[Niels]

I understand that adding the change in color would make it even more obvious. However, I would rather not do it, because such colors also adds to the “noise” of the interface in general. I hope to keep everything as calm and uncluttered as possible – without sacrificing important information of course. I am awaiting your thoughts. Thank you Bahadir!

[Niels]

Hi Bahadir,

We have looked into the issue you brought up with the key-markings not visible enough. In that process we discovered that the key graphic we used was quite transparent, so with your small scale thumbs and naturally contrasty/noisy drawing behind it (as will be the case for many/most animators, I’m sure), the key symbol will almost disappear.

So we have made the key graphic a little larger, with a thicker white outline and solid opacity. It is much more visible now. So maybe we don’t need the colored frame anymore. What do you think?

   

[Niels]

Thank you Keira! Feel free to ask all you want, if you stumble across anything weird or difficult. Best of luck with your short film!

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Keira, – thanks a lot for your great question! And thanks Rodney for your excellent and accurate answers.

I will add, that it is also possible to export as ProRes Movie files, which will hold the alpha too. Some like this way of doing it, because you have all frames as one file. Though split into layers if needed of course.

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

OK, I see. Cool. It is great to import colored backgrounds etc. – but for now (before we implement the new features), you must crop them to fit your animation aspect ratio before you do the importing.

Thanks again,
Niels

[Niels]

Hi Asmaa – thanks for your question!

Yes, imported images are meant to mainly be used for reference purposes. They go into a “reference layer” – which basically means that they are not editable – they are for drawing on top of, like rough animation from other software, or video, or rendered 3D for moving backgrounds or for rotoscoping, etc, etc.

We are working on an interface and features, to make you able to move, scale and rotate complete layers, so this will be possible for reference layers in one of the following releases.

But drawing in imported images will not be possible. You see, Animation Paper has a special line engine that gives you many great advantages, such as being able to scale and rotate your drawings without any degradation or blurring. If you haven’t noticed, try to lasso a little doodle and scale it way up. It is almost magical 😉 But this means that standard bitmap images imported from other software does not have the ability to do all these clever things. Best practice is to do both your rough work and your clean-up/inking  within Animation Paper.

What you CAN do with reference layers are edit them timing wise – i.e. set their exposure by dragging out clones, move them around, cut, copy and paste them – on a whole drawing/frame basis. So, you can do your timing and sync to your drawn animation and audio track if you have that.

I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if you had anything else in mind.

Thanks,
Niels

[Niels]

Alright! That is kind of a relief for me 😀 Do you find you are sacrificing something though? Or is it totally a matter of habit?

[Niels]

Is it a problem to draw in blue? Because then you have your hue shifted colors.

I thought making it like this was a quite clever idea on my part 🙂

To clean up I would use black yes, but any color will of course work (technically speaking). To do it like you wish to do it, you would clean up in black, but have the previous and next drawings in that same layer be other colors when the backlight is on, right? That is not possible as it is now. I guess we could make it like that – but I’m not sure about this. 😉

I’m listening – if you care to go on with this discussion. It’s super interesting to me. But I of course respect your time too.

[Niels]

You can use the lasso for removing areas, which is a great and super useful alternative to the erasers (as you are saying).

But in that case we call it the Cutter and not the Lasso. Just hit X instead of L – and you will be able to draw the dotted line and pick up the area as you are used to with the Lasso. The only difference from the Lasso is that the area is removed from the drawing. Now you can stamp it down elsewhere, but if you don’t need it, just hit Esc to loose the cutout.

So to remove an area from a drawing: Hit X, mark the area, hit Esc.

[Niels]

Hi Potato Queen – thanks for writing!

I can see on your first screenshot, that you have your Range set to begin at frame 19. Your second layer has at least 1 drawing (on frame 1) – which you can not see, because it is outside your working Range.

You can adjust the Range by dragging the end of the Range bar at the very bottom of your Animation Paper window. Or you can simply hit Ctrl Home (Cmd Home on Mac) to reset Range-Start.

Please let me know if this works for you!

Best,
Niels

[Niels]

Thanks both of you! Bahadir – as usual, you got a point. Noted!

[Niels]

Some features work on multiple drawings selected – but not lasso cutouts unfortunately. This is something we want to do for the future. On our list!

Also lassoing from multiple layers is something we are contemplating. Thanks for asking for it!

[Niels]

You just turn on Hue-shift, then your frames are different in color (hue). But this only works on lines that is already a color (blue, red or green – for now – custom colors too, when we have implemented support for that). Anyway, the point is that hue shift doesn’t work on grey/black lines, like you have in your example. I like this feature, because then you can deliberately choose to have some layers in grey/black, if you want it not to have colored (hue shifted) frames, while the ones you want to see colored in your lighttable can actually have it – simultaneously.

I hope I explained this well enough to not get too confusing! 😀

[Niels]

Thanks Ridvan. Yeah, I have been debating exactly that in my head for a long time 😀 I guess it wouldn’t hurt to let the user turn the thing off by clicking the indicator. I’ll think about it some more 🙂 Thank you for mentioning it!!

[Niels]

Hi Bahadir – your post turned up finally! 😉 (Sorry again)

I think I get what you are saying. Thanks for explaining!

Just for clarity – couldn’t you do what you want by marking the drawings you want as “key” and then let the backlight only show the keys? But maybe that’s too inefficient.