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Hi Eli!
Did you succeed in submitting your activation key? If that’s out of the way, you can just go ahead and start drawing…
You don’t really need to setup anything. You draw, you add frames (hit the plus-icon or use the hotkey Ctrl ArrowDown if you are on PC or Cmd ArrowDown if you are on Mac). You draw some more.
You flip through your drawings using your arrow keys.
After you have done a rough animation quickly sketched out (default done in blue pencil) – then you add a new layer (hit N on your keyboard) – and you can start cleaning it up in black.
Hit Space to play your animation.
That’s the very short version. 🙂 Did that help at all? Otherwise let me know if you have specific problems or questions.
Also make sure to check out our tutorials – they will show you most of what you need to know to get started: https://youtu.be/IO7sxaZonhA
Good luck!
Cheers,
NielsHello, I am a newbie to animation, I apologize in advance for my questions – if they seem silly.
1. Do you draw from a tablet or on the screen? I find I sketch better on paper not the desktop screen. If you use a drawing tablet, which work? If so, how do you get the tablet to work in conjunction with the desktop? I have a 2nd gen tablet and in the post COVID world a wacom is out of the question, financially. I was looking at a Huion – would that work?
2. Is it possible to import sketches drawn on paper and trace them?Hi Suzie!
Thanks a lot for your questions – not silly at all!
1. It depends on your preference. Many people, including my self, like it better to draw on a tablet with a screen, like a Wacom Cintiq or a Huion. You have better visual feedback this way. On the other hand the good thing about drawing on a tablet placed on your table and looking at what you draw on your computer screen is that your hand is not blocking anything. 🙂
About working digitally (as opposed to physical paper), I find it is a matter of getting-used-to, but also a matter of weighing pro and cons. Paper is great for the natural feel of course. However, you get so much from working digitally drawing directly onto the screen, like instant linetesting (just hit play), perfect erasers, undo, lasso and copying things, trying stuff out and saving multiple versions, refining your drawings and animation easily and endlessly, much faster workflow, etc, etc. I’m sure others can add to these points. 😉
Yes, Huions work great with Animation Paper.
2) Yes, you can easily import sketches drawn on paper. You need to have them scanned or taken as photos into your computer first as png’s or jpg’s. Name your files with numbers, so they sort as a sequence. In Animation Paper you just hit Import and select all your images in one go. They will automatically import in sequence on a new “reference” layer. You can then time everything, so you make each drawing hold for one or more frames. Then add a new layer (or more) on top to trace them, clean them up with “ink” or add breakdowns or inbetweens as well if you want to. A the end you can color your drawing as well and import a background (or foreground). (Coloring is coming in one of the next alpha releases).
In short: Yes! 😉
Let me know if what I said makes sense. 🙂 You are most welcome to get back to me with further questions.
Best,
NielsA-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Thank you. With the Huion Tablet, I imagine the instructions to connect it to my Mac will be explained with the tablet, or do I need extra software? You software seems like a dream come true!
Another question, can you use a program like Papagayo or CrazyTalk to sync the lips or is there a secret to lip syncing?
No problem 🙂 I’m sure the Huion comes with some kind of driver you have to install. Shouldn’t be a problem though.
You can use any program to help you do lip-sync, but if it was me I would rather do it “by hand” because the performance of your character is so much more than just getting the poses of the mouth in sync. You need to analyse the voice and emotion of it anyway to do the complete facial expressions and get your character to “act” well. Import your voice track into Animation Paper and listen to it over and over again. Draw your key poses and drag out clones so your key poses match the audio. Then you experiment with alternative poses/expressions or you can just start filling in drawings between your keys with more mouth poses until you have all of your animation done. 🙂 Lip sync is both simple and complicated at the same time. 🙂
same
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