Jasc Animation Shop Tutorial

Open up Jasc Animation Shop (or the Corel version, if this is the one you have). Select File-> New. Make the new document 800 x 800, and select “opaque” and make the color white. (Click on the color swatch to change this.)

Your “New animation” option screen should look like this before we create the file:

Say “Okay,” and you get a screen that looks like this:

Using your mouse wheel, you can zoom this view in and out. Here, I’ve zoomed out:

I prefer to work with small frames in Animation Shop, for it allows you to see more of your animation. You’ll see what I mean as we add frames to this file.

Go to Animation-> Insert frame-> From file. You should get a window that looks like this:

Click “Add File” in this new option window. Browse to spider1.png, select it by saying “open” and click “Okay.” (Remember, spider1.png was the first bitmap file we created using Inkscape.)

Our first spider drawing should be added into our Jasc file, and it should look like this:

Now, move the slider underneath our spider picture. You’ll note that underneath this first “frame” of our animation, the numbers say “F:1 D:10.” This means this is frame 1, and the duration, or time this animation frame will show on the screen is 10 one hundredths of a second (This is a very fast time!) We will be changing this “duration” number later on. Right now, focus on the F:1 number. This means we are on frame 1. Move the slider so this says F:2. Our screen should now look like this:

Insert spider2.png in the same way you inserted spider1.png.

This will look like this:

If you want to see both frames at once, select View-> Normal viewing. The screen will look like this: (Note, I zoomed it out a bit, using my mouse wheel.)

Put your cursor in F:3, or frame 3, and click on it to select it. Insert spider3.png.

Our animation will now look like this:

Keep adding frames until you’ve added all 15. Be sure to select the empty frame before you insert the new image, or you might end up getting frames out of order.

Once I’ve added the last one, my screen looks like this:

Now, here’s the fun part. See the slider along the bottom of the animation frames? You can move your file back and forth, and if you’ve got all your frames inserted in the proper order, you should get an idea of how your animation will look. The faster your slide your frames across the screen, the more “animated” it looks. Try it and see!

Now, let’s see how it looks for real. Go to View-> Animation. A new window should open up, and your animation should be “playing” in that window. It will look like this:

One thing I notice right away with this animation, is that the time that each frame is on the screen—which is 10 one hundredths of a second—is too short for my tastes. I want to change this and make the frame duration longer. Here is what I do.

First of all, close out your running animation by clicking the X at the top of the animation box.

Then go to Edit->Select all. After that, go to Animation-> Frame properties. This is the window that should come up:

Here is where I change my duration time. Change the 10 in this box to 20, and then select View-> Animation again. Is this better? Yes, it is. But I still want a longer time. I settle on setting this value to 30.

Remember, every time you want to change the animation frame duration for ALL the frames, you must go to Edit-> Select all before changing the animation frame properties.

Now that we have a simple animation, let’s save it so we can see how it looks using a video player on our computer. Go to File-> Save as-> and chose a file type. I chose .avi format for Windows, for I know this format is one that will easily play on other people’s computers.

A series of screens will come up, asking you questions. Click through these by selecting next without changing anything. We are not going to worry about compression right now, although this is something you might need to know about later on, if you make longer videos. Uncompressed .avi files can be very large. We only have 15 frames here, so even uncompressed, it wouldn’t be that large. The next video you make might be larger, and so you might need to compress it to save space. Compressing the file can change the quality of your output file. This file, with only 15 frames uncompressed, is 87.7 megabytes, which is big.

Try saving this file as an animated .gif. Let Jasc choose the options for you on saving this file, that is, use the default settings. Animated .gifs can be viewed on a webpage, or you can open the file and play it using Windows Media Player. (You may have to select “Open with” and then choose Windows Media Player manually to do this.)

I am saving my animation in both file types, and I have my reasons. One--.avi files can be easily edited, cut, modified, etc, by a variety of other movie programs. Animated .gifs work well for placing on the web, and since I’m going to put this animation on a web-based tutorial (where you are reading it even now) I want to also have a copy in this format.

I named my video “spider1.avi.” Name yours something similar, and once Jasc has saved it, find this file on your computer. Double click it and see if it plays. Does it look like the animation you viewed in Jasc? It should!

My animated .gif file is spider1.gif.

Before we move onto to making this spider video even more cool, we are going to save this as a Jasc animation file so can edit it in Jasc Animation Shop later, if we so desire. Choose File-> Save as-> and choose file format “Animation Shop animation.” This is a .mng file format.

Now, to proceed with the tutorial, either click the back button on your browser, or close the brower window if a new window opened up.

Content created by Annette Griessman, and may not be used without permission.

Email: agriessman@insightbb.com

Last modified on November 9, 2007.