Animation

The timeline #

A frame is a sprite, and the document's frames in order are the animation. Press T to open the timeline. It has two forms:

A drawer (the default): a small tab at the bottom edge of the canvas says which frame you are on. Rest the pointer on it, or click it, or press T, and the strip opens over the canvas; move away and it tucks again (a click or T keeps it open until T, Esc or Hide). The canvas keeps the whole window, and nothing resizes when the strip comes and goes.
Pinned: the Pin button (or Window > Pin the timeline) docks it under the canvas as an ordinary panel, which is what animating all day wants. Unpin lets it go back. The Animation layout (Window > Layouts) pins it for you.

Frames #

+ Frame adds a frame after the one you are on, copying its drawing and sharing its palette; + Linked adds one that shares its cels with the original (a stroke in either lands in both); + Empty adds a blank one.
Click a frame's thumbnail to edit it. , and . step back and forward.
Drag a frame to reorder it. Delete removes it. Ctrl+Shift+D duplicates the current frame.
Hold sets how long the frame stays on screen, in milliseconds; Shift+click selects a run of frames, and the buttons then act on the whole run: duplicate, delete, Reverse, or give them one hold.
Right-click a frame for its menu: add an empty frame after it, duplicate it, move it left or right, reverse the selected run, delete it.

Layers run through the whole animation: add, delete, move, rename, hide or group a layer in any frame and it is so in every frame, each keeping its own pixels of it. See Layers and elements.

Linked cels #

A linked cel makes a layer's cel in several frames one cel: a stroke in any of them lands in all, as it is drawn. + Linked duplicates a frame that way, and a layer row's menu links or unlinks a single layer.

Playback #

Enter plays and stops. Speed previews at half speed to judge timing, or double to see the motion. Playback is a function of elapsed time, so a dropped frame costs nothing and scrubbing lands on exactly what playing showed. While it plays the canvas shows the frame the clock says; stopping is what changes which frame the tools act on.

Onion skin #

O turns on onion skin: the frames either side drawn faint under the live one, with their own tints. Its settings (under the v beside it) choose how many frames before and after, and whether the neighbours come from the frame list or from the selected cycle, so they are what will play either side of this one. The corner preview (P) shows the sprite at 1x to 4x against any of eight backdrops.

Cycles #

A cycle is a named run of frames, "walk" or "hurt", with its own loop mode, saved with the file. It is a sequence, not a subset: a step names a frame, and two steps may name the same one, so a four-frame walk drawn once plays 0 1 2 1.

Press New beside Cycle and name it.
Add steps: pick a frame and press the add button, in the order they should play.
Choose when it ends: loop, play once, or ping-pong (there and back without repeating either end).

Play, onion skin and the exports use the selected cycle, or every frame when none is chosen. A frame carries one dot per time a cycle plays it, and a frame no step names is dimmed, not flagged.

Tweens #

See Rotating, scaling and the canvas: set a transform in two frames, select the run and press Tween.

Palettes in time #

A frame can be given its own palette, so a flash frame, or one palette per frame along the timeline, is colour cycling for nothing. See Colour and palettes.

Getting it out #

File > Export animation... writes the selected cycle (or every frame) as an animated GIF, animated PNG, animated WebP or a numbered PNG sequence; Export sheet... lays the frames into one image. See Opening, saving and exporting.

This is the guide that ships inside the program (F1).