Graphics Gale is a very easy 2D animation program. But I can''t figure out the onion skin thing. I can''t get it to work. Being able to see one frame through another one is very important in animating, and I don''t know how to do it. Or maybe there is a better 2D animation program you can suggest? But for now, anyone know how to use onion skins in Graphics Gale? If you don''t have the program you can download a trial version from download.com. I even rated it - my name was rkpellagirl there.

Hmm... I''m not too sure, but I know how to use Onion Skin in Director. Basically, you have to set a certain image as your background image, and you also need to set how many "layers" you can see through. ONce you have it set up, you just add multiple layers on top of that...

Of course, an easy solution to this would be to use adobe photoshop and image ready... keep your layers partially transparent, and then in image ready take your photoshop image and turn the layers into animation frames.

Hope this helps

- T

I don't understand. What do layers have to do with it? What if the entire frame is just a character? How can I just make that image seen on another frame - transparantly? Ofcourse you don't use Graphics Gale, but maybe many animation programs are similar.

[edited by - Nadine on June 14, 2002 11:54:16 PM]

The concept of "Onion Skin" goes back to traditional animation. They would draw on a really thin type of paper called Onion Skin. They used this so they could draw the new frame on top of the old frame. Therefore, the drawn animation isn''t a blind one.

So, to mimic this in photoshop, if you have an image you want to animate... lets say... a jack in the box. You would start out with your initial image, the box. Add a new layer, set the transparency to like... 50% so you can see the layer below it, and then draw the box again on top of it, except this time making any animated changes you see fit.

Its really hard to explain, but the basic concept is just being able to see a faded image of the prior frame while drawing the current frame.