Moving drawing in other frame effects previous frame

Forgive me for my helplessness. I’m new to animation software and am only fair at graphics software as a whole. The scenario is that I’ve imported a simple stick figure in Frame 1. I then select it, Copy (Ctrl-C), and Paste it in Frame 2. Then in Frame 2 I shift the image to allow it to appear to move to the right a little bit. When I look back at Frame 1, that original image has also shifted there, and if it doesn’t stay put, well, then no animation can occur. Again, I’m very sorry for my ignorance, and I’m assuming that I’m making a beginner’s mistake. I’m using Xubuntu 14.04 Linux.

Before copying the stickman. First add a keyframe at frame 2. This should either make the stickman invisible or translucent if you have onion skin enabled. Then copy the stickman from frame 1, paste it on frame 2, move the stickman. And that should do the trick. I think the step you missed was to add a keyframe first and then copy-paste. See if this does the trick.

 

@andesheng You don’t have to worry! No one was born knowing everything! Alright I’ll outline the steps I think you have done so please try following afterwards:

  1. Create stickman in frame 1
  2. Go to frame 2 with the red playback pointer by clicking with your mouse or by using comma (,) or period (.) / sometimes the arrow keys work too.
  3. Create a new keyframe using the (+) icon on the timeline above the frame numbers
  4. Go back to frame 1
  5. Pick “Select tool” (dotted marquee / rectangle icon)
  6. Draw a marquee that covers your whole stickman in frame 1
  7. Press Ctrl + C —(Note: if you’re using version 0.5.4b, never press Ctrl+X or you’ll lose your drawing)
  8. Go to frame 2 again and press Ctrl + V

---- Up to here I assume you’ve roughly done the same steps, now read the following ones carefully----

  1. select the Move tool (black arrow icon; shortcut: ‘Q’)

  2. Click & Drag the Marquee that surrounds your stickman to a new position.

The drawing translation won’t update in real-time, but once you RELEASE the mouse button it will move to the new position.

  1. With either the Move Tool (Q) or the Select tool (V) CLICK OUTSIDE THE DOTTED BOX. The box will disappear basically confirming to the software that you actually moved the drawing.

If you don’t do this, once you go back to frame 1 any pixel / drawing inside the area of the marquee will move to the new position, since the tool is still active.

  1. Once you’ve done this, Congratulations your stickman has moved from one place to the next! :slight_smile:

Hope this helps and if you have any other question please don’t hesitate to ask. Also follow Sumit’s advice on using the onion skin for an accurate way to place your new drawings in reference to previous ones.

@morr The 11th point you mentioned made one of my confusions clearer as well. Thank you

3 posts were split to a new topic: How to make onion skins be more transparent