ONION SKINNING in Animate

VICTREE MEDIA 17

SUMMARY:

     Onion skinning is a feature in Adobe Flash/Animate that allows users to view the ghost of their previous drawing and next frame, two frames before, two frames after, and as many onion skins as needed. This feature helps in drawing, positioning, and editing frame-by-frame animation. Onion skinning markers move with the current frame pointer, allowing editing of all frames between them. It is also used to add in-betweens during pose-to-pose animation and avoid confusing images. To check the progress of onion skinning, hover the mouse across the entire span on the timeline. In Adobe Illustrator, onion skinning allows users to adjust the transparency of onion skin frames and the percentage delta that decreases across them. Enabling and disabling onion skinning superimposes all frames between the start and end onion skin markers in the timeline header.

     If you want to know in detail about the onion skinning, read them down below:

Introduction:

     If you did the activity that I gave you. Congratulations! You just made your very first animation, but you may have realized that your animation is not aligned in one place. So, you can use a ruler [Which we will cover later]; however, this is where onion skinning come into play. If you remember History of Animation, I told about traditional animation, and in that, the animators kept on flipping Cel sheets forward and back in order to see how their motion is going. That is the same job that onion skinning does and it yet makes animating a lot easier. So today, we are going to cover looping, onion skinning and outline mode.

Onion Skinning:

     To understand onion skinning, you will need to understand how the animation is persecuted in older times of Disney, which was done traditionally on cel or onion-skin paper, and how Disney used to animate was to draw on one image and then, they drew on the next page, just like you now add keyframe in Adobe Flash/Animate. The paper Disney, back in the day, utilized was called "Onion Skin Paper" because the papers they used were like tracing paper but much thinner and weaker. Just like tracing paper, this paper let the animators see their previous drawing but much clearly; hence the word "Onion Skinning" was born. So, onion skinning is a feature that allows you to see the ghost of your previous drawing. Unlike in real life, the digital animation programs allow you to not only see the ghost of your previous drawings but also ghost of your next frame; two frames before, two frames after and as many onion skins as you need, and usually, one frame of the animation sequence at a time appears on the stage.

     Onion Skin provides reference by displaying ghosts of the previous drawing, and next following frames on the stage to help you draw, position and edit frame-by-frame animation/Cel Animation/Traditional Animation. The frame under under the play-head appears in full color and alpha to differentiate between past and future frames, and the previous and the following frames of onion skinning have default color tint. Green color is to see the future frames, while blue color is to see the past frames, and to customize the colors, make use of advance setting options.

     Normally, the onion skin markers move with the current frame pointer, and click edit multiple frames button to enable editing of all frames between onion skin marker. Usually, onion skinning let you edit only the current frame, and you can display the content of each frame between the onion skin markers and edit them. I use it, other than purpose mentioned, to also add in-betweens during the use of pose-to-pose animation [More on this when you will reach to 12 Principles of Animation] method, as described by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, and to avoid a multitude of confusing images, lock or hide the layers you do not need to be onion skinning.

     To check how your onion skinning is coming along, hover the mouse across the entire span on the timeline, and your animation plays in colored outline, giving you a precise preview of the change. Some of the onion skinning parameters in the panel are existing functions: such as outline mode, onion skin previous or future frame color preference, anchor markers, and keyframe only mode renders only, keyframes in onion skin range, which is skip between frames of tween.

     Starting Opacity is the transparency of first onion skin frame on either side of active frame, and Decrease By is a percentage delta that decrease across every onion skin frame. Constraints are the range of previous and next frames that are same when constraints are enabled, unless you edit the range from timeline.

Note: Color code is also applicable for outline mode. Locked layers [With a padlock icon] are not displayed when onion skinning is turned on.

USES

1) You can enable onion skinning by clicking the onion show button.

2) Use Ctrl + Drag to increase or decrease the position on both sides.

3) To change the position of either onion skin marker -> Drag its pointer to a new location.

4) To set the range markers, use the shift key and drag the range markers or the loop range using the markers across the timeline.

5) Onion Skinning is further enhanced to reflectively exclude and include frames by right-clicking any onion skin frame with in the onion skin range.

6) To move the loop range across the timeline to any position that includes the play-head position, utilize the markers in the timeline to hold the Shift key and drag the range.

7) To customize the color of the onion skin frame, select the onion skin frames in the timeline bar -> Select Edit -> Preference -> Select the color swatch button to customize -> Set colors for the past, present and future frames in the onion skin color option.

8) Click the onion skin button to enable and disable onion skinning -> When enabled, all frames between the start and the end onion skin markers [In the timeline header] are super-imposed as one frame in the document window -> Click and hold the mouse on the onion skin icon to view and select the options like selected range, all frames, anchor markers and advance settings -> Select the onion skin icon [The icon to the left of the Loop icon] in the timeline.

Looping:

    Looping is going to repeat the playback of your animation over and over again, and you simply drag the markers to the position that you want to play and repeat it. The markers can go as far as you want or how far your frame are.

USES

1) Press the loop icon or use the shortcut.

Highlight or Outline Mode:

    Outline is what shows you the path a drawing has or follows, while highlight highlights the layer's frames, keyframes and blank keyframes by giving you a small straight line.

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