Pencil(1)

NAME
Pencil - An animation/drawing software

SYNOPSIS
Pencil

DESCRIPTION
Pencil is an application for easily creating animated cartoons, and can export the animations to flash files.

A Pencil document is organised in layers. There are currently four types of layers: bitmap image, vector image, sound and camera. The Time Line window at the bottom of the screen shows the existing layers. By default, a new document contains a bitmap layer and a vector layer on top of it, but you can add and delete layers as you wish (using either the "plus" and "minus" buttons next to "Layers", or the menu Layer).

Each layer has a track which enables you to change it as a function of time. This is done by inserting keys (the little grey rectangles) at certain frames in the track. Each key contains information about what the layer should show or produce at the frame where the key is located. To add or delete keys at a particular frame in a layer track, use the "plus" or "minus" buttons next to "Keys" (shortcut: type "return" to create a new frame). For image layers (ie bitmap and vector), each key corresponds to a different image. The sequence of these images creates an animation. The current frame is indicated by the red bar and can be changed by moving the red bar to scrub through your animation (or use the left and right arrows). To play the animation, use the controls in the time line. Note that you can loop the animation, as well as set the number of frames per seconds.

AUTHOR
Pencil was written by Pascal Naidon.

This manual page was copied from http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=UserManual and is written by Pascal Naidon and Patrick Corrieri.