Onion skinning

The onion skin originally describes the semi-transparent layer of an onion. In the craft of character animation, the onion skin (English Onionskin ) denotes a translucent scheme of the previously drawn single image.

Technology

In 2D animation artist creates traditionally one frame after another. To see what he has previously drawn, created the cartoonist in companies like Disney scenes on their semi-transparent, superimposed frames ( tracing paper ), which were later photographed and put together into a film. The onion skin technique allowed the artists to be guided by the previously drawn frames and thus to generate a continuous flow of movements, long before the film.

Even with the transition from the drawing board to computer technology, the term has received. Digital to create an animation program in the onion skin by semi- translucent layers. In most software packages for 2D animation, you can choose how many onion skin layers you want to see. In the example of a galloping horse can see the movement through three onion skins through. The paler the image appears, the more onion skins ( ie digital levels ) are between this and the current drawn image.