This application is in early development. Testing is encouraged. If you are interested, please drop me a line.

xsheet is a FLOSS application for drawing traditional 2D animation, the digital way. The kind of workflow it allows is known as "paperless", because it replaces the traditional light box. It can be added in the production pipeline of feature films, videogames, and other audiovisual projects.

The name xsheet comes from the good ol' days: an X-sheet is a spreadsheet that allows an animation team to organize the work. Animating "on twos" or "on ones", marking the key drawings, doing the inbetweens later, setting the tempo to sync the characters with the music.

This application works with raster (pixel) graphics. For vector animation you can try other applications like Synfig. You can add this application in your vector animation pipeline using it for making pencil sketches, then exporting and vectorizing.

• multiple layers
• onion skinning
• playback
• metronome

The code is written in the Python language, using the GTK+ stack and other libraries through GObject introspection. It relies in the following great libraries:

• GEGL as backend

• GEGL-gtk (source, docs) as GEGL display

• MyPaint brushlib as brush engine, MyPaint GEGL Surface as drawing canvas

• Sketch pencil that allows sketching in the same layer of the final drawing, using a different stroke color. Draw with a brush whose strokes can be dismissed later. This is like the blue pencil in traditional animation.

• Floodfill tool (paint bucket). With configurable threshold to allow holes in the line drawing. Allow fill in a layer different than the layer that contains the line drawing.

• Camera frame with default sizes. This doesn't limit the drawing to its bounds, but allows to draw considering the final view of the camera. Allow display safe area and configurable grid for movement reference and proportions.

• Audio insertion. For animating in sync with an audio track, like lip-sync animation. Show the audio waveform.

• Scrub frames with trackpad scroll. Similar to flipping the pages in traditional animation.

• Walkcycles functionality. Select a range of frames in the current animation layer and mark an offset. The range is repeated N times, displaced by the offset. This is like using the pegbars to displace the paper cels for making walkcycles in traditional animation.

• Import video as animation layer for rotoscoping.