Comparison

ToonSquid vs HEAVYPAINT

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ToonSquid

This powerful 2D art and animation studio for iPad combines traditional frame-by-frame animation with keyframe animation for layer properties. It offers a robust layer system, customizable brushes, vector shapes, animatable effects, and symbols to bring your creative visions to life.

Highlights
  • Frame-by-frame traditional animation
  • Keyframe animation for layer properties
  • Flexible layer system with blend modes
  • Customizable brushes with Apple Pencil support
  • Vector shapes and path tools
  • Animatable effects and inverse kinematics
  • Symbol workflow for reusable clips
Features
Read full description

ToonSquid is the powerful 2D art and animation studio for your iPad. Its flexible layer system allows you to combine the charm of hand-drawn traditional animation with keyframes that automatically animate layer properties over time. With a library full of beautiful, blazing-fast and fully customizable pixel and vector brushes, animatable effects, a smudge tool, animated text and vector shapes, bones with inverse kinematics, video and audio layers, camera movements, symbols and many more features, ToonSquid makes it easy to bring your vision to life. Traditional Animation - Create hand-drawn frame-by-frame animations - Control how long you want to show each drawing in the timeline - Draw in resolutions of up to 4k Keyframe Animation - Add keyframes to automatically animate layer and effects properties over time - Choose from an extensive list of customizable easing curve presets to create organic motion between keyframes - Easily loop your keyframe animation Powerful Layer System - Define the order and length of each element in your animation using layers and drawings and a flexible timeline - Organize your layers into groups for a clean workflow or to animate multiple layers at once - Use the camera layer to quickly define the visible portion of your animation in the export - Mask layers to other layers, even when their contents are animated - Choose from 27 industry-standard layer blend modes for beautiful compositing effects Fully-customizable Brushes - Draw gorgeous brush strokes with ToonSquid's state-of-the-art digital brush engine - Take full advantage of Apple Pencil's pressure and tilt sensitivity and the iPad Pro's 120Hz display for lag-free drawing - Use vector brushes to create brush strokes that are sharp at every zoom level - Edit the 60+ brush settings and import custom textures to create a brush library that is perfectly tailored to your art style - Blend your strokes together using the smudge tool - Draw in a variety of styles such as sketching, inking, wet mixing, pixel art, and more - Export and share your custom brushes with others - Import your existing library of Adobe® Photoshop® brushes Vector Shapes - Create custom shapes using the path tool by placing and editing each curve control point - Quickly add common vector shapes from the shape library - Import SVG files - Fill and stroke your shapes with beautiful gradients and edit them directly on the canvas - Animate the visible length of a path using its trim properties Animatable Effects - Create character rigs using bones and add inverse kinematics constraints - Create custom meshes to deform pixel layers when they are part of a bone rig - Animate perspective and warp effects - Apply adjustments, blur, pixelation, drop shadow, chroma key, halftone, parallax and more effects Efficient symbol workflow - Split your animation into separate clips that you can then reuse multiple times using symbols - Make edits to an animation clip and immediately see the changes in all of its symbol instances - Use frame markers to speed up your lip-syncing workflow Text - Add text layers and animate their appearance - Import your favorite fonts Color - Use ToonSquid's powerful color picker with plenty of different interfaces to choose the exact colors you need - Create custom color palettes and share them outside the application - Pick colors straight from the canvas using the pipette tool - Fill connected regions quickly with the fill tool Audio and Video - Add audio clips to your timeline and perform lip-syncing animations - Import videos, GIFs and images into your project and work with them through symbols Transform - Animate a layer's position, rotation and scale properties using keyframes - Build transform hierarchies to achieve more advanced movements - Edit your layer's motion path directly on the canvas Numerous Export Formats - Export your work in one of many common file formats such as MP4, MOV, GIF, PNG, JPEG, PSD, and more.

About

HEAVYPAINT

This app offers a raw digital painting experience with unique tools for creating textured art and quick studies. It's designed for artists who embrace digital chaos and seek a streamlined, mobile art studio.

Highlights
  • Unique digital brushes
  • Color Jitter for texture
  • Fast color blocking tools
  • Line Blend for gradients
  • Liquify tool
  • Minimalist interface
  • Gallery for creations
Features
Read full description

Raw digital painting with unique brushes & color chaos. The painter's painting app that celebrates digital chaos. HEAVYPAINT is unapologetically digital and a bit unhinged. It’s a celebration of digital impressionism. Whether you're sketching on the train, painting outdoors, or creating quick color studies, this is your pocket art studio. Unique Digital Tools Color Jitter: Unleash beautiful digital chaos and texture Fan Fill and Lasso Fill for fast color blockins, textured foliage, notan, organic shapes. Rake tool for softening up edges in a graphic way Line Blend for instant gradients
Liquify to adjust proportions and shapes Built for Speed & Mobility Perfect pochade box replacement for pleinair painting. Great for quick paintings on public transit, many will finger paint on their phones. Streamlined interface.Focus on pure color and shape without digital clutter. Streamlined Experience Minimalist interface puts painting first Customizable tools that adapt to your style Strong shape design tools for bold, crisp artwork Gallery to review and organize your creations + Plein air painters who want to ditch heavy supplies + Quick color studies and concept sketches + Figure painting and gesture drawing + Artists wanting to rediscover digital painting joy + Anyone seeking a uniquely digital aesthetic HEAVYPAINT balances professional capabilities with unhinged creativity. Embrace procedural randomness / crunchiness / glitchiness that digital enables. Touch grass. Ideal for pleinair painting and quick studies This app is subject to Apple's standard EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

