Transform marks and let Flipline draw the inbetweens

Pick up a mark

Choose Select (V) and click a stroke, shape or imported image on the active layer. A dashed frame appears with four square corner handles and a round handle above it. Drag inside the frame to move the mark. Arrow keys nudge it by one pixel, or ten with Shift; Escape clears the selection.

Scale, rotate and flip

Drag a corner handle to scale the mark evenly around its center. Drag the round handle to rotate it; hold Shift to snap to 15° steps. The properties panel offers the same changes as exact controls: Rotation (°), Scale −10% / +10%, Flip horizontal and Flip vertical. Bring forward and Send backward change the stacking order inside the drawing. Every change can be undone with Ctrl+Z.

Transforms are stored with the mark, so the project file stays editable: rotation is an angle in degrees and flips are simple switches. Scaling changes the mark's points; the stroke width stays the same so lines keep their weight.

Key poses first

Draw a key pose, then choose Duplicate drawing (Shift+N). The copy keeps the identity of every mark, which lets Flipline pair them later. Move, scale or rotate the marks in the copy to make the second key pose. You can also change the ink color or stroke width.

Insert inbetweens

Go back to the first key pose and choose Insert inbetweens (T) in the timeline. Pick how many drawings to add (1–8) and the spacing: Even spacing, Slow in, Slow out or Slow in, slow out. Flipline interpolates position, shape, rotation, color and width of each paired mark and inserts the new drawings with the first pose's hold. Strokes with different numbers of points are resampled along their length.

Marks that only exist in the first pose are copied unchanged; marks that only exist in the second pose are ignored. Separately drawn poses are paired by order among marks of the same kind, which works best for simple shapes. Inbetweens are ordinary drawings afterwards, so refine them by hand where the motion needs character.

Check the motion

Turn on Onion skins (K) and set Onion skin range to 2 or 3 drawings to see the arc of the movement. Ping-pong playback plays forwards and backwards, which suits breathing, waving and floating loops; the GIF and video exports offer the same option.