page 34--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING later in the Tutorial section. (We'll also look at the fascinating Color f/x menu.) Before proceeding, turn Cycle off by clicking on it again, or by selecting another color from the Color menu. While you're at it, make sure that Distinct and Filled are active in the Modes menu. USING TEXT Now that we're finished with our drawing features, it's time to play with ZOETROE's text features. These enable you to label yor artwork or provide spinning titles for your animated spectaculars. Clear the screen, and select a color from the Color menu in which you want your text to appear, then select Text in the Draw menu. On the full screen, the cursor should become an 'L' shape. Move the cursor to a position on screen at which you want your text to start, then left-click to set the start oint. The cursor chnges to an outlined box indicating the size of your text. Okay, type in a word or two. You can use [Backspace] to erase errors, and the [Return] key will drop you to the beginning of the next line. Right-click to return to the workscreen and the 'L' cursor. Now, you may reposition the cursor, left-click and add more text, or right-click to return to the main menu. NOTE: While in Text mode, none of the ZOETROPE keyboard alternatives will be operative. You can easily select a different font. From the Menu drop-down, select Set Font. The Font submenu will appear featuring whichever fonts have been assigned to the Amiga system. Click on any of the fonts listed in the font window and its example will be displayed to the right. The slider bar to the left of the window will scoll through the list of fonts if there are more than the window can display. page 35--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING Font sizes are indicated by the number to the right of their title. If you want a big font, slect one with a large number. You may further affect the font by clicking on Underline, Bold, and Italic, in any combination. NOTE: ZOETROPE can access any standard, properly installed, Amiga fonts. Usually the fonts will be found in a directory labeled "fonts" on your boot disk. Your ZOETROPE disk contains a few extra-large, public domain fonts for special titling effects. From the CLI, you can install fonts from another directoyr by placing the disk containing that directory in one of your drives, and typing: ASSIGN FONTS: df1:myfonts The above assumes that your fonts are in a directory labeled 'myfonts' within a disk which has been placed in drive df1. You may also change fonts by placing a disk containing fonts, which has also been labeled FONTS, in any drive, then clicking on Relist in the Set Font menu. Try some of the fonts with different colors and styles. If you want to return to the standard default font, select topaz 8 before exiting the Set Font menu. THE CLIP MENU The Clip menu contains some of ZOETROPE's most important features, letting you grab all or part of your workscreen and move it about, or distort it in various ways. ZOETROPE contains a special area of memory called the clip buffer. When a portion (or all) of the screen is cut or clipped into the clip page 36--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING buffer, it remains there for future use, until another image is cut or clipped into it. Only one image may be in the clip buffer at any time. ZOETROPE functions such as Clear Pic have no effect on the contents of clip buffer. The first item in the Clip menu is Cut. But, before we use it, we need something on our workscreen to cut out. If you still have your text on screen, you can use that. Otherwise, draw some more multi-colored scribbles. Decide upon a small area of the screen you want to Cut out, then select Cut from the Clip menu. Crosshairs will appear, along with X and Y coordinate readouts in the uper left of your screen. (The X coordinate represents the cursor position horizontaly, the Y represents the cursor position vertically, based on a coordinate system where 0,0 is the position of the cursor in the upper-left corner of the screen. You can see this byi moving the crosshairs to the upper-left of the screen. See the Reference Section for a detailed description of the ZOETROPE coordinate system.) To cut out your image, place the intersection of the crosshairs at any corner of an imaginary box around the screen area you wish to capture. Now, while holding down your left mouse buton, move the crosshairs diagonally over the image. A box will form, and the coordinate numbers will change. While still holding down the left mouse button, examine the coordinates. The first two numbers are the X and Y coordinates of the point set when you first clicked the mouse, the second two numbers are the size of the box (in pixels) along the X and Y axes, and the third pair of numbers show the current position of the mouse. Move the mouse until the box completely encloses the image you wish placed in the lcip buffer (for purposes of later demonstration, select a portion of the screen that also contains some background color), then release the mouse button. The box disappears nad the screen seems unchanged, but a copy of your clipped image has been stored in the clip buffer for later manipulation. To demonstrate that your clipped image does indeed exist, let's look at Move. Move allows you to move your clip buffer image and position it anywhere on your workscreen, without pasting it to the workscreen. Select Move from the Clip menu, and the clip box outline will reappear. (Actually, the clipped image has also reappeared, but you page 37--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING can't tell that because it's sitting directly over the original image.) Point the mouse anywhere in the vicinity of the clip box, hold down the left mouse button drag the image. You can drag the clip box, containing a duplicate of your cut image, anywhere on your screen. The numeric coordinates display the X and Y position coordinates of the upper-left corner of your clip box, followed by the X and Y delta coordinates (the amount of movement from the starting position). Release the mouse button to deposit your image in its new location. Once again, the box and the image will disappear, leaving you with your original, unchanged screen. Now that we've moved the clip buffer, we