???I am making a fishing cartoon–I have a pole with string that’s set for 40 frames. about midway I want to make just the string move around–how can I draw a new version of the pole with the string moved and insert it into a couple of frames–I think my question is really about how to use the Cell Tab in the properties pallet.
I’ve only recently noticed, let alone taken advantag of that panel. You can use it to fine tune lip-synch or work out different hand/body part poses on a rigged character, for example, allowing a greater range of animation within pegs.
Sounds like your is simpler. I find it works best if I’m in the timeline/camera view. You can draw out the frames ahead of time or as needed, but then you have them forever to come back to.
http://www.cartoonthunder.com/various/cellProperties.gif
If you’re in the middle of the timeline where you have a lot of frames of the same drawing, it’s easy to think you have to insert a blank frame, but you don’t! Just drag the slider in Cell Properties all the way to the left and you’ve got a blank cell to draw in. Naturally you could copy a drawing from another frame and then edit it to suit that frame.
Hope that helps! I think this is one of the coolest features in TBS, but I’d have a hard time picking…
Here is an easy way to understand the cell tab and picking cells from the property panel. Start by thinking of an element as a deck or stack of cells. Now some or all of the cells in this stack can be assigned to one or more frame positions in the sequences of frames represented by a column on your exposure sheet. But you can also have cells in your deck of cells that are unassigned or which you want to reuse by assigning them to additional frame positions. The slider control on the cell tab of the property panel is just a selector that you move to flip through this deck of cells and when you find the cell you want you just stop and that cell is automatically assigned to the frame position you are at. That’s all there is to it. It is just a look for and select tool for picking a cell out of a deck of cells.
Now this is really a powerful thing if you prebuild decks of cells like mouth or eye positions and want to scrub through that deck of cells to select the right expression or mouth etc. Just remember that every cell you put into an element stays in that element and is available for reuse even if you delete it or replace it with another cell for a particular frame position.
Conceptually an element can be viewed as a sequentually ordered set of cell to frame assignments (the exposure sheet view) and/or as a deck or stack of reusable cells. -JK
right as I was about to invite you over for some Texas Hold 'em, you start talking about stacking the deck…
;D