Animation Creator Express vs Animation Desk® Ultimate
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Animation Creator Express
Create and animate your own drawings with intuitive tools. This app offers a powerful yet simple drawing experience with frame management and sharing options. Bring your imagination to life with high-quality animations.
- Easy frame management
- Powerful drawing tools
- High-quality animation playback
- Export to video and GIF
- Layer support
- Onion skinning
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What do you get when you combine the most popular iPad drawing apps and the #1 hottest animation app? - Animation Creator! Easily Create Awesome Animations any time! An "App Store Essential: Painting & Drawing" Plus, Share Animations on Cineverse* for Free! Animation Creator HD allows your creativity to come to life on your iPad or iPad Mini. Be the director! Simple, yet powerful drawing tools, color options, and easy frame management, limited only by your imagination! Create amazing, life-like animations with Retina quality and the high frame rate playback of Animation Creator HD! The only Animation Brand to hit the Top 10! Animation Creator's Amazing Honors: App Store Essentials: Painting & Drawing! #1 Paid Entertainment App! #10 Top Overall Paid Apps! Apple Staff Favorite! Apple Retail Store Featured Display! App Store 'What's Hot' in 50 Countries! Express Version Limitations: • Embedded advertisements • 2 animations • 15 frames per animation • Ultra HD 4K, 1920x1080, 1280x720 & more! • No limits, Infinite frames and animations • Export to Video and share • Export to Animated GIF and share • Email Project and share • Audio Manager tool • Import background/layer from Photo Library and Camera • Layers, highly configurable • Superior frame management • Animation scrub tool • Smooth, high-quality drawing experience • Full screen editing, no annoying tools in the way • Paint brush, with various stroke types • Pencil • Pen, with ink flow effect • Spray can • Eraser • Line • Rectangle • Fill, with adjustable tolerance • Line width selection • Circle • Select/Cut/Copy/Paste/Scale • Undo/Redo - no limit! • Frame positioning and rotation • Color selection palettes, sliders, and wheels • Zooming and panning • On the fly frame rate adjustment • 'Onion Skinning', overlay of previous/next frame * Cineverse is a cloud-based photo & video social site where users freely share and enjoy creative content with others around the world. Right to access Cineverse is offered only to registered iTunes users who are of appropriate age under applicable law in their territory, please contact miSoft or iTunes support with questions. =================================== *Please rate this app!* Your kind Ratings help keep the updates coming! Thanks to everyone for your support! =================================== New features are planned regularly, including more drawing tools, more animation sharing methods, photo importing, and much much more! Thanks to everyone for their feedback, we listen! All Data & Info ©, ™, ® 2008/2020 miSoft, LLC.
Animation Desk® Ultimate
Create frame-by-frame animations from scratch or over existing media. This app offers a robust set of drawing tools, layer support, and various export options for your animated projects. It's designed for both beginners and experienced animators.
- Frame-by-frame animation creation
- Import Photoshop layers (PSD)
- Animate over videos and images
- Advanced drawing tools and brushes
- Onion skinning with color-coding
- Multiple export formats (video, GIF, PDF, PSD)
- Add music to animations
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Dream big with Animation Desk. Draw frame-to-frame animation from scratch, or create animations upon videos, images, Photoshop layers. Animation Desk supports multiple export formats. Create animation on your iPad and iPhone with Animation Desk. AWARDS - Featured in Top100 iPad Entertainment apps in 86 App Stores - Featured by Apple on iTunes Home Page - Featured by Yahoo Tech - Featured by TechCrunch - Recommended by EdTech Impact, Edshelf, EducationalAppStore.com, All about apps in YOUR classroom, iPad Educators CREATE ANIMATION • Import Photoshop layers (PSD) • Make animation over videos and pictures • Create animations with a different aspect ratio, FPS, and duration DRAWING TOOLS • Brushes and Erasers • Custom Brush • Onion skin • Color-coded onion skinning • Selection tools • Layers • Color palettes for developing and managing color schemes • Caption* • Perfect with Apple Pencil 1,2, Wacom and Adonit styli HELPFUL TOOLS • Frame tags • Ruler tools • Frame viewer and timeline • Zoom-in and zoom-out • Canvas rotation EXPORT • Export individual frame into image • Export videos • Export PSD layers, PDF, and GIF (up to 640x480 px), PDF* • Export video with different aspect of ratio • Add music to the animations • Combine multiple animation sequences into an animatic storyboard CAN WE GIVE A HAND? Got a question? Contact us at helpdesk@kdanmobile.com or check out http://support.kdanmobile.com Term of Use: https://www.kdanmobile.com/en/terms_of_service Privacy Policies: https://www.kdanmobile.com/en/privacy_policy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Animation Creator Express at Free against Animation Desk® Ultimate's $9.99. Animation Creator Express also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 10). Animation Desk® Ultimate's advantage is rating (4.0 vs 3.1) and update cadence (monthly vs every 3 months). On review sentiment, ratings volume, ads and monetization model 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
Animation Creator Express is free to download; Animation Desk® Ultimate costs $9.99 up front. Animation Desk® Ultimate sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Animation Creator Express asks for nothing beyond the download.
