Rough Animation
The first step to complete a traditional paperless animation is the rough construction, which is the skeleton of your animation. You would usually start with the main action. For example, to animate a walk cycle, you will start with the torso motion and the legs. Head, arms and clothes will be added later during the secondary animation.
For a satisfactory animation, complete the main action before adding all the details. If you start animating all the details right away, you will lose a lot of time if you have to make corrections. Your animation will often look too rigid.
- In the Tools toolbar, select the Brush tool or press Alt + B.
- In the Colour view, select a colour for the brush. It is a good idea to choose a light colour for your rough animation. This will help you in the task that follows, the clean up process.
- In the Timeline view, select the cell where the first drawing will appear.
- In the Camera or Drawing view, draw the first key drawing.
- In the Tools toolbar, click the Onion Skin button. The Onion Skin feature displays your previous and next drawings as visual references to help you draw your new pose.
- In the Timeline view, click and drag the blue onion skin markers to extend the number of previous and next visible drawings.
- In the Camera View or Drawing View toolbar, press either the Onion Skin Reduce One Next/Previous Drawing or Onion Skin Add One Next/Previous Drawing to reduce or increase the number of previous and next visible drawings. The red icons are for the previous drawings and the green icons are for the next drawings.
- In the Camera or Drawing view, draw your second key drawing.
- In the Timeline view, select a cell between the two key drawings.
- From the Timeline toolbar, click Create Empty Drawing to create an empty drawing or press Alt + Shift + R.
- In the Camera or Drawing view, draw your new pose.
- In the Timeline view, select a new cell and repeat the previous steps for each new drawing.
- In the Timeline view, use the Enable/Disable All and Solo buttons to turn off any layers you don't want to see during playback.
- To loop playback, move the red playhead to the desired start frame and click the Start button on the Timeline toolbar. Move the playhead to the last frame of the playback and click the Stop button.
- in the Playback toolbar, click the Loop button to start the playback.
- In the Playback toolbar, click the Play button to start the animation.