One of my all time favourites programs (ever!) is Painter. When I was new to computer graphics and not quite sure yet about this new tool – it was the one app which drew me in immediately with its rich colours and tools – and I was hooked …. it’s a dream to work with :)

One of the more hidden – or at least less commonly used – features in Painter is animation and working with video – something which is not only great fun – but can also add something to any motion graphics or animation work you might do. My posts on this subject will be by no means exhaustive – rather a quick introduction for those interested to experiment.

working with movie files

To start working on an animation in Painter – you need to specify the document type straight away as movie when creating a new file.

1. top menu > file > new
   Choose the correct file dimensions (typically an aspect ratio of 4:3), resolution and paper colour. The essentail detail here is the specify the ‘Picture Type’ as Movie – here a 10 sec movie is being set up (if viewed at 25 frames per second).
   
2. next, you will be prompted to set the location for your movie file to be saved to as well as a movie name.
   
3. you will then need to specify how many layers of onion skin you want to work with and which storage type your frames whould be saved at.
   Bear in mind how powerful your computer is – the more onion skin layers and the higher your colour depth – the more demand on your hardware.
   
4. your Painter workspace will now show the newly created movie file with its frame stack. Lay out the palettes for easy workflow and get ready to animate ;)
   

onion skinning

The onion skinning view options in Painter aim to imitate the thin transparent paper used in traditional animation. While the frame stack panel shows you all frames in a linear sequence – the onion skins allow you to view several frames at the same time within your main window. This enables you to use a number of frames before and after your current frame as references to create the desired flow of movement.
You have chosen the amount of onion skin layer when you set up your movie – to change this – you will need to close your file and open it again.

To work with the onion skinning – click on the top button on the vertical scrollbar of your main window – or use the keyboard shortcut – see below.

Once you have drawn out 2 or more frames for your new animation – you can see the previous frames faded on the canvas. By using the tracing paper you can now draw out the new frame or edit existing drawings more precisely .

BE AWARE !
One thing to get used to if you are not familiar with Painter already is the way movie files get processed. When you create a movie – the frame stack file can take up a large amount of memory, even though the final movie output might only be marginally small in comparison. Due to this, Painter will save any current frame once you navigate away from it – committing your layers, shapes or drawings immediately. You will not be able to go back and use the ‘undo’ command – you will need to edit the existing frame’s content using other methods.

>> next post on animating with layers in PainterÂ