An important part of the traditional hand-drawn animation process is "flipping" and "rolling" your drawings to check the flow of the action.
It is often difficult to precisely simulate the traditional methods with digital programs such as TVPaint. You are more or less simply "scrubbing" back and forth along the Timeline to view your drawings in rapid succession . It's not exactly the same as working with paper, but it can get close. Read further to see how you can refine this process.
In TVPaint you can use your pen stylus (or mouse) to scrub along the drawings on the Timeline. That's the most basic way of doing it. Many times that is what I do . It's simple and direct.
You can also use the keyboard arrow keys Right (forward) and Left (back) to go to Next Frame (Right) or Previous Frame (Left) or use CMD Right to Go To Next Drawing or CMD Left to Go To Previous Drawing . Note that Next Frame and Previous Frame may not be exactly the same thing as Next Drawing or Previous Drawing , depending on how many frames each drawing is exposed on the Timeline . If all your animation is ON ONES , then going from frame to frame is all you need , but if your have animation exposed ON TWOS or some of your drawings held for more frames , then you need to be able to advance to Next Drawing (not Next Frame) or Previous Drawing (not Previous Frame) .
➔ You'll notice in the TVPaint lingo used in the User Manual and tutorials a drawing or image is often referred to as an Instance on the Timeline. So , Next Instance or Previous Instance is the same thing as Next Drawing and Previous Drawing.
SEE: "What Is An Instance?" in the TVPaint User Manual: "An instance is simply an image in an animation layer, an image whose duration can be adjusted on the Timeline." Another way of saying it is that an Instance is the first occurrence of a drawing, which may be exposed for any number of frames needed. Most animation drawings are exposed "On 2s" (two frames each) or "On 1s" (one frame each), but you can expose drawings (instances) for more frames if the character needs to pause or hold for timing purposes.
When working in TVPaint, you'll have a need to use both the Next Frame and Previous Frame shortcuts and the Next Drawing (Instance) and Previous Drawing (Instance) shortcuts.
Next Frame = Right (forward)
Previous Frame = Left (back)
Next Drawing/Instance = CMD Right (CTRL Right on Windows)
Previous Drawing/Instance = CMD Left (CTRL Left on Windows)
But there's more you can do than simply scrubbing the Timeline with your stylus or mouse , or using the Right and Left arrow keys to go to Next Frame and Previous Frame or CMD Right and CMD Left to go to Next Drawing and Previous Drawing.
You can also set IMAGE MARKS on your drawings and set up keyboard shortcuts to only flip between drawings with Image Marks. Let's say you mark your KEY/EXTREME drawings with a RED mark . Then if you set keyboard shortcuts for Next Image Mark and Previous Image Mark , it will only flip from Key to Key (image mark to image mark), skipping over the frames between the marked drawings.
But what if you want to designate certain drawings as Breakdown drawings between the Keys and you want to be able to only flip between the Keys and Breakdowns , skipping over the remaining frames where the inbetween drawings will be inserted ? There's an even more sophisticated way to handle this in TVPaint and it is called the FLIPS panel. You can do a lot of customization on setting up your FLIPS panel (and you should look at the User Manual and watch the video tutorial about Flips) but I'm going to show you a simple way to approach it that works for me and you might find it works for you , too.
My approach is to mark my KEY drawings in RED , my BREAKDOWN drawings in BLUE, and the INBETWEEN drawings are unmarked. So from a glance at the Timeline I can see where my KEYS, BREAKDOWNS , and INBETWEENS are. (a possible option is to mark the Inbetweens with Light Green. I occasionally have done that , but usually it works for me to only mark the Keys and Breakdowns. )
My FLIPS shortcuts in TVPaint are set up like this:
I have 3 FLIP settings:
- Flip KEYS Only - keyboard shortcut F
- Flip KEYS & BREAKDOWNS - keyboard shortcut G
- Flip ALL drawings - keyboard shortcut H
By pressing the F key and moving my stylus over the surface of my tablet I can flip between the KEYS only. (skipping over the frames with Breakdowns and Inbetweens)
By pressing the G key then I can flip between both the KEYS and BREAKDOWNS (skipping over the Inbetween frames)
By pressing the H key I can flip between ALL the drawings - Keys, B'downs, and Inbs.
NOTE: It does not have to be those three keys: F , G, H , those are just the ones that I prefer. You can set up the Flips shortcuts to any of the keys you prefer.
There are other adjustments you can make to fine-tune the Flips function in TVPaint , but that's the basic set up that works for me. As I look back over what I wrote above , it reads more complicated than it is . Once you have it set up , it's easy.
Also, having the Flips options set up like this does not disable the basic functions of using the RIGHT and LEFT arrow keys (with or without the CMD or CTRL modifier) or simply scrubbing across the Timeline with the stylus . It's possible to switch back and forth between the different methods rather effortlessly once you have your keyboard shortcuts set up and memorized and you can more or less hit those shortcut keys automatically , without having to think much about it (this comes through repetition)
If you don't want to use the Flips shortcuts and only need to flip from Key to Key , you can adopt a simpler system of Bookmarking each Key and setting shortcuts for Next Bookmark and Previous Bookmark to flip between them. See TVPaint User Manual section on Bookmarks. The default shortcuts are Ctrl Shift Right for Next Bookmark and Ctrl Shift Left for Previous Bookmark, but you can assign those to other keys if you prefer.
This is all based on the classical system of designating animation drawings as KEYS (EXTREMES), BREAKDOWNS , or INBETWEENS.
(I realize some animators , Richard Williams for one well-known, vocal example, prefer to make a distinction between "KEYS" and "EXTREMES" , and I understand the logic of his argument about it , but I've found that in practice many very fine animators tend to use those two terms synonymously , so I'm ok using the terms KEY (aka Extreme), BREAKDOWN , and INBETWEEN . Also, both TVPaint and Toonboom Harmony use the term KEY , so it seems convenient to retain the same terminology for this demonstration. Something else that influenced me is that master animator Eric Goldberg uses the terms KEYS , BREAKDOWNS, and INBETWEENS in his book "Character Animation Crash Course" , so following Eric's lead, I'm ok with using that terminology. If anyone feels it is important to make a distinction between a KEY and an EXTREME , I get it , I'm with you , I understand the logic of what Richard Williams was getting at , but I'm not going to cut it that fine for the purposes of this demonstration.)
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