Intermediate

40 mins

Teacher/Student led

Learning Goals

Learning Outcomes

Lesson Files

+65 XP

What you need:
Chromebook/Laptop/PC
Wick Editor needs no account

Animate It, Part 1: Frames, Onion Skinning and Playback

Students draw a bouncing ball frame by frame in Wick Editor, use onion skinning to place each frame, and play it back.

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1 Start
2 Frames and Frame Rate
3 Hands-on: Draw Your First Frames
4 Hands-on: Onion Skinning, Then Play It
5 Make Sense

1 - Start ~4 mins

Illustration for Start Flick the corner of a notebook where someone has drawn a stick figure on each page. It walks.

What actually happened

Nothing moved. They are still drawings, shown one after another fast enough that your eye fills in the gap. That is all animation is.

Today you make the drawings and play them back. Next lesson you organise them into layers and get the finished animation out of the tool.

wickeditor.com runs in your browser with no account and no sign-up.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - Frames and Frame Rate ~4 mins

Illustration for Frames and frame rate A frame is one still picture. An animation is a row of them shown in order.

Term	What it means
Frame	One drawing, one moment.
Frame rate	How many play each second. Higher is smoother — and more drawing for you.
Onion skinning	Seeing faint copies of the frames either side, so you know where to draw next.
Playhead	The red line showing which frame you are looking at.

The trick to movement that looks right

Small changes between frames. Big jumps read as teleporting, not moving.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+10 XP

3 - Hands-on: Draw Your First Frames ~13 mins

Start a project and draw the top of a bounce.

+15 XP

4 - Hands-on: Onion Skinning, Then Play It ~13 mins

Turn on onion skinning to place the rising frames accurately, then watch the whole thing run.

+15 XP

5 - Make Sense ~4 mins

You made a row of still drawings and your eye turned them into movement.

Key point

The illusion lives in the SPACING between frames, not in any one drawing. Change the gaps and you change the speed, the weight and whether it looks real.

What would happen if every frame moved the ball exactly the same distance, including at the top of the bounce?

+10 XP

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