can really see the effect of the Move command. SelectMove again and, this time, the clip buffer image appears in its new place - and it's obvious that not only the box, but the image itself has appeared. Try dragging the box to a new location, but this time, click far outside the box before starting the drag operation. In ZOETROPE, you don't need to be inside the clip box to drag it. This makes it easiy to position a clipped image partway off the screen. Notice that, as you move your image about, the portions of the cliped image that contain black (or whatever the background color sis) remain transparant, and the colors on the main screen show through. This is because we are currently in X-Ray Copy mode. Release the mouse button, then go on over to the Modes Menu and turn off X-Ray Copy mode by clicking on it. Select Move again, and move your image about the screen. This time, the entire block is opaque. X-Ray Copy affects the transparancy of the background color (colorregister #0) in all clip buffer operations. Return ot X-Ray Copy and turn it back on again so that the asterisk is beside it. Move onliy repositions the clip buffer. It does not paste the box down permanently. For that, we need to go to Paste. Paste operates exactly the same as Move except that the image is pasted (or drawn) to the workscreen after you release it. Let's try it: Select Paste from the Clip menu. Our clip buffer box appears along with our image. Drag the image to some place on the screen, then release the mouse button - a copy of the image is pasted to the screen. Try it again, moving it and pasting it to another location. Now, press [Help]. The image disappears. Try this: Select Move and move the image to a precise location that you want it. (Don't worry page 38--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING about being too precise.) Now, select Paste, but, this time, without dragging the image, press the right mouse button- a copy of the image is pasted right where it was. Thus, we can use Paste to first drag, then stamp the image in a new location, or simply to bring the moved image into view before pasting to the existing location. You canprobabliy guess what Paste Below does. Go ahead and select it. The clip image appears, as before, on top of the others. However, when you drag it elsewhere and relase it, the image is pasted beneath those on screen. Now, let's take a look at a variation of Cut - the Clip option. Whereas Cut allowed you to cut out any portion of the workscreen at any location, Clip is a form of automatic Cut that encompasses and places in the clip buffer every part of your workscreen that is not part of the background color. Thus, if you have a tiny squiggle in the clip buffer, if you've painted a scene that covers your entire screen, Clip will cut out and store the whole screen. We'll demonstrate it in several steps. Clear your screen, select a nice, bright color, then select the fat, round brush from the Brush menu. Chose Draw from the Draw menu, return to the workscreen, then click once to place a single, brush-shaped dot toward the center-top of the screen. Now, we could select Clip from the Clip buffer, but the menu might obscure the effect, so let's use the keyboard alternative of Clip - the [Tab] key. While close watching the single dot, press [Tab]. For just an instant, a white clip box surrounds only the colored dot before disappearing. Theeasiest way to check if it's there is with Move. Select Move, and move the clipped dot around the screen. Yup, it's there. Okay, release the clipped dot, then draw another dot several inches below the first one. Press[Tab], and, this time the clip box outline is just large enough to take in both dots. Let's try a third dot - place this one to the left or right of the first two, as the third corner of a large triangle. Press [Tab] again. This time, the clip box is large neough for all three. page 39--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING Erase the screen and try Clip with various combinations and sizes of images. You'll find it a very handy function. There are a few more things we can do with our clipped images, besides just moving and pasting them about the screen. Erase the screen, then using the same round brush and bright color, draw a number '4' - about 1-1/2 inches high - in the center of the screen. Now, press [Tab] to place the '4' in the clip buffer. We can rotate our clipped buffers any number of degrees about any of the ethree X, Y, and Z axes. The X axis runs horizontally through an image, the Y axis runs vertically, and the Z axis runs from front to back - it's the depth axis. To put it graphically, a pig rotating on a spit rotates about the X axis; a revolving gas-station sign rotates about the Y axis, and the hands rotating about a clock face rotate about the Z axis. So, let's put this to practice: Erase the screen (we've already captured our clip images). Select Rotate from the Clip menu nad our clipped '4' appears on the screen within its clip box. Place the mouse cursor just outside the lower-right corner of the box, hold down the left mouse button, and move the mouse around the box in either direction. Notice that our '4' rotates about the Z axis, and the degrees of rotation are displayed on our screen. Rotate clockwise, and the degrees run from 360 toward zero; counter-clockwise runs from zero to 360. Release the mouse button, and the rotated image stays where it is, with the clip box still around it. We have only rotated the image, we have not yet pasted it to the screen. Move the mouse to just outside the right side of the clip box, hold down the left mouse button,and move the mouse around the box. Notice two things: First, as soon as you pressed the left mouse button, the image returned to its original orientation. And, second, the rotation is now around the Y axis. Release the mouse button, and repeat the above procedure by clicking just outside the bottom side of the box - this time the rotation is about the X axis. Rotate the '4' to some positoin you like, release the button, then click the right mouse button to exit Rotate mode. The clip box vanishes, page 40--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING and the rotated '4' is pasted to the screen. You could press [Help] at this point to remove it, but don't.) An important