posts from a wannabe animator

Q:I read a lot of animation related books in our library and I'm forever wondering how dope sheet works. It seems so complicated. Maybe there's a simple way of explaining it? But no pressure, because I'm not yet there. I'm just curious. :D And oh yeah, how do you make a movement slow? Do you repeat a frame consecutively or just make one frame go slow? Thank you! :*

Dope/Exposure(X) sheets are an easy way of organizing scenes for an animation. It separates each frame by layer, such as character, background, and sound. They’re really useful for figuring out timing and where to place your key poses/frames. There’s a good, in-depth explanation here.

As for slow movements, you could have each frame exposed for 3-4 frames (the standard exposure for a frame is 2). Think of it in terms of the ball bounce. When the ball is moving up and losing it’s momentum, you have more frames over a longer period of time. This makes it move slower. But for really slow stuff you may have to increase the frame exposure. Hopefully that helps. :D