Animation program
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=15553
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 12:36pm
Topic: Animation program
Posted By: JerryPie
Subject: Animation program
Date Posted: 11 December 2012 at 6:30pm
Looking for an animation program with user interface similar to MSpaint.
I am a die hard MSpaint user, so I would like to find something that is made in this fashion. -- I have tried Grafx2, and it's very difficult for me to navigate. Is there a program I can see individual frames layered over the next frame, so I can make sure my sprites are lining up.
I have tried to draw individual frames and save them as separate files, then upload to Iaza.com for animation..This is very tedious, and I almost always end up with ugly animations due to the fact that limbs are not lining up properly.
Any help would be awesome! Thanks guys
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Replies:
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 12 December 2012 at 4:34am
I am one of the coders of Grafx2. In this program, you'll generally want to use keyboard shortcuts for next/previous frame (pageup/pagedown, if I remember correctly) so you can compare frame 1 and 2, then 2 and 3, 3 and 4 etc. While doing it, the "adjust" tool (bottom left) lets you easily shift the frame until it connects nicely with the previous frame.
Other animation programs can have a function called "onion skinning", which lets you view several images at once : usually only "next", or "previous+next". Some can show more frames at once, sometimes with decreasing opacity (distant frames are barely visible). You should try for yourself, see if it's the feature you're looking for. I'm sorry I can't recommend a specific program, I tested all the free animation programs I could find, and never found this function as easy and powerful as I expected. IMO it's only useful at high resolution (96-pixel-high fighting characters) and during sketching, with thin outlines. In any other cases, there are so many overlaps of pixels from the two frames that you can't see which frame(s) the pixel belong to. And in these cases, the mechanisms of Grafx2 (switching back and forth between two frames) gives a much better idea of what you're doing.
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Posted By: JerryPie
Date Posted: 12 December 2012 at 9:18am
Yrizoud, thank you so much for the quick response.
Grafx2 looks like a really great program, but the shortcuts and hot keys are obviously foreign to me. Is there a website with a list of them I can look at? Even if its just a list of simple hot keys like undo, redo.
As far as the Onion skinning, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I would love to find a program that can do this. Long ago I used animation shop, and it had this feature. It worked very well, but there was a problem with my version of the program that would make the GIF conversion decrease color count...so I quit using it. Now I'm back on paint, and looking for something new.
It's very hard to switch to something with new commands and menu's when you are in the middle of some serious projects. I just don't have time to dedicate to learning something right now. I'm just looking for a couple extra features ATM. Once I'm done with my current project, I would gladly spend a couple of weeks learning a more muscular program.
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Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 12 December 2012 at 11:57am
The entire list is available from within the program : hit F1, click Help. The highlighted 'key' names can be clicked to modify the shortcuts, and you should really change them for familiar ones, rather than memorize grafx2's defaults.
But instead of browsing this long list, it's better to hit F1 for example while your mouse cursor is over a button of the toolbar, or while a window is open (palette, etc) : It will open the Help page about this button/function, and display just the relevant shortcuts.
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Posted By: laurashields
Date Posted: 28 December 2012 at 10:05pm
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I had a few program of animation which is my project and referred to Pixel joint.
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