Procreate Dreams has been in the hands of artists for only a few months and dozens of popular and exciting classes have already emerged from the community. Skillshare, an online learning platform focused on creativity and creative professionals, is leading the way. Their rapidly growing library of Procreate Dreams classes is suitable whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned creator.
Procreate has been working closely with Skillshare since early 2023 to develop a variety of distinctive content to coincide with the launch of Procreate Dreams. They’ve assembled an accomplished team of teachers to deliver the courses, each bringing a distinct style and career experience to their lessons. Whether you’re seeking to sharpen your social media posts, are intimately involved in illustration, or angling to become an animator, there’s a lesson calling your name.
As well as Procreate Dreams live sessions, classes, and Skillshare Originals, you’ll also find a huge range of tutorials on Procreate and other creative topics. These span animation, creative writing, film and video, productivity graphic design, illustration, music, photography, design, marketing, and freelance and entrepreneurship. Your brain — and career — will thank you later.
Before we get into what you’ll find over there on Skillshare, please enjoy this delightful code of freeness: DREAMBIG. It will give you complete access to all the resources on the site for two months.
Smitesh Mistry will up your social game
If you want to breathe life into your illustrations or struggle with drawing but would like to learn to animate, Smitesh Mistry’s Skillshare Original is ideal for you. It builds on his previous Skillshare livestreamwhich used animation to enliven social media posts and help them stand out in busy newsfeeds.
Utilizing existing video and adding animation, the teachings of Smitesh are surreal, fun, and full of achievable quick wins.
The class will step you through drawing and cel animation, keyframing, video editing, and compositing, with special attention on Procreate Dreams’ Flipbook, keyframe, and Performing functions. Drawing on his multi-disciplinary talents, he’ll guide you from planning through to the creation of short and snappy movies with integrated video and sound, ideal for TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts. If you’re looking to create memorable content that stops impatient, scrolling thumbs in their tracks, we humbly suggest you switch onto Smitesh.
Danni Fisher-Shin on perfecting the pipeline
Danni Fisher-Shin is an accomplished art director, animator, and illustrator. She has worked in commercial animation for over a decade including with pop stars Olivia Rodrigo and Zedd and major brands such as Apple and Netflix.
In February, Danni Fisher-Shin launched the first Procreate Dreams Skillshare Original. The Skillshare Originals are 60–75-minute lessons combining rich storytelling with instruction, augmenting the community class and live session learning streams (more on those below).
Danni draws on her background as a professional animator to develop a class aimed at people familiar with existing animation software who want to add Procreate Dreams to their toolset. As well as exploring the fundamentals of 2D animation, Danni provides battle-learned tips for smoothly wrangling a multiple-program pipeline.
At the end of the class, you’ll leave with a finished animation, an understanding of Procreate Dreams’ potential, bubbling excitement about your next project, and a new hat. Well, maybe not the hat.
Community
At the heart of Skillshare is the opportunity to interact with a supportive community. You can share projects with classmates and experts for insightful feedback and tips, find inspiration from the work of other creators, or communicate directly with your Skilllshare teachers.
Teachers can sign up to offer their classes on the platform as part of the community class stream. Art director and illustrator Mimi Chao launched the first of these for Procreate Dreams; watch her story here.
The community classes will continue roll out in 2024 with a diverse slate, including pattern designer Priscilla Adei-Cardwell, self-identifying ADHD artist and coder Rich Armstrong, illustrator Marie-Noëlle Wurm (whose recent live stream was described by a Procreate staff member as “a warm hug”), Irish concept artist and figure-drawing enthusiast Siobhan (“Shivon”) Twomey, and trained medical illustrator Simon Ip. And that’s just for starters.
Live Procreate Dreams
Skillshare schedules an extensive series of live events where you can join a teacher and other creatives in a dynamic learning environment. A Skillshare coach is present to MC and field your questions from the group chat directly to the teacher, allowing you to find specific answers to any bits you are stuck on or just curious about. The communal energy of these classes is what makes them stand out from other tutorial videos.
If you can’t make it to the live sessions, you can rewatch them later and just pretend you were there. For a taster, see this selection on YouTube, including Lisa Bardot’s incredibly popular session which explored how to turn your Procreate illustrations into animation using Procreate Dreams.
That code again
So, if you’ve got a yearnin’ for learnin’, use DREAMBIG for two months free access to the entire Skillshare site.
It’s going to be an exciting year for mastering Procreate Dreams. We launched the app knowing that it would be the teaching and artist community who show what the app’s capable of. As these lessons are shared and absorbed by others, new ideas are sparked and unique, boundary-pushing work is created. The result is an accelerating teacher/learner feedback loop.
It’s been a fun ride so far and it’s only just the beginning. Hope you can join in.
