Timing and Spacing are the heart of animation. No matter how well you can draw, you need good timing and good spacing for good animation. FlipPad has several unique features that help you improve your timing and your spacing. You can make changes to our xsheet while the scene is playing. That means you can add or delete frames. You can cut copy and paste images. And you can even drag and drop the thumbnails – while the scene is playing. That makes it so much faster and easier than any other app.

Disney’s famous bible on animation, “The Illusion of Life” says that timing is learned through trial and error. FlipPad eliminates 5 out of 6 steps that other apps require to let you change to your timing. Since FlipPad lets you change your timing 5 times faster, you can learn timing 5 times faster. That’s right! FlipPad saves you time while you’re learning timing.

As for spacing, FlipPad’s Lightbox feature works just like a traditional animation disc. Each drawing you open automatically gets added to the stack. So you can see any drawing you want ghosted behind the one you’re working on. It doesn’t matter if they’re 100 frames apart or even in different levels. Being able to see any keyframe you want makes it easier to do a better job of positioning your in-betweens.

Timing controls when drawings appear on screen. If the drawings play too close together the action is too fast. Too far apart and it’s too slow.

FlipPad Makes Timing Easier with REAL-TIME EDITING

That’s quite the pun because FlipPad actually edits time in real-time. The other apps makes you stop playback, find the frame where you want to change the timing, open a menu, adjust the timing and then play the scene to see if you made it better – or worse. Compared to FlipPad that’s is all a big waste of time and effort because FlipPad lets you adjust the timing in real-time, while the scene continues to loop so you can see your changes instantly.

Only FlipPad lets you insert or delete frames while the scene is playing so you don’t have to wait to the difference. Disney’s “The Illusion of Life”, say animators learn timing through trial and error. FlipPad let’s you try more options faster and makes your errors disappear sooner.

Spacing controls where drawings appear on the screen. It’s is the movement from one drawing to the next. Too much movement and the action is too fast. Not enough movement and it’s tool slow.

As we saw in the video at the top of the page, the spacing between drawings controls how fast things move. The drawings near the extremes were close together so the movement was slow. But the drawings where the pendulum was swinging near the bottom were further apart. That made the pendulum move faster. Getting your spacing right depends on know where the previous and next drawings are.

FlipPad’s Automatic LightBox Makes Spacing Easier

Most apps let you see one or two previous drawings. That’s OK if you’re animating “straight ahead”, where you just draw one frame after another. But most animation is done “pose to pose” so you can make sure your character is in the right place at the right time. This is where FlipPad leaves the others in the dust. FlipPad’s lightbox does everything animators are used to.

Professional Animators Use An Animation Disc

Professional Animators use an animation disc with a lightbulb behind a translucent piece of glass that rotates so they can always find a comfortable drawing angle. The drawings are stacked on pegs that hold them in place. When they turn the light on they can see several drawings behind the one they are working on. It also lets them flip the drawings between their fingers to seethe in sequence so they can get a better feel for the movement.

Most Students Use a LightBox

Students often use a lightbox that works the same way but usually without the rotation. You put the drawings on the pegs in whatever order you want and turn the light on to see the lower drawings ghosted behind the one you’re working on.

FlipPad Does It All

When you open an image it automatically goes on top of the Lightbox and the image on the bottom automatically falls off. You can control how many images you want on the pegs and you can make the background show up all the time. In FlipPad a single tap lets you flip drawings.

Animating Straight Ahead

If you want to animate “straight ahead” (one frame after another) just open the next frame and you will see as many previous images ghosted behind the one you’re drawing. So you know exactly where to draw.

Animating Pose To Pose With Inbetweens

Most animation is done “pose to pose”, so you can make sure your character will be in the right place at the right time. When you draw the first key frame it stays on the Lightbox while you draw the last key frame. Then they both stay on the Lightbox while you draw the inbetween. So you always know exactly where to draw. And it doesn’t matter if the key frames are 100 frames apart. No other app does that. You can even see images from other layers too, so you can see everything you want to help you know exactly where to draw.

FlipPad’s Timeline Helps You See What’s Going On

FlipPad’s timeline is a traditional xsheet. But our sheet comes with thumbnail images to make it even easier to see what’s going on in the scene. Other apps with this feature cost 10 times more. The xsheet is vertical because that’s the way the pros, studios and schools all want it. So every row is a frame and every column is a layer. Images are automatically held until you replace them with another image or stop the hold.

Improved Drawing With Smoother Lines

When you zoom in on the lines it becomes painfully obvious how much better the line quality is in FlipPad. Better anti-aliasing in FlipPad makes the lines look smoother and the fact that we store the lines in their own layer above the paint makes them composite better onto the paint and the background. FlipPad also edits the lines with separate tools so you can erase the lines without touching the paint.

Unique Painting Features Make Painting Faster & Easier

FlipPad stores the paint in its own layer below the ink lines for better compositing and for more powerful painting tools. FlipPad lets you drag the. paint bucket like a brush to paint adjacent areas with a single swipe. It also lets you paint. all the enclosed areas in the whole frame with a single click and hold. And to go even further you can paint every enclosed area in the entire layer with a single. command. And of course you can erase the paint with a single click and without touching the lines. No. other app gives you this level of speed, ease of use and control.

See How Easy FlipPad Is To Use

The next iPad version will also run on your Mac

Available for Beta testing.

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