Animation Desk® Ultimate holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 3.1. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 306 and 299 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 45% of Animation Creator Express's written reviews are positive against 39% of Animation Desk® Ultimate's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Animation Creator Express ships an update every 3 months, Animation Desk® Ultimate monthly. Both last shipped on September 29, 2026.
| Parameter | Animation Creator Express | Animation Desk® Ultimate |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 3.1 (306 ratings) | 4.0 (299 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 45.4% of reviews — better | 39.4% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 306 — better | 299 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Monthly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 374 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | miSoft | Kdan Mobile Software LTD |
Customer experience
Animation Creator Express
Animation Desk® Ultimate
User reviews
Animation Creator Express
From 306 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Easy to use
- 👍 Good for beginners
- ⭐ Great animation features
- ✨ Fun and creative
Room to improve
- 🔒 Limited features in free version
- 🐛 Crashes and glitches
- 💰 Paywall for full version
- 📤 Difficult to export animations
Animation Desk® Ultimate
From 299 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Good for beginners/amateurs
- 🎨 Decent set of brushes and tools
- 💯 Excellent for frame-by-frame animation
- 🎥 Useful for creating storyboards and rough animations
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
- 🔍 Laggy and unresponsive at times
- 🎨 Drawing tools lack precision and smoothness
- 🔀 Issues with layer management and frame duplication
- 💰 Expensive for the current feature set
Bugs and requests
Animation Creator Express
Reported bugs
3 issues- Zooming leaves marks on screen
- Exporting to YouTube doesn't work
- Frequent crashes when using certain features
Requested features
4 requests- More frames per animation
- Ability to save animations to camera roll
- Add audio/music support
- Improved drawing tools and brushes
Animation Desk® Ultimate
Reported bugs
4 issues- Frames randomly disappearing or getting corrupted
- Layers merging unexpectedly or not behaving as expected
- Crashes when trying to import certain media files
- Onion skin and playback issues causing problems
Requested features
5 requests- Add more brush customization options
- Improve the timeline and layer management tools
- Implement a better undo/redo system
- Allow importing and syncing of audio for lip-syncing
- Provide more export options beyond just video
In-app purchases
Animation Creator Express
No in-app purchases
Animation Desk® Ultimate
- Kdan Cloud$2.991 Month
- All Access Pack－1 Month3 Days trial$9.991 Month
- Kdan Cloud$9.991 Year
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- All Access Pack－3 Months3 Days trial$19.993 Months
- All Access Pack - 1 Year7 Days trial$59.991 Year
- 10 Kdan Credits$0.99
- 100 Kdan Credits$7.99
- 200 Kdan Credits$15.99
Show 2 moreShow fewer
- 500 Kdan Credits$37.99
- 1000 Kdan Credits$59.99
Questions
Is Animation Creator Express free?
Is Animation Desk® Ultimate free?
Which has better reviews, Animation Creator Express or Animation Desk® Ultimate?
Do Animation Creator Express or Animation Desk® Ultimate have ads?
Which is updated more often, Animation Creator Express or Animation Desk® Ultimate?
Other comparisons
