Using a similar term for different things. Please, no.

Retired Products Animate Feature Requests
1

I really enjoyed the tutorials and learned a lot from them, so thank you again for making them. One thing that is extremely confusing though is the use of similar terms for different things, such as “Onion Skinning” and the term “Onion” for the bulbous shape of the modules group in the Network view. Or “Layer” to mean a layer of art in the timeline and “Line Art Layer & Colour Art Layer” for the different layers inside each drawing. I remember the term “Master” being used for 2 separate things, one of them having to do with the rabbit. That kind of thing is confusing to someone trying to learn hundreds of new terms, menu tools and ways of working.

I wish the “Key” Drawings were called Extremes instead. For one thing, that’s what they’re called in pose-to-pose animation, with “keys” being the director’s storytelling drawings, and more importantly there’s already something else, unrelated to that, in the timeline called "keyframes."

I also wish that the K & B drawings were indicated in the timeline and not just in the X-view. That might even eliminate some of the confusion, if the “keyframes” were shown as dots and the frames containing key/extreme drawings had a different color, symbol or something.

Thanks for listening.

2

I’m really glad to hear that you’re looking to implement that. And I think a glossary would be extremely helpful too.
Thank you!

3

Thanks for the feedback!

I know it’s hard to come to understand the terms. We are a hybrid software in the sense that we make use of both traditional techniques, as well as digital, flash-style techniques. For that reason, we use the terminology for both traditional and for flash-style. That’s why you’ll reference to Key drawings (which is also a traditional term) as well as Keyframes (a flash term).

I can’t think of any way to make it easier in the learning process, but perhaps we could include some kind of glossary to help.

Regarding the K, B, and I in the Timeline, I totally agree with you here. We’ve been discussing this many times in the office, and we do want to implement something here, it’s just a question of exactly what we can do and when we can do it. So don’t worry, we’re on it!

~Lilly