Animation

Draw With Onion Skin On

Each Storyboard frame has its own canvas and its own layers, with a blend mode for each layer. Turn on the onion skin to see the frame before or after behind the one you're drawing, and show a grid or the rule of thirds to keep the framing steady. Beside the canvas, each frame has its scene, shot, duration, action, dialogue, audio, camera movement and transition.

Play The Animatic Before Anyone Animates

Press Space and the Storyboard plays each frame for its duration, with its transitions. Animate something in a frame with a fade, a slide, a scale, a rotation or a bounce, and turn on parallax so the layers move at different speeds for a sense of depth. Export the animatic as an MP4, a WebM, a MOV, an animated GIF or an animated PNG, or connect a Video element to the Storyboard so it plays on the page and updates when a frame changes.

3D Characters In The Frame

On Studio and Pro, you can upload 3D models, cameras and lights on a storyboard frame. Import a character or an environment as a GLTF, GLB, FBX, OBJ or 3DM file, place the camera and draw your notes over the scene. A frame with 3D exports as GLB, glTF or OBJ, so the animator starts from the staging you agreed on. The animation itself still happens in your animation software.

Sign-Off On The Animatic

Hover Share on the project page and select Send to client to send the page with the animatic. Your client creates a free Formta account, or signs in, comments and approves the Storyboard when it's right. When they ask for changes, make them and send the page again, and the new round is kept in its own tab next to the last one. Keep characters, props and backgrounds in your inventory with tags like in progress or final, so every production can use them.