HEAVYPAINT4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: HEAVYPAINT at Free against ToonSquid's $9.99. HEAVYPAINT also leads on device support (3 vs 1). ToonSquid's advantage is rating (4.6 vs 4.0) and in-app purchases (none vs 3). On ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

HEAVYPAINT is free to download; ToonSquid costs $9.99 up front. HEAVYPAINT sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. ToonSquid asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

ToonSquid holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: ToonSquid has 1.3K ratings behind it against 66, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 89% of ToonSquid's written reviews are positive against 58% of HEAVYPAINT's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ToonSquid ships an update every 2 weeks, HEAVYPAINT every 5 weeks. Both last shipped on October 30, 2026.

Scorecard8 real differences · 2 level
ToonSquid versus HEAVYPAINT: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterToonSquidHEAVYPAINT
Price$9.99Free — better
Rating4.6 (1.3K ratings) — better4.0 (66 ratings)
Positive reviews88.6% of reviews — better57.7% of reviews
Number of ratings1.3K — better66
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterEvery 5 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.015.0
Further details — not scored
Size48 MB37 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperKeiwan DonyagardHEAVYPOLY, Inc.

Customer experience

ToonSquid

All ratings1,336 ratings
Positive91.8%
Neutral3.2%
Negative4.9%
Written reviews1,155 reviews
Positive88.6%
Neutral4.7%
Negative6.8%

HEAVYPAINT

All ratings66 ratings
Positive68.2%
Neutral13.6%
Negative18.2%
Written reviews78 reviews
Positive57.7%
Neutral15.4%
Negative26.9%

User reviews

ToonSquid

From 1.3K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 AMAZING APP!!!
  • 🚀 This is an absolute LIFESAVER
  • 👍 Super solid animation App!
  • 👍 Great app just one suggestion
  • 👍 Absolutely Amazing App

Room to improve

  • 🐛 AMAZING APP!!! One recommendation tho.
  • 🐛 Snapping
  • 🐛 Crashes
  • 🐛 Keyframing doesn't work
  • 🐛 Randomly ill get a warning that i have low memory

HEAVYPAINT

From 66 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Powerful brushes and tools
  • 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
  • 💡 Unique and distilled painting experience
  • 👍 Responsive and dedicated developer
  • 👍 Great community support

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Bugs and crashes
  • 🐛 Issues with saving and restoring purchases
  • 🐛 Inconsistent UI and missing features

Bugs and requests

ToonSquid

Reported bugs

7 issues
  • Keyframing doesn't work
  • Randomly ill get a warning that i have low memory
  • The lasso tool thing isnt working for me
  • Bug
  • Whenever I use the fill bucket tool my app will randomly crash sometimes
Show 2 more
  • When I upload my animatic as a video file and play it, it works for a couple of seconds, but then the screen goes white
  • The app keeps crashing on me in certain projects

Requested features

31 requests
  • Custom graphs
  • Bevel Shading
  • Drawing to drawing transform
  • Record Audio
  • Extract audio from video
Show 26 more
  • Symmetry tool
  • Skew / Shear feature for keyframes & symbols
  • Blending modes and filters
  • Ability to select & edit/copy multiple frames at once
  • Ability to rotate selected lines with the selection tool
  • Ability to draw rasterised brushes outside of the box perimeters
  • Audio feature where you can turn videos into audios
  • Pen tip icon like Procreate and FlipaClip
  • Ability to adjust an entire layer's opacity
  • When playing an animation from a specific point on the timeline, returning to that point on the timeline when you pause
  • Easier time selecting and moving and then unselecting specific areas
  • Being able to copy and paste selected areas
  • Ability to turn on brush outline
  • Ability to adjust the size of the workspace
  • Liquify brush
  • Rigging/bone system
  • Ability to reuse assets in other projects
  • Rigged deformations
  • Ability to flip the entire canvas for drawing
  • Folders for projects or "stacks" like Procreate for sorting projects
  • Ability to import .svg files
  • Ability to merge all the animation layers into one
  • Ability to customize the shape of deformation tool
  • Ability to make vector/flash animations
  • Ability to merge layers
  • Ability to change opacity for frame-layers

HEAVYPAINT

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Gallery crashes
  • Artwork files not saving properly
  • Eyedropper tool not working as expected

Requested features

3 requests
  • Improved layer management
  • More customization options
  • Better color controls and eyedropper tool

In-app purchases

None

ToonSquid

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

HEAVYPAINT

Subscriptions2
  • Gallery Sync Monthly7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Gallery Sync Yearly$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Unlock Full Version$9.99

Questions

Is ToonSquid free?
ToonSquid costs $9.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is HEAVYPAINT free?
HEAVYPAINT is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, ToonSquid or HEAVYPAINT?
ToonSquid is rated higher. ToonSquid averages 4.6 out of 5 from 1.3K ratings, while HEAVYPAINT averages 4.0 from 66 ratings.
Do ToonSquid or HEAVYPAINT have ads?
Neither ToonSquid nor HEAVYPAINT shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ToonSquid or HEAVYPAINT?
ToonSquid ships an update every 2 weeks, and HEAVYPAINT every 5 weeks. Most recently, ToonSquid was updated on October 30, 2026 and HEAVYPAINT on October 30, 2026.

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