Animated Pixels

[ChallAcc]

By this, I mena, are we able to do frame by frame animation? Having the shading is amazing, so I'd love to be able to draw something in stages, and creates effects with it.

Say text for example. I draw a letter T, then on frame 2, I draw a letter E, all the way to X and T, so it appears like a typewriter.

Imagine that, but like a snake growing longer, or something. At the moment, I can only change the position of things, or their visibility.

[ChallAcc]

Take it this isn't happening :(

[Nevercenter]

Thanks for the feedback!

Tell us a bit more what you mean--we think we understand but we aren't sure.

Would you like to be able to add things that become visible only per-frame? (So in your TEXT example above, you would like to have the first frame with just the T, then add and E on the second frame so it's TE, and so forth? End result watching the animation would show the word appearing letter-by-letter.)

Or are you talking about some kind of morphing animation feature? (So like you'd draw a T on the first frame and an E on the second frame, and Pixelmash would change the T into an E with some visual where the lines from the T morph into an E?)

[ChallAcc]

@nevercenter Thanks for your reply. Your first example is what I mean.

The other day I tried to make a simple puff of smoke, starting with a dot and then getting bigger, turning into a donut and finally fading away. I thought this was going to be so simple in your program, but it really wasn't.

I'd also like an onion skin (If it's not already there) so I can see the previous (few) frame(s).

That would make animation a lot easier.

Because your tool didn't have this, I had to move over to a different program, but would happily come back.

At the moment, for me, your program is only useful for still images.

[Nevercenter]

Oh! Yes--all of these things are totally possible. :)

Animation > Show Onion Skin will give you the onion skin; you can also set options (how many frames before/after, colorize or not).

For the smoke puff you describe, you'll want to make a layer, then Animate tab > make the number of frames you want, then "Image Keyframe All" for that layer. This means that each frame will be an image keyframe for that layer; so you get to draw that layer fresh for every single animation frame. With onion skinning on you can easily see the ones before/after (based on settings) to reference as you paint.

For the TEXT example above with things being progressively added, there are a couple of ways to approach it. One way is to make a layer for each (T, E, X, T), then use Visibility Keyframe. For each layer, you would select that layer, go to the frame you want it to appear in, make it a Visibility Keyframe (checkmark in the Animate tab), and then check the layer so the visibility action is that it becomes visible. That layer will persist being visible in the animation sequence until you set another frame in the layer as a Visibility Keyframe and change the visibility. (So, in the example, uncheck all layers. Then: select T layer, select frame 1, check Visibility Keyframe option*, check T layer. Select E layer, select frame 2, check Visibility Keyframe option, check E layer. Select X layer, select frame 3... and so forth. At the end you will have T on frame 1, TE on frame 2, TEX on frame 3, and TEXT on frame 4)

Frame characteristics are set per layer, so you could also combine the two above, and have frames 1,2,3,4 be Image Keyframes for the smoke layer, while having frames 1,2,3,4 be Visibility keyframes for T,E,X,T, respectively.



*of note, these directions are simplified for the explanation's sake: frame 1 is always a transform/visibility/image keyframe (by definition) for every layer (because the layer starts to exist there, whether or not it has visibility or anything in it at that point), so you don't actually need to check the Visibility Keyframe box for the T layer, above; it is auto-checked.

[Nevercenter]

We have an interface walkthrough for Pixelmash 1.1 here: https://youtu.be/1VLRAIoRbsY

Unfortunately, when we just glanced through now it seems we covered everything except visibility keyframes ;) But we do cover the other ones. Let us know if the above description plus the video doesn't help and we can put together a quick demo video for you

[Jiegovsky]

So what you're saying is. Basically, if we want a fadeout animation, we'll have to painstakingly do this frame by frame.

Instead of just calculating the alpha/opacity of one keyframe to the next. We just had to manually do this all by ourselves. Which is exactly the same thing other programs do.

Great stuff.