Timelines & animation

BitMappery also supports so-called Timeline mode, where layers are grouped into tiles, which are analogous to frames in an animation. Using Timelines you can either draw freeform animations (which you can export to an animated GIF) or assemble a spritesheet for your pixel art characters.

Creating an animation

Preparation

In the document creation window, you should select the "Timeline" type. After selection of the type, you can optionally choose one of the available presets to help you on your way:

  • Pixel art formats - perfect for creating tile based sprite sheets in various sizes (16x16, 32x32, 64x64)
  • Small / medium / large formats - aimed at creating animated GIFs to be distributed online

Note: it is recommended to choose a background color for your document (in case you don't need transparency in your timeline).

The background colour is fixed and does not appear as layer content. This approach allows reusing a single backdrop without needing to copy/draw the same bottom layer in each tile.

New document window
Timeline editor

The spritesheet provided is 16x16 Dragon by Chasersgaming.

Tile and layer management

Below the canvas you will see your timeline, which is the list of tiles (or frames) your animation contains. The currently selected tile is visualised in the main window, with its layers visible on the right. Only layers belonging to the current tile are shown.

You can create a new tile by clicking the "Add"-button on the lower right of the panel. Alternatively, you can right click an existing tile to clone (or delete) its contents.

Drawing operations and keyboard shortcuts are the same as in the default document editing mode, with one notable exception...

Carbon copy

Whenever you create a new tile, you can opt to activate "Carbon copy" (in the View menu) in order to show a semi-transparent overlay of the previous tiles contents. This is convenient if you wish to trace parts of the previous image.

In the next example you can see this in action: Observe tile 3 is selected (where the character mysteriously gains a hat) and its contents are visible in pure black lines. The less opaque outline displays the contents of the previous tile (see the second tile in the timeline window).

By using the carbon copy you can more easily create subtle changes between tiles, which should help you get rid of those wibbly-wobbly jumps where positions and sizes of parts of your image keep jumping in between frames.

Carbon copy drawing
Animation preview window

Previewing and tweaking

When you are ready to preview your animation, you simply click the "Play" button on the top right of the timeline panel. A popup window showing a scaled version of your animation is displayed.

You can adjust the speed by using the "Frame rate"-slider at the bottom of the window. Speed is expressed in frames per second.

The slider* allows to select speeds from 1 to 60 frames per second. The selected speed is automatically saved into your document (and will be preserved when exporting your window to animated GIF).

*You can double click sliders to change these into input fields in case you prefer manual numeric entry.