concept to understand is that only the pasted image has been rotated, the clip-buffer remains in its original state. To prove this, select Rotate again from the Clip buffer and - there it is. Whenever the clip box appears on the screen, we can drag it elsewhere. Since it's now over our previous rotation, let's move it aside by placing the mouse inside the clip box, and dragging the '4' to one side. We're still in Rotate mode, so we can rotate our image as we did above. You may have noticed above that the rotational axes depend on where we set our cursor outside of the clip box - Z was at the corner, and X and Y were at the bottom and side. Actually, anywhere outside the corners will rotate about the Z axis; the sides will rotate about the Y axis; and the top and bottom will rotate about the X axis. Also, the positions we chose, above, perform rotations in 1-degree increments, whereas the other locations perform rotations in various increments such as 45 and 30 degrees. (For a detailed illustration of the various rotations, see Rotate in the Reference Section.) Move the clipped image to varirous parts of the screen, and experiment with various rotation. (You may also drag a partially rotated image elsewhere, then continue the rotation.) At any time, feel free to clear the screen so you can see your rotations better. When you're ready, we'll look at Stretch. Stretch works, generally, like Rotate, except that it performs a stretch (or shrink) operation on the contents of the clip buffer. Just like Rotate, the actual contents of the buffer are not altered, only the pasted image. Also like Rotate, when the clip box appears in Stretch mode, you may first drag the image anywhere by clicking and dragging inside the box; clicking and dragging outside the box performs the various Stretch operations. Unlike Rotate, the Stretch operations are performed along only the X and/or Y axes, and the Stretch operations are cumulative - as we shall see. Clear the screen, and we'll use the same '4' as we did with Rotate. (If you've lost it, just make another.) Select Stretch from the Clip menu and the '4' appears in the clip box. Place the sursor outside the bottom side of hte box, press the left mouse button, and drg the mouse either up or down - the '4' stretches and shrinks along the Y axis. The numbers in the upper-left portin of hte screen represent, from left to page 41--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING right: the size (in pixels) of the X and Y axes of the stretched image, followed by the percentage of the stretched axes (X then Y) compared to their original size. Thus, if the original Y axis is 120 pixels, and it has not yet been stretched, it will be 100 percent of its original size; it if has been shrunk to 60 pixels, it will be 50 percent of its original size. While still holding the left button, stretch the '4' until it's a little larger than the original image. Now, relese the mouse button, move the cursor to outside of the right side of the box and drag to the right. This is what we meant by 'cumulative'. Unlike Rotate, when we select a different part of the box to scale, Stretch maintains the shape as previously altered. Okay, click the right mouse button to paste the new image to the screen. Select Stretch again, and drag the clipped image to a clear spot on the screen. Now, place the mouse near the outside of the lower-left corner and drag that corner in, out, up and down - the image is stretched along both the X and Y axes in either direction. Try the lower-right corner - the image maintains its original aspect ratio while being stretched along both axes simultaneously. Stretching from different corners and sides affects not only the axes, but the increment of stretching. (For a detailed illustration of the various Stretch modes, see Stretch in the Reference Section.) Play around with Stretch for awhile. When you're ready, clear the screen, and we'll look at Invert. Invert is fairly simple - it 'flips' the image in your cut buffer about the X and/or Y axes. Like Rotate and Stretch, you may drag the clip box to any place on the screen before, or after an Invert operation. Unlike Rotate and Stretch, the flipped image in the clip buffer remains in its inverted position. Select Invert and your '4' will appear within the clip box. The Invert operation follows a simple rule: the side of the image away from the mouse cursor will be flipped toward the side closest to the mouse cursor. Thus, to flip the '4' upside down (around the X axis), place the cursor outside either the bottom or top of the clip box, and left-click. To flip it about the Y axis, place the cursor outside either the right or left side and left-click. You may flip the image about both axes simultaneously by simply clicking outside one of the corners. Thus, if you click outside the page 42--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING lower-left corner, the upper-right corner will be flipped to the lower-left, and vice versa. Note that any click operation is essentially a toggle - a second click from the same position will undo the previous flip. Now that you have flipped '4', click the right mouse button to paste it to the screen. Now, select move, drag the image away, and examine it - it's still in its inverted state. Mask changes all colors in the clip buffer (except the background color) to the currently selected drawing color. This is useful for cast-shadow effects, and to create complex masking objects from existing shapes. It's easy to demonstrate. Clear the screen, keep the round brush and, using Draw, draw a diagonal line about 2-inches long in the center of the screen. Now, select a different color, and create an 'X' by drawing a diagonal line in the opposite direction across the first. We now have a two-color image. Press [Tab] to clip the image, then use Move to drag it over to the side of the original. Select a third, distinct color from the Color menu, then select Mask from the Clip menu. For an instant, the clip box appears, and you can see the image changing color. Select Move,and take a look at the image. The two-colored 'X' is now one single color - the current drawing color. For an interesting shadow effect, mask the clip image with a dark color and paste it to the screen. Then select Cut and cut out only the original two-color 