heyLeiloo

Docker for Solo Game Developers: Stop Being Tech Support for Your Own PC

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heya! I'm Leila.

On this site I usually write about the fun part. Designing characters. Picking palettes. Building worlds people want to stay in.

Nobody warns you about the thing that actually eats your time when you make games alone. It isn't drawing. It isn't level design.

It's your own computer.

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The balancing act

Making a game is never a one-program job. On any given day I'm in Unity, sculpting in Blender, fixing 2D assets in Adobe Animate, and writing branching dialogue in Yarn Spinner.

Every one of them wants its own versions, its own background files, its own updates.

Then you update one small thing, and Unity won't compile. Or the test server you set up last month refuses to start. And your whole afternoon goes into being tech support for yourself instead of making your game.

I got tired of that. So I fixed it with Docker.

What a container actually is

Forget the scary word. A container is a sealed box.

You put a program inside it along with everything it needs to run, the exact versions and the settings and all of it, and the box keeps that program from touching anything else on your machine. Nothing gets installed system-wide. Nothing leaks out.

The backend I use to test Shark's Request lives in one of those boxes. Test server, database, all of it. When I'm done for the day I shut the box down, and my computer is exactly as clean as it was before I started.

Nothing installed. Nothing left over. Nothing to break.

What goes in the box, and what doesn't

This is the part most explanations skip, and it's the part that saves you a wasted weekend.

Unity, Blender, Procreate and Adobe Animate stay on your computer, installed normally. They're programs you look at and click in, and they want your graphics card and your tablet and your screen. They belong on the machine.

What goes in containers is everything running quietly in the background: databases, test servers, build tools, anything with a version number that fights with another version number. That's the stuff that breaks silently and takes an afternoon to unbreak.

So the rule I use is simple. If I stare at it, it's installed. If it just runs, it's in a box.

Two projects, one laptop

Right now I'm building Shark's Request and a psychological thriller visual novel at the same time.

They need completely different setups. The visual novel keeps its own database and its own test server for the branching dialogue behind characters like Liam and Aurora, and none of that agrees with what Shark's Request needs.

So each project keeps its environment in its own box, described by one small file that lives in the project folder:

# docker-compose.yml — the visual novel's dialogue database
services:
  db:
    image: postgres:17
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: dev
      POSTGRES_DB: dialogue
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"
    volumes:
      - dialogue-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  dialogue-data:

Two commands run my whole day:

docker compose up -d
docker compose down

The first brings the project's setup online. The second puts it away. Switching projects means running those in one folder and then the other, instead of reinstalling anything.

That volume line at the bottom matters more than it looks. It's where the data lives between sessions, so shutting the box down doesn't throw away everything I wrote.

Moving to the laptop

Here's the part I use most. When I want to leave my studio rig and write somewhere else, I don't lose a day setting things up. I copy the project folder, run the same command, and the same setup comes up the same way. Same versions, same settings.

Being honest about the limit: this holds when both machines are the same kind of computer. Move between an Apple Silicon Mac and a Windows PC and some images need a different build. It's not magic. It's just that the setup stopped being something I think about, and that turned out to be the whole benefit.

Not faster. Quieter.

Why this is worth an afternoon

Cleaning up your workspace is not the glamorous part of making games. Nobody claps for a tidy computer.

But every hour you don't spend fixing your own machine is an hour you spend building your world instead. And the setup you write down once keeps working while you go do the part you actually care about, like designing the characters who live in it.

I'll keep showing how the studio actually runs here, boring parts included.

Game Character and Story Design: How to Make Players Care

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heya! I'm Leila.

Mechanics matter. If a game doesn't feel good in the hands, people stop playing, and no amount of story will save it.

But a flat story loses people just as reliably. They finish the tutorial, they shrug, and the game sits in a library forever. Here's how to avoid that.

import VideoPlayer from "@components/VideoPlayer.astro";

A design gets attention, a spark keeps it

I've written about what makes a character design recognizable. What I skipped there is the part that actually makes someone care: personality, and what the character is carrying.

A cool design gets three seconds. What they feel, and what they've survived, gets the rest of the game.

