Mental Canvas Draw 4+

I hope to see an upgraded version that allows you to create 3D objects to put into your 3D landscape, and offers greater more editing capability. Mental Canvas has a lot of constraints that tend to limit the type of pieces you can create with it. While there are plenty of fun, creative things to do within this stylized 2D/3D hybrid, it doesn’t meet my needs and I don’t think it would be that much harder to make it versatile enough to be much more generally useful. Unless I am missing something, it doesn’t seem to be possible to edit anything once you have projected it off of the plane. Also there is only very limited capability to rotate objects off the plane using the hinge tool. Once they are rotated or projected objects positions can’t be adjusted. If there is a cut/copy/paste method, it is not intuitive. Taken together, these limitation make for a frustrating experience.

I tend to get excited about new apps that might make me more productive or help with art and creativity. Nine times out of ten, I have found these apps to repeat what other apps do – they're just shinier, with a better UI and not much else. They don't do anything different. So they collect dust and eventually end up getting uninstalled.

I came across a user demoing Mental Canvas via TikTok and instantly knew I had to download the app to my iPad and try it myself. Within fifteen minutes of installation, I had my first drawing consisting of multiple canvases in 3D. Mental canvas makes 2D art have depth in ways I've never seen before. The best part is, I didn't have to learn 3D modeling to do this. Mental Canvas also provided on-screen video tutorials and provided example scenes to learn and get up and running quickly.

It's been a day, and I'm already addicted to making new art in Mental Canvas. I doubt I'll ever let this collect dust. I could see myself using this as a replacement or addition to work done in Procreate. My mind has been exploding with new ideas of what I could do in the future, and I can't wait to get started on my next piece.

To say this app allows you to “go outside the box” doesn’t even begin to express how powerfully it expands your abilities. Unlike any other tool I’ve ever seen or used Mental Canvas makes infinite canvases for drawing(acknowledging that you’re drawing on a 2D screen) which can each be positioned at any angle, distance, relation to the other layers/canvases and then travel through your creation by saving particular perspectives/positions and zooming from one to the next as though you were hovering in 3D space. The drawing tools are relatively basic/simple, probably for the best 90% of the time but I would like to see SVG imports and basic vector type integration. Otherwise the limits are imaginary.

Well, and cost. I’m generally happy to pay for well-made apps rather than be advertised to or having my data sold to fund the development, but I’ve had a difficult time justifying the ROI for this one. I want it to keep up to date and progress, I love to use it from time to time but I haven’t quite cracked how to make it worth the paid investment.