'X'. Now, select Paste, drag the two-colored 'X' over, but slightly offset of the single-colored 'shadow', and relase the mouse to paste the new image. You can now Cut the combined images and paste them anywhere you wish. Oh yes! Almost forgot to show Use Clip from the Brush menu. Have you still got that two-color, shadowed 'X' in the clip buffer? If not, scribble some multicolored image, then Cut it into the clip buffer. Now, select Streak from the Draw menu, and activate Use Clip in the Brush menu. Return to the main screen, and draw some streaky lines - your brush is now the entire clip buffer. Use Clip will work with Streak, Stiple, and Airbrush. For a wild effect, try Airbrush at high Speed and Spread with a large clip buffer. page 43--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING At any time, you may cut a new section of the screen into the clip buffer, and begin drawing again. You can deselect Use Clip by clicking on it again, or by selecting any of the other brush shapes in the Brush menu. THE FRAME MENU We will now examine some miscellaneous, but nonetheless important items in ZOETROPE that pertain to its painting capabilities. These will enable you to alter your artwork in various ways, although they are also closely tied in with ZOETROPE's animation features, which we'll be addressing in the next tutorial. Take a look at the Frame menu. Plenty of items there. We've already covered Undo, and we've described Restore as it's used in the Ppalette menu. There's another use for it which we'll discuss when we talk about ZOETROPE's animation capabilities. So let's move on the Separate. Separate is a global color change that replaces every occurance of a specific color on your screen with the currently selected drawing color. It's a fast way to knock out complicated images (by replacing parts of them with black) or to radically change the color of an image without having to alter your Palette. Let's test it. First, let's set up a colorful screen. Select the biggest brush shape, activate Cycle, turn on the Airbrush and spatter the screen with color. page 44--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING Now, pick a color from the color menu that you want another color on screen changed to (say, red). Select Separate from the Frame menu, place the mouse cursor over the screen color you wish changed (say, puce). Left-click, and wherever that color exists on screen, it will be changed to the current color. Separate Many works a little differently. First, bring up the Palette menu, and adjust the Color Range Bar to cover some five or six colors you want to change. Now, select a drawing color you want them changed to. Exit the Palette menu, select Separate Many, and all the colors within the Color Range Bar will be changed to the drawing color. (Notice that the keyboard alternative for Separate is the dash, or hyphen, while the alternative for Separate Many is the underscore.) Now, don't erase your workscreen! We're going to save it to disk, because we'll need it lter when we talk about ZOETROPE's animation abilities. Yes, we're finally here - we're going to do our own computerized cartoons. NOTE: If you already erased your screen, don't fret. Just make up another abstract screen with a lot of colors. THE LOAD/SAVE MENU Okay, it's time to save your masterpiece on a disk. Don't worry if it's not an electronic recreation of the Mona Lisa; whatever you've drawn, even if it's a screen full of multicolored scribbles, will be fine for or purposes. Place a blank, formatted disk in whichever drive you wish to use as a data drive. If yo have a single-disk system, replace your ZEOTROPE disk with the blank disk. NOTE: Once ZOETROPE is booted, its disk no longer needs to remain in the drive. page 45--------------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL II: DRAWING Now, select Load/Save from the Menu drop-down. The Load/Save menu is filled with a variety of functions, only a few of which we're concerned with at the moment. For now, Load/Save allows you to load and/or save your work to disk in various file formats, indicated by their particular file extender names. We'll be saving a single, static (non-animated) picture, so the file format we're interested is .ic, a standard, low-resolution IFF file. Click in the .pic box to select that file format, then click on Save. A special ZOETROPE file selector appears. At its left are a list of files from the current disk (or drawer). If you have placed your blank disk in the same drive that contained the ZOETROPE disk, the file window will be empty. If you have placed your blank disk in an external drive, such as DF1, click on DF1: to switch the file path to that disk. (If you're using a hard disk, click on the proper partition.) We'll call our picture MONALISA. Click in the field to the right of File:. A square cursor will appear. Press [Esc] to erase any letters in the field, then type MONALISA, and either press [Return] or click on OK. You don't need to type in a file extender, because you already set that from the Load/Save menu. The disk drive runs, and your picture is saved to disk. Okay! You've completed the paint program portion of ZOETROPE. It's a good idea, at this point, to go back and play with all the various drawing options we've discussed until you're familiar with them. When you're ready, move on to the next tutorial. If you wish, you may exit ZOETROPE, and reboot at any time you wish to begin the next tutorial. page 46 IS BLANK page 47------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III - CELL ANIMATION Okay, you've learned how to draw with ZOETROPE, it's time you learned how to move your drawings. We're going to do a simle, flat (cel) animation sequence. But first, let's talk again about the Playback Bar at the bottom of the main menu screen. (Yes, we covered this in the first tutorial, but it's an important part of the ZOETROPE system, so we thought we'd hit it one more time in greater detail. If you feel secure with the Playback Bar, jump ahead to 'A Simple Animation', following this.) From left to right, the icons in the Playback Bar are: First Frame Click on this to move immediately to the first frame of your animation. Fast Reverse This fast-plays your animation sequence backwards. Reverse Play This plays your animation sequence backwards, using