There are apps that give videos a feel of pencil sketching or even an animated quality. Since these are days of generative AI, many apps are taking the easy way out, combing through art styles in paintings that are already there to come up with AI-generated art. Indie developer Tinrocket (founded by John Balestrieri) has taken a different route — using on-device processing his new app can deliver real-time videos/photos featuring different kinds of artistic treatments.
The app is called Cinemin and it is available on the iPhone App Store. You can either capture live video and make the app work on the footage/photo or choose videos/photos that are already in your gallery. There are brilliant treatments available in the app and it hardly takes five seconds to turn a 30-second video into a work of art.
It boasts a “live animation camera” that, by some app magic, turns mundane reality into a vibrant 2D animation style, complete with lines and shading so flat, you’d think they missed a dimension.
“Cinemin pushes the iPhone to the limit. We worked really hard to optimise our code, but eventually, faster iPhones came out so we’re just going with that,” said John Balestrieri, Tinrocket’s founder, in a blog post.
There are all the features you can ask for from a visual effects app — real-time video and photo capture, media import from the photo library, a variety of style options, an editor, high-resolution export, and a full-screen mode that can hide the interface.
Balestrieri, who is known for award-winning apps like Waterlogue and Olli, takes pride in saying that his application doesn’t use online artwork to train generative AI, “often without artists’ permissions”.
“Instead, I created Cinemin using my combined knowledge of art and technology. I essentially programmed the app to ‘see’ like an artist, imparting a visual authenticity and ensuring we don’t use any unauthorised artwork,” he said.
Export options on the app allow 1080p, 3K, and 4K resolutions. There is a monthly subscription fee of $0.99 per month, yearly subscription of $5.99 or one-time purchase at $9.99.