Happy characters are great. Leiloo is one, and her excitement about the world is the whole reason she works. But even a happy character needs a spark, a second side that complicates the first one. Without it you have a mascot, not a person.

Ren is my example of the other direction. Most of the time he's awkward and quiet, and only his sister Yuna knows how kind he actually is. They have nobody but each other in a world that keeps trying to take everything.

Look at him for a few seconds and you can tell something happened. There's a power inside him that's slowly killing him, and he fights it anyway. It possessed him, and now he can barely control his own hands. A recipe for disaster, which is exactly what makes him worth following.

I can't say much more yet, because Ren belongs to a bigger project. The point stands without the spoilers: the spark is what catches people. Design the face second.

Play the games you want to make

You cannot design good games without playing good games. That sounds obvious and almost nobody does it deliberately.

Look at Final Fantasy VII and Alan Wake 2. Completely different from each other, both extraordinary, both doing something with story that a design document can't teach you. The more of that you take in, the stranger and more specific your own work gets, because you're drawing from more than one well.

Trying to design a game without playing them is like baking a pie without ever having seen a pie. Look at it first. Taste it. Take it apart and figure out what's in it. Then go make your own recipe.

The way I do it: when a game gets a reaction out of me, I stop and ask what exactly caused it. A line of dialogue, a camera angle, a silence where music should be. That answer is reusable. "It was good" isn't. Some of those answers end up in my concept art long before they end up in a game.

Don't get lost in the sauce

Here's the trap on the other side. A deep character and a world with a hundred worked-out corners are exactly the kind of work that feels productive forever.

You can spend months designing someone and completely forget their purpose: being in a video game. Lore that never becomes a level is a hobby, not development.

So do the reality check regularly. Ask what this character does in the player's hands. Ask which mechanic this piece of backstory changes. If the answer is nothing, it can wait, and the honest move is to write it down and go back to the build.

Balance the narrative against the game you're actually shipping, and the two hold each other up. The story gives the mechanics a reason, the mechanics give the story a place to happen.

The short version

Give the character a spark, not just a silhouette. Play the things that move you and take them apart. Keep checking that the world you're building still fits inside a game.

That's how players end up caring, and caring is what makes them finish.

The palette side of the same problem is in how to create a unique game aesthetic.

How to Create a Unique Game Aesthetic: Color Theory and Art Direction

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heya! I'm Leila.

A lot of developers are obsessed with one thing right now: photorealism. The belief is that without the highest polygon counts and the most expensive textures, a game can't succeed.

They're wrong. Graphics fade. A vibe doesn't.

Here's how to build an aesthetic that belongs to you, the same way I built mine.

import VideoPlayer from "@components/VideoPlayer.astro";

Pick three colors and marry them

You need a signature, and a signature is smaller than people expect. Mine is three colors: blue, yellow, and pink.

They're not colors I picked because I liked them that day. They're bright and hopeful, but the contrast between them keeps the whole thing from going soft. You don't need a thousand colors to build a world. You need the right three, and then you need to never quietly swap one out.

This is easier to see in games you already know. Think about Detroit: Become Human. The colors that come back to you are blue, white, and a heavy dark grey. See those three together anywhere and your brain goes straight to that game.

The Wolf Among Us is a completely different story with a completely different mood, and what sticks are purple, pink, and yellow. That's why the fan art I painted for it stayed in those colors. Anything else wouldn't have read as that game, no matter how accurate the character was.

Even Minecraft, which is about as far from art-directed realism as you can get, owns green, brown, and light blue.

That's color theory doing its real job. It isn't about being pretty. It's about being remembered while nobody is playing.

It works well enough that when I see a random object out in the world in pink, blue, and yellow, my first thought is: oh, that gives Leiloo vibes. That reaction is the entire goal.

Then put them absolutely everywhere

A signature you only use sometimes isn't a signature. The second part is execution, and execution means the palette shows up in every place your project touches.

You see those three colors in my character, Leiloo Sharkind. You see them in the game world she lives in. You see them on my YouTube channel, in thumbnails, in the concept art I post while a design is still forming.

At that point you're not making content anymore. You're building a universe, and universes get recognized before they get read.

