Mischief acquired with a new price
About a year ago, I wrote about an innovative and new program called Made with Mischief. It’s a light weight but powerful drawing tool that uses new vector technoly called Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields. The result of that mouthful of words is an fluid and resolution-independent experience, giving vector art a more naturalistic vibe—from the creation to the results.
Announcements and speculation
Last month Mischief made news when it was officially announced that the software was acquired by The Foundry. The Foundry is a high-end software company based in London. Their big claim to fame is Nuke, a composting tool that’s used for big-budget productions. There’s been lots of mention in interviews and actual press releases that The Foundry is looking to adapt Mischief’s technology into their existing product line.
One product that would benefit greatly from Mischief’s drawing technologies is a new program The Foundry announced earlier this year called Flix.
Flix is storyboarding software that’s collaborative and kind of like GIT for building a visual narrative. You can manage multiple iterations from a large team of creatives. Flix is a collaboration of Sony Pictures and The Foundry. Currently, The Foundry shows the integration with Photoshop, but I could easily see the fast and simplistic experience of Mischief taking Photoshop’s place. Now, most of us wouldn’t have a need or probably be able to afford Flix. Like Nuke, it seems to be geared to their existing market. It’ll be interesting to see if Mischief plays a part with Flix development.
New price, same developers
Talk about burying a lead. The best news for us is the new price. Originally, Mischief was $129 USD. Now under The Foundry, the have a new pricing structure. You can still download a free 15-day trial of Mischief. They also offer a lesser totally free version of the software. With the free version, you only can work on one layer and have limited drawing tools. For a whopping $25 USD you can now get the full version. That’s a great deal! They’ve been having multiple deals over the holidays, offering Mischief for as little as $19 USD.
One of the founders, Sarah Frisken, is staying on as chief scientist. She’s going to spearhead the development with the backing of a larger entity with deep pockets. It’s interesting to watch an industry giant acquire a tool made for a general audience. It looks like it may be the next Autodesk Sketchbook.
