Swapping Images

Cut-out animation is not only about moving parts around. It is also about swapping drawings to give the animation a more traditional animation look. You can add as many new drawings as you want in your scene and use them in your current animation. You can also add new drawings to your library and import them in other scenes.

It is not necessary to remember the frame on which you drew or imported the drawings as you can see them in the Drawing Substitution window.

You cannot swap one symbol for another—only the symbol’s frames or layer’s drawings.

You can swap images in the Timeline or Library view. When you use the Drawing Substitution window in the Library view, you are not selecting drawings from the Library but drawings contained in your scene’s layers. The Drawing Substitution and Preview area are simply sharing the same interface space.

It is important to understand that when you swap a drawing, its entire exposure is replaced up to the next drawing block.

Drawing Blocks

Although, if you select a frame range to be swapped, the following exposure will remain the same even if it was part of the same drawing block.

If you want to make sure that a certain drawing remains exposed on a particular frame and is not overridden by a drawing swap on an earlier frame, you can use the key exposure function. They key exposure feature breaks a drawing block into two pieces. The same drawing is used in both blocks. If you modify the artwork in one, the artwork be modified in the second one, but if you swap the exposure of the first one for another drawing, the second block will remain with the first drawing. This feature is used to avoid messing up your animation key poses. One of the most frequent layers it is used on is the mouth layer.

Key Exposure Concept