Practical version, since this is the step people skip: pick your three, write down the hex codes, and keep them in a file you actually open. Icons, key art, store page, social banners, the loading screen. Every time you're about to introduce a fourth color, ask whether it's carrying meaning or just decorating.

A vibe can come from anywhere

Third, and this is the freeing part: colors anchor your work, but they aren't the whole identity.

Your vibe can come from anywhere. An era, like the 80s, or a sleek futuristic look. Mine leans into 2000s arcade, which is why the world feels loud and friendly instead of grim.

It can also be an animal. The shark sits at the center of my universe, and once it was there, decisions got easier: what the enemies look like, what the collectibles are, why the color blue keeps showing up in the background.

The key isn't following whatever is trending. It's combining elements that feel right together and then staying with them long enough for people to learn them.

Be unmistakable, not perfect

If you're building your first game, stop trying to make it perfect. Perfect is invisible. Aim for unmistakable instead, because that's the version people describe to their friends.

Three colors, applied everywhere, plus one idea nobody else would have picked. That's an art direction, and it costs nothing except the discipline to not drift.

For the rest of what a first game needs, I wrote up the three pillars I'd start from.

Now go find your palette, and get to work.

How to Launch an Indie Game in 2026: The Three Pillars

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heya! I'm Leila.

People ask me how to launch a game in 2026. They expect the answer to involve complex code, or a list of expensive software to buy first.

It doesn't. Three things carry a first game, and none of them is a purchase.

import VideoPlayer from "@components/VideoPlayer.astro";

Pillar one: an anchor people recognize

Before the engine, before a single line of code, you need something to build around. For me that was a character.

Meet Leiloo Sharkind. She's a colorful girl who loves helping others, and she is half-human, half-shark. You might not tell just by glancing at her, but the sharp teeth and the fact that she breathes underwater give it away.

Her mission isn't to save the world. It's to help her Shark Friend collect pies.

That sounds small. It's supposed to. A goal that fits in one sentence is a goal you can actually build a game around, and it's hers, which is the part that matters.

Here's what makes an anchor work, and it's the same three things every time. A silhouette you'd recognize in one color. A palette that stays the same everywhere she shows up. One detail that makes no sense until you know her, like teeth on a girl who mostly wants to be helpful.

Don't build a generic soldier. Don't build a blob. Spend the time on a character with a specific look and a specific goal, because once you have one, the world stops being a thing you invent from nothing. It becomes a place they need. You aren't forcing a game into existence anymore. You're building them a home.

If you want to see how far one character can carry a project, the whole cast and world of my game lives in the Shark's Request album.

Pillar two: open the engine and break it

Second, you actually open Unity or Unreal. Not a tutorial about opening it. The engine itself.

The best advice I can give you is to stop trying to make the whole game at once.

Don't build level ten. Make the character move. Then make them jump. Then spend an afternoon making the jump feel good, because that afternoon teaches you more than ten tutorials will.

You will break the code. The physics will glitch and send your character into the sky. The art won't load and you'll get a bright pink rectangle where your sprite should be.

Good.

That frustration is the actual job. If nothing is breaking, you aren't building anything new, you're copying. The work was never typing code perfectly. The work is fixing it when it breaks, and every fix is a thing you now know that you didn't know yesterday.

Start with one small thing that works, then make the next small thing work. That's the whole method, and it's easier in 2D, which is why I'd start there. Two of the fixes that ate my early days are written up here: getting rid of sticky walls in Unity and adding a 2D collider to sprites.

Pillar three: believe in the scale of your own work

Third, and this is the one nobody tells you: you have to treat your project as if it's already big.

My game premiered in a cinema. Seeing Shark's Request projected on a screen that size proved something I keep coming back to.

The screen doesn't care how big your team is. It only cares about the vision.

That's not a motivational line, it's a practical one. It changes what you make. Design an icon that would survive being blown up ten feet tall. Write a description you'd be fine reading out loud to a room. Pick a name you'd want on a poster. When you respect your own project, other people take the cue from you.

Design your game as if it belongs in a theater, because one day it might.

The part that comes after

Three pillars: a character worth anchoring to, an engine you're not afraid to break, and the nerve to treat small work seriously.

