your brush flow.
You want one-handed drawing with occasional panel checks.

When to turn it off:

You’re in a layout/composition phase and need to constantly reference the Inspector.
You’re making precise timeline edits where the panel should stay visible.

🔄 Touch Scrubbing the Timeline

Navigating the Timeline on touch devices uses scrubbing — dragging your finger left or right along the frame track to move the playhead.

Drag right → advance forward in time.
Drag left → go back in time.
Release → playhead stops at your position.

The timeline cells are deliberately larger on mobile to accommodate fingertip precision and reduce misclicking on neighboring frames.

⬇️ Wrapping Button Rows

Some panels (especially the Timeline controls) have many buttons. On desktop they fit in one row. On mobile, Brinimate automatically wraps long button rows into multiple lines.

This ensures zero buttons are hidden — no horizontal scrolling, no overflow menus, no “more…” buttons hiding critical actions. Everything remains visible and tappable.

💡 Pro Tip — Best Mobile Workflow: Use Auto Collapse ON during drawing passes, and switch it OFF during timeline/inspector passes. Work in alternating cycles: Draw (canvas-first, no panels) → Edit (panel open, make adjustments) → Draw again. This rhythm keeps you in flow without constant panel management.

Drawing on an iPad with an Apple Pencil or a Samsung S Pen? The Canvas-First approach shines brightest on stylus-equipped tablets where you can use your dominant hand for drawing and your other hand for quick panel taps — a near-desktop level experience in a portable form.