pony

Tutorial “Pony”

Pretty pony wants to play. Here we will show how to create a simple animated film in ARTOONIX. The purpose is to demonstrate all the stages of the project from conceptual idea to the complete animation while learning the basics of techniques and tools available.

1. Concept

Before you start, you need to decide what you want to animate – the plot, how the characters will look like, style, etc. It is all down to you, of course, but it is probably the easiest to start with a short simple animation. Let’s say you want to animate a pony like this:

2. Project

Start by creating a New Project for your film:

  • On the Projects page of Artoonix click on  New Project .
  • Name your project Pony in the opened dialog box New Project . Leave the rest of the settings as they are at this stage.

As a result you will have a new icon “Pony” in the projects list. You can now open it by either double-clicking on this icon or, if it is highlighted, by using the button  Edit on the page Projects.

Open the “Pony” project. You have now page Project: Pony open which shows all the tools that you can use to modify it. You can create or modify the video sequence, add sound and preview the resulting film.

 

3. Frame

Now we can create the video sequence. It is composed of several frames. To create a frame, do this:

  • Press the button  Create New frame on the toolbar
  • Click Add new frame.

You see now a page called Add new frame 1 which has tools for drawing and forming the frame.

The drawing itself can be split into parts that can be moved, turned and scaled together or independently from each other. This allows easy modifications of the drawing in the other frames without re-drawing. For example, our Pony van be split into 8 areas:

To draw such pony, follow these steps:

  • Press  Add new object button 8 times to create 8 “objects” – you can see them all on the panel called Objects.Note, that there will be an extra object on the panel – it’s created automatically every time you create a frame.
  • Name each of the newly created objects:
    • Click the object you want to name in the Objects panel.
    • Push the button  Change object properties on the toolbar or simply double-click the object.
    • In the dialog box change the Name to the one you want and click ÐžÐš.
  • Do it for all the objects and you will end up with the Objects panel looking like this:

  • Now we can start drawing each of the objects. Click each object to select and start using appropriate tools for drawing. You can view information about any tool by positioning the pointer over it. The name of the tool appears in a tool tip below the pointer.   

 

Group 1 – drawing tools: brush, spray, eraser, eyedropper.

Group 2 – painting tools and styles – freehand, lines, squares, filled squares, ellipse, filled ellipse; paint bucket.

Group 3 – sets the size of the tools.

The color can be chosen from the color palette at the bottom of the painting canvas.

As a result, after drawing all the objects you would have a painting that would like this :

 

  • Now, press the  Apply button in the upper part of the view to come back to the Project: Pony where you will seethe first frame that you have just created.

4. New frames

In this example we will be creating the follow-up frames on the basis of the just created one.

  • Press the button  Repeat selected frame on the top toolbar panel

    If it is shaded, make sure you have selected the frame in the list on the left.

    You will be taken to Duplicate Frame 2 where the content of the previous frame is copied.

  • Press the button
  • Simple Transform – now you can manipulate each of the objects either separately (move, rotate, resize) or grouped (movement, rotate).

    You will see now the frame around the object you have just selected. Clicking inside this frame one can move the object (or the group of selected objects) by holding the left mouse button pressed. One can also rotate the objects around the rotation center  by dragging the edges of the frame. To resize an object, drug the markers of the frame.

  • Now, press the
  • Apply button in the upper part of the view to come back again to the Project: Pony
  • Repeat points 1..3 for each frame to form the sequence that would look like this:

Now you need to set the timing – let us say the first 4 frames have 100 milliseconds delay and the last frame – 2 seconds 600 milliseconds:

  • Move the mouse cursor under the first frame.
  • Select the first four frames by dragging the mouse down.
  • Press the button  Change time delay for the selected frames.
  • In the dialog box Video frame properties and set the values as follows: Minutes = 0, Seconds = 0,milliseconds= 100. Press the ОК button.
  • Click the last frame and do the similar manipulations to set the timing of the last frame to be 2 seconds and 600 milliseconds.

As a result the total duration of the film will be 3 seconds .

  • Please, use the control buttons     on Draft video preview panel to preview the complete animation.

5. Adding sound

We will now go through the process of adding the audio tracks to the Pony project.

At the bottom of your Project: Pony screen there is an audio panel with several tracks. One can either record the sounds from a microphone or other sound source (such as *.wav audio files). Besides, it is also possible to edit each track – cut some parts out, move it to the other place of the same or other track, etc.

We will demonstrate live recording with a microphone. To do it:

  1. Press  Show/hide sound recording panel to reveal the audio panel (if it is not already shown)
  • Connect the microphone to your PC. Select appropriate “Device” and “Source” (it depends on your audio hardware).  If the selection is done correctly, you will see the some response on the level indicator whenever you tap on the microphone.
  • Click the first track – we will use it to record the sounds. Press the button [Home] (or   on Draft video preview panel) to place the audio cursor to the beginning of the track.
  • Now you are ready to record – click the  Start button. Press  Finish to end, or Cancel to cancel the recording.

    Note, that “Max. recording time (sec)” sets the maximum time of the recording. Increase it if you want the sound extend beyond the length of the video sequence.

Let us now insert the sound from an audio file.

  1. Click on the 1-st track someplace around 1 seconds from the beginning (see position counter on draft video preview panel).
  2. Press   Import audio from wav-file and select suitable sound (e.g., C:\WINDOWS\Media\tada.wav). You will see something like this:

Let us use the second track and imitate “echo” effect.

  1. Select with your mouse part of the track 1 like shown below.
  • Press the button  Copy selected audio to clipboard .
  • Place the cursor onto the track 2 with some delay (say 200 millisecond).
  • Press the button  Insert audio from clipboard. You will see something like this:

  • Use the toolbar on Draft video preview to see and hear the preview of the complete animation.
  • If you are happy with the result, press the button   Back… to go to the Animation projects view. Your animation is ready.

 

6. View the animation

To view the complete animation film you have just created, do this steps:

  1. Click the icon of the Pony project to select it.
  2. Click the button  Movie. The movie will be encoded (using the settings that you have set in the program options). Click the same button again to view it.

    The movie will only be encoded if there have been changes made to the project. If it is not the first time that movie is created, you will be asked if you want to do it.

    Use the buttons     on Draft video preview panel to preview the complete animation. to control playing the film. .

  3. Click button  Back… to go back to the Animation projects view.
  4. To export the movie into GIF file – use the right-click pop-up menu in this view.

 

You can view the complete animation here.
As you can see, it is very easy to create simple animations in Artoonix.
Start experimenting yourself, and, most importantly, have fun!