None of them costs money. All of them cost attention.

Shark's Request is coming to Steam soon, and everything above is what got it there.

2D vs 3D for Your First Game: Which One Should a Beginner Choose

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heya! I'm Leila.

If you're about to start your first game, this is usually the first fork in the road: 2D or 3D. It feels like a huge decision, and it gets treated like one.

The short answer is 2D, for almost everyone, almost always. Here's why, and when the other answer is right.

import VideoPlayer from "@components/VideoPlayer.astro";

What 2D lets you learn first

Starting in 2D means you get to learn the things every game needs, without anything stacked on top of them.

Movement. Collisions. Simple animation. UI. The basic code that ties all of it together. Those are the fundamentals, and they don't change when you move to 3D later. A jump that feels good in 2D is the same design problem as a jump that feels good in 3D, just with fewer places to get lost.

No advanced lighting. No models to build or import. Nothing between you and the thing you're trying to make work.

That's not a compromise, it's the reason people finish. And finishing your first game teaches you more than anything else on this list, because it's the only way to learn the last twenty percent: menus, saving, the bugs that only appear when everything runs together.

What 3D actually adds

3D is exciting, and I want to be fair to it. The catch isn't that it's hard, it's that you stop learning one thing and start learning a whole workflow.

You take on modeling or importing models. Lighting setups. Materials and shaders. Cameras that now move in three dimensions instead of following a character sideways. Physics with an extra axis and a lot more ways to go wrong.

None of that is beyond a beginner. It's just a longer runway before the first thing you can play, and a longer runway is where most first projects quietly die.

If you're patient and the idea actually needs depth, go for it. Just choose it on purpose, knowing what you're signing up for.

You don't have to make the art

Here's the part that stops people who aren't artists, and it shouldn't.

You don't need to draw anything to start. There are enormous libraries of free and cheap assets: sprites, tile sets, 3D models, animations, whole environments. itch.io has a huge free section, and both the Unity Asset Store and the Unreal Marketplace have starter packs made for exactly this.

Use them. Get a character moving today instead of spending three evenings drawing something that comes out looking like a potato. You can always replace the placeholder later, and by then you'll know what the game actually needs, which makes the art better anyway.

I say this as someone who does draw. Even then, I block things out with rough shapes first and paint properly once the mechanic works.

Deciding in one question

If you're still stuck, skip the pros and cons and ask yourself this: what does the thing you want to make actually need?

If the fun comes from timing, precision, platforming, puzzles, story, or characters on screen, 2D gives you all of it with less to fight. That's the road I took. Shark's Request is 2D, and none of what makes it work would have been improved by a third axis.

If the fun lives in space itself, being inside a place, looking around corners, judging distance, then 3D isn't optional and you should start there.

The bottom line

Start with 2D if you want a smoother learning curve, faster results, and fewer technical walls between you and a finished game. Choose 3D if you're ready for the bigger challenge and want those tools in your hands.

Both paths are valid. 2D is just the cleaner place to begin.

Whichever you pick, the next step is the same: open the engine and make something move. A couple of the walls I hit early are written up here, so you don't lose an evening to them: sticky walls in Unity and adding a 2D collider to sprites.

And remember: in the world of creativity, the spark is always on.

Maya Basics — a Five-Minute Tour

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

If you've just opened Autodesk Maya for the first time, the screen can feel crowded. This Maya basics tour covers the five regions that matter, the navigation gestures, and where the modeling tools live — five minutes, then you're modeling.

Once you've got a mesh, the game-engine side of the workflow starts in Unity. The first two stops there are usually adding an icon to your build and adding a 2D collider to a sprite.

The Maya workspace

The top of the screen is the menu bar and the shelf (icon row with the tools you use most). The big central area is the viewport. On the right you'll see the channel box with the selected object's attributes. The bottom is the timeline and the range slider for animation.

Viewport navigation

The viewport always starts in perspective. Use Alt + left-mouse drag to tumble around the scene, Alt + middle-drag to pan, and Alt + right-drag (or the scroll wheel) to zoom. The view cube in the upper-right corner is the fast way to snap to front, top, side, or any iso angle.