the speed set in the Time menu. page 48------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Create Frame/Previous This inserts a copy of the current workscreen in the current frame position, and pushes the remaining frames to the right. Thus, if you Create Frame/Previous while on frame #3, a copy of frame #3 is placed in position #3, and frame #3 (pls all subsequent frames) are shifted to the right. Move Frame Backward Each click on this moves you one frame backward in your animation sequence. You may hold down the mouse button to scroll backward. Frame Counter Bar The number in this box indicates which frame of your animation sequence you are currently working on. Clicking within the bar on either side of the number box will move you to a frame either before or after the one in the box. Left will move to a previous frame; right to a later frame. You can move thorugh your animation in real- time by dragging the Frame Counter Bar to the right or left. (There must be at least two frames for there to be a slider bar.) Move Frame Forward Each click on this moves you one frame forward in your animation sequence. You may hold down the mouse button to scroll forward. Create Frame/Next This inserts a copy of the current workscreen in the frame position after the current one and pushes the remaining frames to the right. Thus, if you Create Frame/Next while on frame #3, a copy of frame #3 is placed in position #4, and frame #4 (plus all subsequent frames) are shifted to the right. Forward Play This plays your animation sequence forward, at the speed set in the Time menu. Fast Forward This fast-plays your animation sequence forward. page 49------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Last Frame Click on this to move immediately to the last frame in your animation sequence. Total Frames This displays the total number of frames in your animation sequence. NOTE: If you left-click on this number (or press [Return], 10 frames will be added to the end of your animation sequence, all identical to your last frame. Frame Mode This displays a single letter indicating the current frame mode: To Frame (f), To Segment (s), or To All (a). Which frames are affected by certain ZOETROPE operations will depend on the frame mode setting. A SIMPLE ANIMATION Now that we've reviewed the Playback Bar, let's try it out. Click on the Create Frame/Next icon four times. With each click, you'll notice that the Frame Counter Bar shrinks as you subdivide the Counter strip into equal portions. Also, the number within the bar reflects the number of the current frames. Over on the right, the Total Frames box displays the total number of frames. Since you've added four frames, there should be a total of five frames in the Total Frames box. Want to try it again? Simple - select Kill Seq from the Menu drop- down, and reply 'Yes' to the requester. You've just erased all your frames, and you're back to one frame. Okay, use the Create Frame/Next icon to create five empty frames again. Now that you have a real Frame Counter Bar, you can drag the numbered box right and left to place yourself at the different parts of your animation. But since we havn't created anything yet, there's no noticeable change. Drag the number bar back to frame #1, and let's create something. Select a nice, bright color from the Color menu, and choose default brush #1 (the cross) from the Brush menu, and select Draw from the page 50------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Draw menu. Now, go to the center of your workscreen and draw the number 1, about an inch high or so. That's it - nothing fancy. Let's move on the the next frame. Click on the Move Frame Forward icon, just to the right of the Frame Slider Bar. This will bring you to frame #2. As yo click, you'll notice your screen going black. This isn't surprising, since you havn't drawn anything on this frame yet. Right-click to return to the workscreen, and draw a number 2. Let take a shortcut to frame #3. Instead of returning to the Playback Bar, clicking, then returning to the workscreen, simly press the right cursor arrow key. The screen will be black, and you'll be working on frame #3. Okay, draw a number 3. Use the same technique ot draw a number 4 on frame #4, and a number 5 on frame #5. Now we're ready to play our animation. Right-click to bring up the Playback Bar, then click on the Forward Play icon. You'llnotice that you're now moving at speed through this animated sequence, flipping very quickly from the first frame to the last, then starting again on frame one. From tiny acorns grow mightly oaks; what you've just done is the foundation upon which you can create truly impressive, animated Amiga graphics. Right-click to stop your animation at any point. Now, try dragging the Frame Counter Bar back and forth for real-time control of your animation. Next, select Ping Pong from the Modes menu, then click again on Forward Play. Your number animation will now move back and forth. Is your animation moving a little too fast? Select Time from the Menu. The slider bar in the second row from the top controls the playback speed. The higher the number, the slower the playback. Drag the number to a higher value and try your animation again (you can play it directly from the Time menu). Ping Pong is useful for certain rhythmic movements. For example, if you have a dozen frames of a bird's wings flapping, moving down, then back up, Ping Pong would enable you to create a realistic movement in half the normal number of frames.) Turn off Ping Pong before proceeding. page 51------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Now, let's try a more advanced animation. But first, let's examine how we can delete our current animation sequence. We showed you Kill seq earlier, which deletes all frames from memory. But what if we want to delete a chosen few? Drag the Frame Counter so that frame #3 is displayed. Now, select Delete from the Frame menu. A requestor asks yo to confirm the deletion. Go ahead and answer 'Yes'. Frame #3 is deleted from the middle of the animation, and you now have a total of four frames containing the drawn numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We can also delete a segment, or range of frames. Select Time again from the Menu. From the Time menu, you may alter the overall playback speed