Swapping Drawings

Cut-out animation is not only about moving parts around. It's 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 the library and use them in other scenes. But before starting to swap drawings, it's important to understand how keyframes, exposure and key exposure work in Harmony:

Keyframe: A keyframe is a point in time where a change to the properties of the object or character occurs. In Harmony, keyframes consist of the coordinates that determine how an entire layer and its contents are moved. Keyframes include these parameters: XYZ position, skew, scale, angle and pivot.
Exposure: Exposure is a property; it is the length of time that a drawing is visible over a series of frames. In Harmony, exposure is independent of keyframes. That is, keyframes are not linked to drawings. Keyframes can be moved independently from the drawing exposure.
Key Exposure: A key exposure in Harmony is a type of exposure that forces a drawing to remain exposed on a specific frame. If a drawing is exposed before a key exposure and you swap out that drawing for another one, then the original drawing is retained. This preserves the key drawing. Note that Harmony automatically sets a key exposure when you perform a drawing swap.

When you want to swap drawings, you can do so in the Timeline or Library view. In the Timeline view, the Parameters area is where you can select a drawing to swap. In the Library view, the Drawing Substitution window lets you see the drawings before selecting one for swapping. In this view, you are actually selecting drawings in your scene layers, not drawings in the Library.

NOTE: Keep in mind that when you swap a drawing, its entire exposure is replaced up to the next drawing exposure.

Drawing Blocks

When selecting a certain frame range to be swapped, the behaviour of the Timeline and Library views is different. If you are using the Parameters area of the Timeline view to select a drawing to replace a selected frame range, the new drawing will replace the frame range and continue until the next key exposure. In the following example, drawing 2 (DR2) is replaced by a new drawing, starting at the beginning of the selected frame range and ending at the next key exposure.

If you use the Drawing Substitution window in the Library view to select a drawing, the drawing is split in two and the exposure before and after the frame range remain the same. In the following example, drawing 2 (DR 2) is split in two and the selected frame range is filled with a new drawing.

Adding Key Exposures

If there is a particular drawing you want to keep on a specific frame, you can set it as a key exposure. This prevents it from be overwritten by a drawing swap on a preceding frame. A key exposure is simply a property of an exposure that forces it to be exposed on a certain frame regardless of whether the previous exposure is the same drawing or not.

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you modify the artwork in a drawing, all instances of that drawing will be automatically updated even if set as a key exposure. This keeps your existing animation key poses intact. It is frequently used on a mouth or eyes layer.

Example: Swapping a drawing with no key exposure

In the following example, drawing 3 (DR 3) is selected on the timeline and it contains no key exposure.

When it is swapped for drawing 4 (DR 4), the entire duration of drawing 3 substituted for drawing 4.

Example: Swapping a drawing with a key exposure

Here's what happens when swapping a drawing with a key exposure. In the following example, the playhead is positioned in the middle of drawing 5 (DR 5) to set the position for the new key exposure. When the new key exposure is added, drawing 5 is split in two; both halves contain drawing 5. Now if you swap the first drawing 5 for drawing 1, the second drawing 5 retains its exposure.

Removing Key Exposures

When you no know longer need a key exposure, you can remove it. When you do this, the existing key exposure is replaced by the preceding exposure. In the following example, a key exposure is set to drawing 1 (DR 1). When the key exposure is removed, the exposure is replaced by the preceding exposure, drawing 4 (DR 4).