Onion skin

Onion skin shows faded copies of the poses around the frame you are on, so you can see where a movement comes from and where it goes. This page shows how to turn it on, choose how far it looks, and make the ghosts easy to read.

What onion skin shows

A ghost is a faded copy of a pose from another frame, drawn on the stage behind the figure you are posing. Ghosts from earlier frames are tinted red, ghosts from later frames blue. When you pose the next step of a walk, the red ghost shows you where the last step was, so you can keep the move even.

The spacing between ghosts shows speed: ghosts far apart mean a fast move, ghosts close together a slow one.

Turn it on and off

Onion skin is on when you start StykAnimate. Your settings, like the colours and how far it looks, are remembered.

1. Press O, or click the onion button near the right end of the timeline header. When it is on, the button is highlighted.
2. Open the settings with the small arrow next to the onion button. You can also right-click the onion button, or press and hold it on a touch screen.
3. Use the switch at the top of the settings to turn onion skin on or off without closing them. The settings stay editable while it is off.

Try it

Blue hops across the stage while Purple waves. The keys sit two frames apart, with Auto easing between them, and the playground opens with the settings showing. Change each one and watch the stage.

Choose how far it looks

Before and After are a distance in frames from the playhead. A new install looks 2 frames back and 1 frame ahead. Type a number, use − and +, or drag the word Before or After sideways: 8 pixels change it by one frame, and holding Shift when you start makes it finer.

What appears inside that distance depends on More → Sample:

• Poses (the default) shows the poses you made, the keys, that fall inside the distance. In the Simple timeline these are your frame cards.
• Every frame shows every frame inside the distance, including inbetweens and holds. Use it to check the spacing that easing makes.
• Every (1 to 20) thins the ghosts out: 2 shows every second pose or frame.

With Timeline markers on, the Advanced timeline’s ruler shows the distance as a red band before the playhead and a blue band after it, each ending in a small bracket. Drag a bracket to change the distance, or click it and use the arrow keys (Home sets it to 0). The markers move with the playhead. Turning Timeline markers off hides them without turning onion skin off.

Colours, strength and order

Normally a figure’s ghosts sit just behind it on its own layer, so a floor on a lower layer does not hide them and they never cover the pose you are working on. Show on top lifts every ghost above everything, which helps when figures overlap.

With many figures on the stage, choose Selected, then click the figure you are animating: only its ghosts stay.

Example: check the spacing of a jump

1. Make the jump: a crouch, a take-off, the top of the jump, a landing. Give the frames a few inbetweens and set their Easing to Auto.
2. Move the playhead to the top of the jump and press O if onion skin is off.
3. Open the settings and set Before and After wide enough to reach the take-off and the landing, for example 8.
4. Choose Every frame under More, and Every 2. The ghosts now show where Blue is on every second frame.
5. Look at the gaps. They should get smaller as Blue rises, and bigger as he falls. If they don’t, change the inbetweens or the easing and look again.

While you pose

Ghosts show the poses as they are saved in the animation. While you drag a dot they stay where they are, and they update when you let go.

Onion skin never changes your animation: it does not add keys, change easing or move anything. The range is only a view, not a selection of frames.

In the Simple timeline, click the card you want to change before you pose; the ghosts are the cards around it. In the Advanced timeline, put the playhead on a key before you pose, or add a key there first. For the path of a single hand or foot over time, use motion paths.

Common questions

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