of an animation sequence, and you may determine which portion of your animation is affected by various ZOETROPE functions - such as Delete. You'll notice the Playback bar duplicated on the top of the Time menu. Below it are boxes for More (which enables you to load in the remainder of an animation that, in its entirety, cannot fit into your Amiga's memory), the Animation Speed bar, Tween (which enables you to perform sequential movements on objects and paste them on some or all of your frames), and the To Frame, To Segment and To All boxes. On the bottom row is the Segment Range Bar, which allows yo to set the range of frames uon which ZOETROPE will perform certain functions. This bar is adjusted in exactly the same way as the Color Range Bar that we used reviously in the Palette menu. We only have four frames in our animation, but let's adjust the range to include only the middle frames #2, and # 3. Drag one range dot to the right until the number on the right of the bar reads [3], adjust the other end of the bar so the number to the left reads[2]. (You may also adjust these by clicking on the arrows to either side of the Range Bar). Notice, that if you reverse the direction of the bar, the numbers to the right and left will be reversed. page 52------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Above the bar, To Frame is highlighted, indicating that our oerations are being performed only on the single frame currently displayed. We want to delete our segment of frame #2 through frame #3, so click on To Segment. Now, right-click to exit the Time menu, and select Delete again from the Frame menu. This time, the requester asks if you want to delete frames #2 through #3. Click on 'Yes', return to the Playback Bar, and look at your frames. You onliy have two frames remaining, containing the drawn numbers 1 and 5. Take a closer look at the Playback Bar. At the extreme right, in the Frame Mode box is the letter 's' against a red background. This indicates we're in To Segment frame mode. Click once on the 's', and it becomes an 'a', for To All. This is a shortcut to selecting frame modes from the Time menu. Click again, and it returns to the familiar 'f', for To Frame. The red in the 's' and 'a' boxes is simly to remind yo that you are in a frame mode that will affect several frames, and cannot be undone. Set the frame mode To All (a), then select Clear Pic from the Frame Menu. A requester appears asking if you want to 'do it (clear) over all frames?' Left-click on Yes. ZOETROPE will move through all the frames in your animation and clear them out. Note the difference between using Delete to a range of frames, and Clear Pic to a range of frames. This time, we did not delete the frames - we still have two frames left - we simply cleared the images within the existing frames. Play around with what we've just looked at. Create some frames; draw on them; animate them; delete them individually, or by ranges; experiment with the different frames modes. BLUEING AND CHANGES Let's do another short, simple animation sequence - a winking face. Kill the animation you have in memory, put ZOETROPE in To Frame mode, and create five blank frames. Select the small round brush, ick a bright color from the Color menu, then go to frame #1 of your page 53------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION animation. In the center of yor workscreen, draw a face, similiar to the one shown in the figure below. (drawing of smiling face with round open eyes) Now from the Frame menu, select Next Blue. A copy of your frame #1 is placed in frame #2, then 'blued'. Blueing is a term taken from 'non-repro blue' used in offset printing. In ZOETROPE, we use it to line up - or register- our pervious frame images so we can alter them slightly to create animations. NOTE: The blueing color will always be whatever color is in color register #1. At default, this is dark blue, but will change with different alettes. If you're using a palette in which the blueing color does not show well, simle adjust color register #1 from the Palette menu to a more contrasting color. The Next Blue command has conveniently left uus in frame #2 to contine our cel animation. Trace over the face, as nearly as you can, but this time, alter one of the eyes to an oval shape - as though it's beginning to wink. page 54------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION (picture of smiling face with beginning of wink) Now, let's do a Next Blue again, but this time, use the keyboard alternative, so you don't have to exit the menu screen each time - press [/]. (All the blueing keyboard alternatives are in the keypad area to the right of your keyboard.) Next Blue not only copies and blues the previous drawing, it also relaces the blueing color in the previous frame with whatever was there before, leaving our new details intact. We'll see this when we go back to relay our animation. Now, repeat the procedure described above the for next three frames. Trace another face with more of a wink, press [/] for Next Blue, and repeat until you've reached frame five. (3 picture of smiling face completing the wink) page 55------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION When you reach the last frame(the eye should be completely closed; a mere line), Next Blue will simly remove the blueing color. Now lay your animation from the Playback Bar. (You may want to speed up the playback rate from the Time menu.) Voila! You've just created an even more interesting animation. A bit simple, again, but you're well on your way to mastering ZOETROPE's animation functions. Well, this is fine, you say, but my face is jiggling all over the screen! Not only the eye is animated, but the entire head as well. So, how do we animate only a portion of our sequence? Easy, let's make the same animation, but only animate the winking eye. First delete the entire animation sequence by selecting Kill Seq from the Menu dro-down. When you have only one frame, draw your face again, but this time, leave out the winking eye. So, okay, now we have a one-eyed face. Now, create four more frames by clicking on the create Frame/Next icon in the Playback Bar four times. Drag the Frame Counter Bar back and forth, and you'll see that all five frames contain identical, one-eyed faces. Okay, move back to frame #1, draw the