Intermediate

40 mins

Teacher/Student led

Learning Goals

Learning Outcomes

Lesson Files

+65 XP

Pupils work on their own device

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

Animate It, Part 2: Layers, Timing and Getting It Out

Students split their animation onto layers, change the frame rate, save an editable project and export a finished GIF. This lesson counts towards outcome 3.8: students use these editing skills to build their digital montage in the montage lessons that follow.

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1 Start
2 Why Layers, and What Frame Rate Does
3 Hands-on: Put It on Layers
4 Hands-on: Frame Rate, Save and Export
5 Make Sense
Quiz

1 - Start ~3 mins

Illustration for Start Your bouncing ball plays, but everything is drawn on one layer, and it is not yet a file anyone else can watch. Today you fix both. Open it first: at wickeditor.com click Launch Web Editor, then Try it, then open at the top right, and choose the .wick file you saved last lesson. If Wick asks Load Autosave?, you can click Load, but if your frames are not there, use open.

If your animation is gone

No .wick file from last lesson? Rebuild a short bounce, four or five frames is plenty for today's work, at wickeditor.com.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - Why Layers, and What Frame Rate Does ~5 mins

Layers are see-through sheets stacked on top of each other. Put the things that move on one and the things that stay put on another.

Layer	What goes on it	Why
Top	The ball	It changes every frame
Bottom	The background	Drawn once, never redrawn

Frame rate

Frames per second: how many of your drawings play each second. On the same drawings, a higher frame rate plays the movement faster and a lower one slower. To make movement smoother at the same speed you need a higher rate and more drawings to fill it, which is why every animator trades smoothness against work.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+10 XP

3 - Hands-on: Put It on Layers ~12 mins

Separate the moving ball from a background that stays still.

+15 XP

4 - Hands-on: Frame Rate, Save and Export ~13 mins

Change the timing, keep the editable file, then produce something you can actually share.

File	What it is for
.wick	Your editable project. Only Wick opens it. Keep this.
Animated GIF	Loops by itself, no sound. Good for posting.
Video (.mp4)	Plays anywhere and carries sound if you added any.

+15 XP

5 - Make Sense ~5 mins

Two ideas worth keeping from today.

Separate what moves from what does not. That is what layers are for, in every tool you will meet, not just this one.
Keep the editable file AND the shareable one. They do different jobs.

Key point

A GIF is the finished thing. The .wick file is the thing you can change your mind about.

+10 XP

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