PuppetPad
Leonardo Amora Graphics & Design iPad
PuppetPad is a free Graphics & Design app for iPad by Leonardo Amora. Rated 5.0/5 from 2 ratings. Requires iOS 17.0. Updated October 27, 2026.
- Rating
- 5.0
- 2 ratings
- Price
- Free
- on the App Store
- Size
- 18 MB
- Age 4+
- Updated
- Oct 27
- 2026 · v1.9
Screenshots
About PuppetPad
Behind a toy, a powerful animation tool. You stare at one of your drawings and think "I wish this thing would actually move." PuppetPad makes that happen. Plus a few uses you haven't thought of yet. Grab an image. A doodle from Procreate, a photo of your dog, your boss mid yawn, a regrettable selfie. The app opens it, builds an invisible mesh around the figure, and hands you pins. Drag a pin and the figure moves with it. Drag again and it becomes animation. That is the entire workflow. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE AN ANIMATOR PuppetPad was made for: . People who want memes more elaborate than Photoshop copy and paste . Parents who want their kid's drawing to actually walk . Graphic designers blocked on what to do with their right hand . Anyone who wants to animate someone's profile picture without their consent . Anyone who wants to animate someone's profile picture WITH their consent . Beginning animators who find Live2D and Spine intimidating (rightfully so) . Pro animators who just want a quick iPad rough . You, who opened the App Store out of boredom HOW IT WORKS 1. Import a PNG. The contour mesh is generated automatically. You won't see it. It just works. 2. Tap anywhere to place a pin. Pins are joints. 3. Drag pins to animate. Every move becomes a keyframe by itself. 4. Hit play. 5. Export as GIF. Send to the family group chat. THINGS PEOPLE END UP MAKING . Characters waving arms like they actually exist . Cat photos performing snake dances . Company logos pulsing like an anxious heart . Kid drawings waving goodbye to grandma over FaceTime . Caricatures of questionable taste . Story vignettes . That one meme that needed that one detail to move . Loading animations for your own app project . Character rough drafts before doing the polished work elsewhere WHAT'S INSIDE THE TOY Underneath the playful surface, PuppetPad runs a real animation engine. Alpha aware mesh generation, an ARAP solver for natural deformation, keyframed timeline, multi pin selection, bone rigs with inverse kinematics, mesh density control, undo and redo via multi finger taps. You don't need to know what any of that means to use the app. But the engineer in you might appreciate that it's there. FEATURES . Apple Pencil supported (works with fingers too, if that's how you live) . iPad landscape, full screen, zero clutter . Works offline . No login, no signup, no newsletter . No ads. Ever. . GIF export . Undo and redo (you will need them) PRICE One time purchase. Pay once, it's yours. No monthly subscription, no "pro version" upsell, no paywall popping up when you try to do something useful. Forever yours, the way software used to be. WORK IN PROGRESS PuppetPad is built by one person in the hours that life leaves over. Every bug report and every suggestion turns into a real improvement in a future version. If you want to request a feature, complain about something, send fan art of the app, or just say you liked it: [email protected] Human reply, in whatever language you write to me in, from the same person who wrote this text. XD Thanks for considering the app. Now go animate something absurd.
What’s new
Version 1.9 · Updated October 27, 2026
PuppetPad 1.9 is here, and your puppets tell a story, scene by scene. STORYBOARD Turn your layers or groups into scenes. Select them, make a storyboard, and it becomes a block on its own line of the timeline, like a clip in a video editor. Drag the blocks to put the scenes in order. Pull either end of a block to stretch or squeeze the scene: everything inside follows in proportion, so a 2 second animation pulled to 3 seconds plays slower instead of being cut. There is also a speed slider from 0.25x to 4x, Reverse and Duplicate. Layers you leave out, like the background, stay in every scene. Play loops the scene you picked, or runs all your scenes one after the other, and Export joins one or several storyboards in a single file, with the sound cut along. TIMELINE MARKERS Tap the thin strip above the ruler to drop an orange marker, tap it to send the playhead there, drag it to move it or off the strip to delete it. They are only guides and change nothing in your animation. With Snap on, the playhead, your keyframes and the storyboard blocks stick to them. WHATSAPP STICKERS Making animated stickers has a much better flow now. Each sticker goes into a gallery in the new Stickers tab, and when a gallery reaches three you send the whole pack to WhatsApp right from the Export window, all animated. ALSO IN THIS VERSION A stop button next to Play goes back to the start and deselects everything. Storyboards fold away with an arrow, like groups. A layer follows the folder it joins. Maximum effort!
App privacy
The developer, Leonardo Amora, reported these privacy practices to Apple.
Data Linked to You
The following data, which may be collected and linked to your identity, may be used for the following purposes:
- User Content: Other User Content
- Identifiers: User ID
- Other Data: Other Data Types
Used for: App Functionality
Alternatives to PuppetPad
Looking for apps like PuppetPad? Here are 6 similar apps on the App Store. The highest rated is Kilona - Production Studio (5.0/5), and all 6 are free to download.
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Mosaiq - Animate Your World
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| App | Rating | Price | Last updated | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PuppetPad | 5.0 / 5 (2 ratings) | Free | October 27, 2026 | |
| Kilona - Production Studio | 5.0 / 5 (5) | Free | Oct 13, 2026 | Compare |
| Vecta Motion | 4.8 / 5 (6) | Free | Jul 22, 2026 | Compare |
| Animax AI: 2D Animation Maker | 5.0 / 5 (2) | Free | Jun 9, 2026 | Compare |
| iPaint - Paint Animator | – | Free | Jul 29, 2026 | Compare |
| Spritelove - Pixel Art Studio | – | Free | Aug 10, 2026 | Compare |
| Mosaiq - Animate Your World | 2.6 / 5 (9) | Free | Apr 2, 2025 | Compare |
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