first version of the winking eye where it belongs, then press [/] to Next Blue it. Because Next Blue only blues the changes that occur from the previous frame, only the winking eye is blued to the next frame. The rest is easy. Trace over the blued eye in frame #2, press [/] to move to frame #3, and so on until you've comleted your animation. When you play it back this time, only the eye is animated, while the rest of the drawing remains rock-steady. When you selected Next Blue, it automatically went through the following steps: Go to the next frame, copy the image to the next frame, blue the image, unblue the image in the previous frame. We can do these steps manually using the Blue Pic and Unblue Pic functions. First Kill all frames, then draw an image in frame #1. Next, click on Create Frame/Next to copy the image to frame #2. From frame #2, select Blue pic - the entire picture is blued. Trace a new picture in page 56------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION frame #2, then click on Create Frame/Next to copy it to frame #3. Go back to frame #2, and select Unblue ic to erase the blueing. And, so on. Obviously, Next blue is a lot easier, but there are times when you need the flexibility of using just one of the blueing tools. And there are a few more options in the Frame menu that help in creating cel animations. A standard method of animation is to first 'rough in' the extreme positions, then return and add the 'betweens', and then, must later, the colors. The History and Unhistory functions are designed for this. Kill any animation,create five blank frames, make sure the Color Range Bar covers all colors in the Palette menu, and activate Cycle in The Color menu. Select a large brush and draw a large multi-color number in each frame, labeling them from one to five. Deactivate Cycle. Now, move to frame #3 and click on Create Frame/Next [F7]. You are now on frame #4 (which dislays a duplicate number 3), the original number 3 is in frame #3 to the left, and the drawn number 4 (which was in frame #4 is now frame #5 to the right. Confused? Don't worry about it. Select Clear Pic to erase the duplicate drawn 3, then select History. Your frame now contains a blue silhouette of the previous frame's image, and a red silhouette of the next frame's image. If this were an animation, you could use these as references to draw your 'between'. Go ahead and draw a squiggle. Notice that no matter what color you were using before, you are now drawing with a bright green. Select Unhistory and all colors except the bright green are removed. Look at your color palette. Whenever History is selected, color registers #1-#7 are altered to provide the proper overlap shading. History and Unhistory are only effective when used for monochrome work - such as that used in initial animation. Later, you can restore your palettes and begin full coloring. You cannot entirely undo a History by pressing [Help]. Go ahead and try it; your images are restored, but not the palette. To completely undo a History, use the Restore function in the Frame menu. page 57------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Get Changes and Next Changes are similiar to Blue Pic and Next Blue - except that they deal with the changes drawn within the current frame, since arriving there. The concept of what is considered a change is important. As we said, changes are any drawing that is done to a frame since you arrived at that frame. Once you leave the frame, the changes are part of the permanent image. If, for example, you draw in frame #2 (using different drawing tools, brushes, colors - or clip buffer pastes), then you move to frame #3, and right back to frame #2. The very action of moving out and back into frame #2 makes the previous changes permanent. Only those changes made now that you're back in frame #2 will be considered 'changes'. To demonstrate the Get Changes and Next Changes fetures, first Kill all frames, then press create four empty frames. Return to frame #1 and, using the Box function in the Draw menu, draw a red box, about 2- inches square, in the center of the screen. We want this box to be permanent, and this is easily done: move over to frame #2, then back to frame #1. The box is now permanent. Now, we'll add some changes. Using the same color, select Circle from the Draw menu, place the cursor on one corner of the box (any corner) and create a circle that overlaps about halfway into the box. (Of course, yo can't see the part that's inside the box because it's the same color.) Next, select a different color (like yellow), a think brush, and Draw from the Draw menu. Draw a squiggly line across boh the box and the circle, and into the background. Okay, we're all set. We have a ermanent red box, plus two changes: the red circle and the yellow line. Now, select Get Changes. Nothing much seems to hapen, but what really occured was that all the changes were placed in the clip buffer. (Remember the clip buffer?) There are plenty of ways to view the cli buffer, but first, let's move to a blank screen so we can really see what's going on. Move to frame #2, select Paste from the Cli buffer, and paste it to frame #2 without moving it. Hmmm...the changes are there, but what's wrong with the red circle - there's a corner missing. The missing corner exactly matches the overlaping red box from frame #1. Flip back and forth between frames #1 and #2 to see the difference. The reason the corner is missing is because it is a part of the permanent image in frame #1, and, because the circle was the same color, there was no change of image in that area of the screen. The squiggle line was in a different color, so all of it was considered a change. page 58------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION Let's try Next Changes. As we said, it's a little like Next Blue. Move to frame #3, and draw another red box, just like the one in frame #1. Make the box ermanent by moving to frame #4, then back to frame #3. Now, create the same changes as we did before: the red, overlapping circle, and the yellow squiggly line. Now, select Next Changes. This time, ZOETROPE automatically moves to the next frame in the animation and pastes the changes to frame #4. (It does not, however, place the changes in the clip buffer. You can see this by selecting Move to see the