Before you start creating your animation, it's important to understand a few basic animation concepts.
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Props are stationary objects. If we look at our sample, you'll notice that there are three props: the background, the picture and the desk. Our one and only actor is the dollar sign.
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Because the dollar sign is an actor, it consists of a collection of cels. The cel sequencer displays how the actors cels have been synchronized with the animations frames. Clicking through the actor's cels demonstrates the gesture you can expect in each frame.
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Actors can also move across a path. When the path edit tool is selected, the series of nodes that appear on the screen represent the actor's path.
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By selecting a few of the nodes, they can all be moved, thereby modifying the actor's path.
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Actors can be created in a variety of different ways. By clicking the Add Actor button, or tool, the dialog box presents options available to create or insert a new actor.
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The easiest, and probably the most popular way of adding actors to an animation is through the library. A variety of ready-made actors, props and sounds can be found on the Corel CD-ROM in this box.
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When a library is open, you can select and add an actor to the library.
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If we move the frame slider further into our animation, you'll notice that more props appear near the end. The introduction of these props is controlled in the Timeline Roll-up.
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In this animation, props 3, 4, 5 and 6 represent the bullet characters. Let's slide the timeline to the beginning of the animation. That way, the bullets will be present throughout and the text will appear in a staggered fashion.