Primitive shapes

Start every scene with a primitive. Open Create → Polygon Primitives and pick cube, sphere, cylinder, or plane. These are the building blocks — most models begin as a primitive that gets subdivided and pushed into shape.

Modeling tools

The modeling toolbox lives in the shelf and under the Mesh and Edit Mesh menus. Extrude, bevel, and the multi-cut tool are the three I reach for first — most low-poly shapes come from extruding faces and beveling sharp edges.

Channel box and attributes

The channel box on the right is where you see and edit translate, rotate, and scale for the selected object. Click any number to scrub it, or type a value directly. If you don't see it, press Ctrl + A to toggle between the channel box and the Attribute Editor — same data, different views.

How to Color in Corel Painter

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

If you're new to Corel Painter, the colour picker is the first thing worth learning to drive properly — every other tool depends on it. This is the short tour I wish I'd had when I started.

For the iPad-side equivalent, see How to Color in Procreate.

Where can I find the colour palette?

To open the colour palette, click on the circle with the colour.

When you click on the circle with your colour, a colour palette will appear. And you can change the colour.

If you click on the small circle next to your set colour, your colour will change to the previous colour.

Are there any other palettes?

If you click on the button with two lines, you will see a more detailed colour-matching palette.

Where can I find the eyedropper?

If you click on the little eyedropper icon in the top right corner of the colour picker, you can pick any colour from your canvas.

How to add colour to my palette?

If you click on the small plus above your set palette, then this colour will be added to the palette.

How can I change my palette or create a new one?

To set a new palette, click on the name of your palette or on the Basic Palette. After that, you will see your palettes.

To create a new palette, click on the plus sign in the upper right corner. You can create a palette from your photos or files.

How can I save, share, rename, open or clear my palette?

To find these functions you need to click on the three dots above your palette.

How to Add a 2D Collider to Sprites in Unity

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Adding collision to sprites is fundamental for 2D game development in Unity — without a collider, a sprite has no physical boundary, so the player walks straight through it. This step-by-step guide is the Inspector flow in five clicks.

Once the collider is in place, the next thing that tends to go sideways is the player sticking to the collider edges. The fix lives in How to Get Rid of Sticky Walls in Unity.

Select Your Sprite

Click on the sprite you want to give a collider. The Inspector panel on the right side displays all available settings for that object.

Add the Collider Component

In the Inspector, find Add Component. Navigate to Physics 2D and select Box Collider 2D — or any other collider that matches your sprite shape.

Adjust the Collider

A green boundary box now appears around your sprite. To refine the boundary, click Edit Collider within the Box Collider 2D component settings. Small adjustment handles appear — drag them to customize the collider's shape and size.

Result

With a collider in place, your object now has a physical boundary. The player (or other physics objects) can't pass through it.

How to Get Rid of Sticky Walls in Unity

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Solution Overview

A common issue in 2D Unity game development: characters unintentionally adhere to wall surfaces during gameplay. Here's the quick fix — a Physics Material 2D with zero friction, dragged onto the player Rigidbody 2D.

Hitting this before you've even given your sprite collision geometry? Start with Adding a 2D Collider to Sprites in Unity, then come back.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Create Physics Material 2D

Right-click on the Assets section (or in any folder) and navigate to Create → 2D → Physics Material 2D.

Step 2: Configure Friction Settings

Name your new material — the example uses slide. In the right panel, find the Friction value and set it to 0.

Step 3: Apply Material to Player

Select your player character and find its Rigidbody 2D component. Locate the Material field and drag your newly created Physics Material 2D into it.

Step 4: Test

And it's done. Your character should no longer stick to walls when you run the game.

How to Add an Icon for a Game in Unity

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Setting a game icon in Unity sounds trivial — and it is, once you know where the upload slots actually live. This is the shortest path to a finished icon, plus the two mini-problems you'll almost certainly run into on the way.

For the next setup chore in a 2D Unity project, see How to Add a 2D Collider to Sprites in Unity.

Main Instructions

To set an icon for your game, navigate to File → Build Settings. A small window will appear. In the lower-left corner, click Player Settings.

