A method for reproducing authored content within a visual manipulation software environment includes displaying the authored content, such as an individual drawing stroke, in a manner that enables the end-user to experience the temporal dynamics associated with the creation of each drawing stroke or action performed by the author when creating the content. Each individual drawing stroke created by the author may be displayed in a tutorial with the same speed and direction used by the author to create the stroke, and can then be used as a guidance curve by the end-user. End-user input corresponding to the displayed author content is then received and used to generate an end-user version of the displayed content.