resent contents of the clip buffer.) Now that you understand changes, we can demonstrate Restore. We've already demonstrated how it can be used in the Palette menu and with History. It can also be used as a more powerful version of Undo. If you'll remember, Undo only restores the last drawing function you did. Restore, on the other hand, restores all changes. (Actually, it erases all changes, restoring the original frame.) Try this: Yo've already got several frames with images on them. From any frame, select another color, then scribble something. Change colors, tools, and brushes, and draw all over the screen - bt don't leave the frame. Now, select Restore. Like magic, all yor changes are gone. It's imortant to note that Restore is not a toggle like [Help]. If yo select it a second time, you changes will not return. However, yo can press [Help] immediately after a Restore to get your changes back. If, however, you have already selected Restore a second time, [Help] will no longer restore your changes. There's only one more thing to cover in the Frame menu: Flip 5. This is a special playback mode designed specifically to assist cel animation design. Animators are constantlyi flipping through the pages of their flip books to get a feel of how the movement is progressing. When yo select Flip 5 (most easily done by pressing the [Enter] key on your keypad), ZOETROPE plays once through five frames - the two before, the current frame, and the two following - before returning to the current frame. You can easily see this by creating eight frames and numbering them. Now, move to frame #5 and press [Enter]. ZOETROPE plays frames #3 thorugh #7, then returns to frame #5. page 59------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION NOTE that Flip 5 affects none of the functions usually affected by leaving a frame, including Undo, Restore, and the various Blue nad Changes functions. COMPOSITING Let's take another look at the Load/Save menu. Kill the animation you now have in memory, then select Load/Save from the Menu drop-down to bring up the Load/Save menu. We saw how to save our MONALISA picture earlier, let's reload it. From the Load/Save menu, select .pic and click on Load. From the file selector, either double-click on the MONALISA file title in the file window, or click once on MONALISA, then click on OK. (Or, if you know the name of your file, you could enter it directly in the File: field.) Take a look at the picture on your screen. We're going to use it for further demonstration, but first, we need to make sure there are some areas in it that contain the background color (color #0; probably black). If there are, you can leave it the way it is. If not, select the largest brush you can find, and color #0 from the color menu (it's the one in the upper-left corner). Now, draw a couple of black smudges here and there on the screen. Got it? Okay, save MONALISA to disk again. MONALISA is a icture type of file. Let's take a look at an animation, or .rif, file. From the Load/Save menu click on .rif, then click on Load. Select the file called FISH.RIF. Just before the FISH.RIF file loads, the MONALISA picture is erased from memory. As FISH.RIF loads, each frame is displayed on the screen (FISH.RIF is a four-frame animation). Now that you have fish up there, animate it with the Playback Bar. Let's underlay our MONALISA icture to frame #3 of the FISH sequence. Move to frame #3. From the Load/Save menu, select .pic and Under, then click on Load. Select and load MONALISA.PIC from the file selector. Because you've chosen Under, the picture appears beneath the fish. Go back and take a look at the animation now. As you move through, you can see that your background only appears in frame #3, and it's behind the fish. You may notice that your background isn't exactly the same color as it was originally. That's because it was probably made page 60------------------------------ZOETROPE TUTORIAL III: CELL ANIMATION from a different color palette, and we're using the FISH.RIF color palette now. When using Normal to load a file, ZOETROPE changes to the color palette of the loaded file. When using Under or Over to load a file, ZOETROPE maintains the palette of the image(s) in memory, but automatically trys to match the palette of the loaded file - as best it can - to that in memory. This may or may not be very successful, depending on the differences between the two palettes. Let's try something else. Kill the animation, then load MONALISA again. (Remember to set the mode to Normal first.) Now, we want to load the fish as an overlya, using MONALISA as a background. But all we have is one frame. So, click onthe Total frames number to create ten duplicate Mona Lisa's. Okay, we have plenty of frames to fit our little, four-frame FISH. Where shall we overlay it? Adjust the Frame Counter to frame #4, click on .rif in the Load/Save menu, and select Over. Click on Load and select FISH.RIF. When the fish appears on your screen, it's surrounded by a box. ZOETROPE is waiting for you to position him on the screen. At this oint, you may simply right-click to continue the load at the given position, or you may drag the box elsewhere, and relase the mouse button to continue the load. A requester asks if you want to merge the file starting at frame #4; go ahead, answer Yes. Once the load is comlete, look through the animation - the fish swims over the backgrounds in frames #4 - #7. We can also underlay the fish. Move to frame #8, click on Under, and load the fish back in. He still apears in his box on top of the background, but this is only for positioning. Drag the fish to where at least part of hiim is over a black (or background) color on the screen. This time, the fish animation will be pasted on each frame beneath the background. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves. Kill the animation, then press [Return] a couple of times to create 21 bklank frames. What we want to do is load three versions of the FISH sequence end to end. If we did a Normal load of FISH.RIF right now, it would erase our 21 blank frames. (Remember, a Normal load erases and replaces anything in memory, even blank frames.) So, all we need to do is load FISH.RIF as either an overlay or underlay. (It doesn't matter, since we're loading it to blank frames.) So, go ahead, load FISH.RIF,