Operation Manual

Creating Animations 225
Getting started with animation
What is animation? Like flip books, Disney movies, and TV, it’s a way of
creating the illusion of motion by displaying a series of still images, rapidly
enough to fool the eye—or more accurately, the brain. Professional animators
have developed a whole arsenal of techniques for character animation—
rendering human (and animal) movement in a convincing way.
A clear distinction has to be made between two types of animation techniques,
both possible from within DrawPlus, i.e.
• Stopframe animation: also known as Stop motion animation, involves
the animation of static objects frame-by-frame. In the film industry,
Stopframe animation is used within widely known productions based
on figures made of clay or other bendable material—think King Kong!,
and more recently Wallace & Gromit™ films (Aardman/Wallace and
Gromit Ltd).
• Keyframe animation: performs movement of computer-generated
objects from basic shapes to cartoon characters (used traditionally in
Stopframe animation). Using the power of computing, smooth
playback of animated objects is easily achieved between key moments
in your animation, defined by the user as Keyframes.
DrawPlus lets you export Stopframe or Keyframe animations to a variety of
different formats. For more details, review Exporting animations (see p. 248).
For now we'll look at how to set up both Stopframe or Keyframe animation
within DrawPlus.
To begin a new Stopframe or Keyframe animation (from Startup Wizard):
1. Start DrawPlus (or choose File>New>New from Startup Wizard... if
it’s already running).
2. Select Create>Stopframe Animation or Create>Keyframe
Animation from the Startup Wizard.
3. From Page Setup, review document types in the left-hand pane.
4. Select a document type thumbnail from a category in the left-hand
pane.