Paint 3D (and MS family)

I was utterly delighted to be a part of the Paint 3D team for three years - and I'm still a huge fan of the app (even if Microsoft have completely forgotten it exists, sigh)...

Well. The sentence above, written in mid June, didn't age well...

The opportunity came from their awareness of artworks I'd made in Classic Paint and also in the wider stable of (sadly forgotten) programs like Expression and Fresh Paint. Classic Paint images below:

Microsoft Expression below this text. I'd been a fan of Expression from it's Creature House origins (and if honest wasn't immidiately wooed by the update in UI). Still, to this day, a fantastic vector art program.

Aaaaaand finally images made in Fresh Paint app below. For some reason it had a pink colour in the standard palette slots that really tickled me so I ended up using that colour in pretty much every picture I ever painted in FP :)

...and Microsoft even had an awareness of images I'd created in OneNote app (which I tried to say hallo and show to Mike T once and he completely blanked me. Sigh again). 

All of which led me to be asked to join the Paint 3D team.

I remember the interview well, it was soon after BETT in 2016 and, for the first time ever, I had con flu. I felt TERRIBLE in the interview and was convinced I'd blown the chance but soon after I was asked to join and met and worked with some utterly lovely people. It was hard, sometimes, to go from teacher brain to dev brain, and tbh I freequently realise I squandered some opportunities for self development while I was there.

But I did, at least, make some killer Paint 3D images and, if every in Microsoft company, frequently bemoan their lack of awareness of the creative riches they've forgoten, tucked away in a drawer. One day, maybe, hopefully they'll say 'oh yes! Creativity without the AI...'

It's a very different way of working - creating soft and hard edged doodles and putting them together. Sadly a combine and blend mode (similar to Womp 3D) never made it into the released versions but you can stiill do a huge amount with it. Not as much as you could and I'm super sad that there's no roadmap for improvement of the program, nor to fins some clumsy bugs that crept in.

An unusually delightful aspect of Paint 3D is it's 2D montage tools. For a long while at work (I worked as a teacher 3 days a week and a part time Microsoft employee two days a week) I started each Monday morning an hour early at work to create a Monday Montage using whatever free imaged Pixabay had chosen to focus on for that week. Always a weird outcome and always a huge smile on my face once the 9am class started.

Recently, sadly, Microsoft has decided to nuke Paint 3D which... well, is very much on brand for them not understanding their creative potential. A huge and monumental shame but hey, AI is all and creativity ... well... less so. Given that there's been a simple to fix, often reported, copy paste bug for 3 - 4 years I think the 'no future updates' text wasn't neccesary :(