Animation Tips #1

Clicking the File New toolbar button while pressing the <Shift> key will open a new animation without running the settings dialog. Animation Shop will keep the settings you selected on your last animation, and apply them to the new one.

The Duplicate Animation feature is a quick way to create another animation by copying an existing animation. To use the Duplicate Animation feature, choose Window > Duplicate Animation (or press <Shift> + <D>). A copy of the animation will appear in another Frames View window. The Edit > Duplicate menu item, the Duplicate toolbar button , and the Duplicate item in the frame context menu are used to duplicate selected frames, not an entire animation.

When an animation looks 'jumpy', it's usually because the contents of each frame are not perfectly lined up with each other. You can use the Onionskin tool in Animation Shop to preview how each frame of the animation aligns with the adjacent frame. Clicking the yellow Onionskin icon will overlay a transparent copy of the next frame onto each frame.* Another reason an animation could look 'jumpy' is because more transition frames are needed to smooth out the action. Export your frames to PSP to create some new frame-layers with 'in-between' movement.

Onionskin Preview temporarily superimposes a transparent overlay of frame 1 onto frame 2; frame 2 overlays frame 3; etc, for all frames.** Zoom in to see how contents of one frame line up with the next and use the Mover tool to make small adjustments to pixel alignment that may correct the jerkiness of movement. If major adjustments are needed, you may have to export frames to Paint Shop Pro to fix!
*Clicking Onionskin icon again will turn overlay off.
**This can vary, depending on preference choices...double click Onionskin icon to view preferences.

If your jumping pixels are due to stray pixels or pixels that are the wrong color...refer back to top for list of topics!
Sometimes when you select the transparent background option in the Animation Wizard and save your image it will show with an opaque background, this can happen with some tubes that have an invisible layer with background color when you open the tube in Animation Shop. Make sure that all layers show when you are using tubes to animate and remove any unwanted layers before exporting to Animation Shop.

A "halo" is created by pixels of the 'wrong' color appearing along the edges of your image. This happens often when using an image with a 'blurred' drop shadow or when original image was created with a different color background than is currently being used. When saving & optimizing your animation, try using different transparency settings to see if it gets rid of the halo. Sometimes selecting 'blending the background color of your page with the transparent pixels' is the best option (under 'Partial Transparency'). If the halo is appearing around a blurred drop shadow (or any area with graduated color between opaque pixels and transparent pixels), it is partly because the .gif file format used for animations is not well suited to graduated color. Try removing areas of graduated color from your image or using opaque drop shadows.