Animate
Layers
Click a layer to select it and drag to move it; drag the corner square to scale it and the round handle to turn it. With the stage focused: arrow keys move the selection (Shift for ten), the square brackets select the layer below or above, K keys it, Delete removes it.
Properties
About
Animate is a keyframe studio for motion graphics. Put shapes, text, paths and Fresh slop on the stage, set keys on a timeline, and lay a song underneath: its beats show as a grid, and keys snap to them. Projects stay in this browser; download one to keep it or move it.
Keys
- Space
- Play or pause
- K
- Key the selected layer here
- , .
- A frame back or on (Shift: a beat)
- [ ]
- Select the layer below or above
- Ctrl Z, Ctrl Shift Z
- Undo, redo
- On a key
- Arrows move it a frame (Shift: a beat), Delete removes it
Music
Songs come from Lamewire (machine-made, every one labelled with its machine) or the house’s songs written as notes. A Lamewire song’s tempo is detected, one tempo for the whole song, so a song that changes speed drifts off the grid. Nothing plays until you press Play.
Dancers
A dancer is a rig that moves on the song’s beats. Four of them are the recording acts themselves, each the club’s own drawing pinned to bones: Odd Glove, the Urn, the Sluice Hands and Step Fourteen. The three people are nobody in particular, the crowd. Watch them dance.
The site’s icon is the flip book on the Slopwright’s bench, the oldest moving picture in the workshop.
Exports
Video records the timeline once, in real time, with the song. A sprite sheet is a grid of frames. Send to Slopbox shrinks up to eight frames into the Slopbox’s house palette and opens them as a small cartridge in its game builder, ready to copy into your own. The project file’s format is written down.