Inside the Player Settings window (under the Player section), you'll find several mini icons for uploading your game's icon — one set per platform (computers, mobile devices, etc.). Pick your target platform and click the field below Icon to upload your custom icon.

Mini Problems

Missing platform categories

If you can't locate the iPhone or Android categories for icon upload, you most likely haven't installed the build-support add-ons for those platforms. Open the Unity Hub, go to your Unity version's settings, and add the missing platform modules.

Missing icon selection fields

If you don't see the small clickable icon with a Select option to add your cover image, check the box labeled Override for standalone and enable it. The mini icons you need will appear.

How to Use Brushes in Photoshop

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Brushes are the soul of digital painting in Photoshop — the same artist with a different brush feels like a different artist. This is the short setup tour: where the Brush Panel lives, why Brush Settings matter, and how to install custom .abr brush sets you've downloaded.

For the colour side of the same workflow, see How to Color in Corel Painter or the iPad alternative How to Color in Procreate.

Where can I find a Brush Panel?

To open the Brush Panel, navigate to Window → Brushes. For more advanced customization, press F5 to access the comprehensive Brush Settings Panel.

Why do I need Brush Settings?

The Brush Settings Panel lets you adjust texture, scattering, and noise. Other parameters you can customize:

Size
Angle
Hardness
Opacity
Flow
Smoothing
Scattering
Texture
Noise
Shape
Dynamics
Transfer

How can I download new brushes?

Artists frequently share custom brushes online in .abr format. To install a downloaded brush set, go to Edit → Presets → Preset Manager, click Load, and pick your .abr file.

How to Color in Procreate

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Colour in Procreate is divided across two places — the eyedropper and ColorDrop for picking what you already see, and the four palette modes (Disc, Classic, Value, Palettes) for choosing what you don't. This is the tour.

If you haven't set up your layer stack yet, start with How to Use Layers in Procreate — it's the foundation everything else paints on.

Eyedropper

To choose the colour you need from the picture, you need to press and hold on to the screen. You will have a mini circle indicating which colour you choose.

Colour drop

To fill the background or a certain part of the picture, you need to press and keep on the colour in the upper right corner. After transferring this colour to the part that you want to paint over.

Palettes

Disc

In the disc palette, it is quite easy to select bright and pleasant colours. But there is also a minus — in this mode, it's hard to choose just white because of the circle form of the palette.

Classic

In the classic palette, there is a mini square with the colour you have chosen. To change the colour, move the cursor on the first line with the colour. This is the simplest palette for easy and fast colour selection.

Value

There are six stripes with colour in the Value palette — this gives greater colour control.

Palettes

In this mode, you can create your own colour palette by clicking on the plus sign in the upper right corner. You can also put your palette on the main colour selection screen for ease of use. The palette will be reusable — handy for keeping the same colours across, say, all the frames of one character.

How to Use Layers in Procreate

Leila (heyleiloo.com) — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT

What are layers and why do we need them?

Layers in Procreate let you overlay image elements without changing your completed work. You can edit, recolor, and remove individual elements from the canvas. When you first create your canvas, you have two layers by default — the background and Layer 1.

Once you're comfortable with layers, the next stop is How to Color in Procreate — picking and applying colour is the other half of any layered painting workflow.

Where can I find layers?

Click the icon with two squares in the upper right corner to open the layers panel.

How can I create a new layer?

Click the plus sign in the upper right corner of the layers panel.

How can I hide my layer?

Click the checkmark next to the letter "N" to hide or show your layer.

How can I duplicate, lock or delete the layer?

Swipe left on the layer to access these options.

What is a duplicate?

A duplicate creates an identical copy of your layer.

What is a lock?

With a lock, you block the layer and you can't draw on it.

What is delete?

Delete removes your layer entirely.

How can I lock the layer so it doesn't go beyond the edges of the drawing?

Swipe the layer right to enable alpha lock — useful for coloring tasks where you want to stay within an existing shape.

How can I change the visibility of my layer?

Tap with two fingers and swipe left/right, or click the letter N and adjust the visibility slider.

Where can I find other layer functions?

Select the layer and click on it to access rename, clear, copy, colour, and select.