how to create an animation with free tools: Project Dogwaffle 1.2, and Virtual Dub

Happy Jumping Jack

Draw a short animation, then save it as image sequence and use VirtualDub to convert it to Animated Gif or AVI and more formats

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In this tutorial you'll be able to create an animation from scratch, drawing frame by frame. You'll use Project Dogwaffle, such as the freeware 1.2 version, or even higher end commercial versions such as PD Artist or PD Pro. The animation will be saved from Dogwaffle into an image file sequence, such as Targa images or other popular format (PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF...). Then we'll use Virtual Dub, a free tool for video editing/dubbing, to convert it to other formats such as animated gif or AVI with your prefereed compressor (codec)

Getting Started

First, select the desired brush. For example, a simple brush, perhaps the medium-sized version of it. Simply right-click on the brush icon in the tool panel to see the available predefined (internal) brushes, and select the one you want.

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Start from a blank image (File>New) of the size you want, or perhaps start with a larger size. We can later resize (resample) the image buffer to a smaller final dimension.

Then click the Animation menu and select Create...

This will let you create an animation made of 30 frames (or more or fewer if yu change the default frame count)

In the upper right corner of the Tools panel, click the Layer mixing thumbnail. We will use the Swap buffer (aka the alternate image buffer) progressively to see the prior frame while we draw the new frame, using tracing paper mode for blending.

The orange tringle in the upper-left corner of the thumbnail indicates that mixing is enabled.

Next, right-click the same thumbnail, to view more options.

Select Options...

This opens the Swap mixing window. It's essentially a very simple layering system, with just one layer but containing two image buffers side-by-side. You could, I guess, consider it two layers on top of eachother, but here they're shown side-by-side because in the full PD Pro versions there's additional layers avalable and still also the swap buffer which is tagged along the side of the currently selected layer. It's a powerful feature and tool.

Select the Swap mixing mode: Tracing paper.

At this time there's nothing yet in the swap buffer, since we haven't drawn the first image yet. But that will soon change.

Draw the first frame's image. In this tutorial, we'll draw a happy face ball that bounces off the bottom and hits the head on the top.

Notice how the swap mixing window shows the thumbnail of the current image. The left side shows the main image buffer's content. The right is still blank white, as there's still nothing in the swap burffer.

Now copy the main image buffer over to the swap buffer. You can do this in several ways. One way is to select

menu: Buffer > Copy to Swap

or use the keyboard shortcut 'J' (uppercase j)

Notice how now the thumbnail to the right inside the Swap mixing window does show a copy of the same image. The same image is now in Main and Swap buffers.

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5