This Strip is Not Safe For Work!

OK, editing panels is now under testing.. expect shenanigans for the next few days (in general, all over the site) ### important: only available for animated strips #### WARNING! ### OLD ANIMATIONS SHOULD NOT BE EDITED! simply put: the editing relies on the automatic backup and to save space: after a panel is completed the backups were deleted for new animations they are now kept but for old animations this data is lost you can now set a strip to be animated in '+NEW' but changing it afterwards leads to "undefined behavior"! ##### so before you draw the first panel for an animation make sure you set it to be an animation (othewise if you attempt to edit panels you might get a blank canvas etc) also please remember that it's all under testing: anything you draw might be lost! so please try and use only low-effort doodles if you want to test editing panels I also expect problems with: - image caching (edited panels might not show up edited) - auto backup problems (had to change it a bit -- seems ok but you never know) ###### and of course there are usually the problems I don't expect

I did an animation to test it and did about 4 edits on each panel, and no problems! It looks like everything is working so far!

mini update: now you should be able to test the animation without completing the strip ######(needs at least 2 frames for the button to be visible)

@TeeEffDee # 👍

mini update: ping-pong animation now added ###### (applicable for animations with at least 3 frames)

I tried out the tools with a multi-edit animation of a candle and everything seems to be working great! I love it! If you're looking for ways to gild the lily one other thing that would be great is persistent backgrounds, so that the background painted on the bottom layer stays on frames that come afterwards, allowing people to use the higher layers to paint over a background that stays put. By no means is that any kind of must-have but could be a great benefit to people doing complex backgrounds, allowing everyone who paints afterwards to have the option of keeping the background. Great work, Peyo, this is amazing!

# 👍 hmm.. I think that might be possible .. at least I have an idea for a really cheap and quick way do it ###### (I can't help but feel that things are slowly getting out of control with this new animation feature .. )

I think you've gone above and beyond on the animation features! I hope you don't mean it's getting out of control in a bad way or anything, you could definitely never add another thing and have the best collaborative animation software going. Thanks for everything you added, it's great!

well it was just this little easy to implement feature (in very few lines of javascript) and that's why it was added in the first place .. so I'm more 'that escalated quickly' I guess (but in general I can see many ways things will go wrong already .. so far we have been sailing very smoothly as few people know about the site and most of you are mature and PJ veterans..etc. I mean we didn't even had our first troll yet anything can happen)

Honestly if you want to really head the problem of inevitable malignant narcissists off, a block feature would do it! The double measure of a friends list for friends only projects plus the ability to block users (banning contact, banning submission to your projects, banning mentions, banning notifications, basically cutting them off cold and completely so they don't have the ability to make so much as a blip on the radar) puts the ability to protect yourself in the hands of the user. That's 99% of the technical battle won right there. Also the mere presence of those measures tends to dissuade malignant narcissists because they see the possibility of getting excluded for their behavior. The attractive situation is when they see a format where they can monopolize it, turn people's efforts into their own domination game, and people can't do anything about it.

Also the invisible/secret game mode is great! I had never even contemplated something like that but it's a spectacular idea.

the real problem is I really don't want to add these things .. so it's another of those "have my cake and eat it too" situations I mean like they could just make a new account and things could keep getting escalated indefinetly.. to "drawception no new accounts" levels even .. and no matter how advanced the tech is in reality all I can do is keep my fingers crossed anyway I guess I just worry too much

i think a feature that hides the friend request on your profile so there arent people permanently lingering on your page who you dont want to accept would be good (there is no way to dismiss/decline a request unlike on paneljam), and also a way to stop someone from pinging you with mentions the new user argument wouldnt really make sense there since there wouldnt be any actual indication visible to them that youve done so, unless they just arbitrarily decided to make a new account every day, which they could do regardless of any potential block feature

ok for now I added the 'ignore friend request' feature to my local todo list

Peyo, I have to preface this by saying it is ONLY a neat concept, this is not something that would be essential and is certainly not something that is lacking. This is a next level thing. But one amazing thing would be if there was some way to have a mode that let anyone who was allowed to participate in an animation (or strip, most of the ideas that make good animation make good strips) edit any frame. The reason being, it would allow people to make animations or comics where they could draw their own character, then others who came along later could add their own characters. It would open up a pretty phenomenal artistic potential. Obviously, this would be a mode people would have to be EXTREMELY careful who they allowed to have access to since the potential for destruction of existing work would be through the roof. But for 2 artists or even a small group who wanted to collaborate on something together and trusted each other it would be amazing. One way I did think of to get around the problems with giving access to something that powerful would be a case by case whitelist where you would have to actually tag other users as being able to participate in that given project. The fact any participant could eviscerate the project would make it pretty risky as just a "friends list" kind of thing. In essence this sort of feature seems like it's technically do-able based on everything else you have done, and it would bring the functionality of networked programs like Aggie/Magma and Drawpile to a comic and animation site. Pretty exciting in concept! Judging from the dedication people have been putting into animations I think the payoff would be pretty big, creatively.

it's indeed a neat concept but I'm afraid it's beyond the scope of this site .. I know I kind of make it look easy with the frequent updates lately but we kind of reached my limits too (I'm not sure how we even got this far) and I'm sorry to say this because you all clearly enjoy this new feature but my answer for now is 'maybe one day' (it is next level stuff alright.. and if I ever find the time and skills: it would still have to be a entirely new site built around the idea anyway)

Don't be sorry at all, what you made so far is amazing! It expanded my own notions of what could be done with a site like this, so great work!

I thought I'd put it out there in case you're ever looking for something that would mark a massive leap in control for animators. If each panel in an animation was tagged with a display time in milliseconds (It would be better not to cap it and just have a manual type-in box versus a slider with a max value) the sheer level of control that would give animators would be phenomenal. For example, under the current system if I wanted a still period in an animation the only way I can have that is if I just repeat a frame as many times as is necessary to create the stillness, and that's constrained by the playback speed of the animation. So for example even if I set the playback speed at 1000ms which is extremely, extremely slow, a pause of 5 seconds would require 5 repetitions of a frame. For a hold on a character this would be agonizing as the same frame would have to be re-drawn 5 times. And that's a best case scenario. Most animations would have a far faster playback speed, so it just makes still periods off-limits for anything but a hold on a plain background. If this was coupled with a relative speed slider on the main interface instead of the milliseconds slider, you could just have all panels receive a default speed in ms when created, and then let that relative slider determine how those ms ratings are interpreted at playtime. For example, if a panel was individually set to 500ms, and the relative slider on the main control was set to a 200% playback speed, at playtime the panel would be displayed at 50% the speed rating or 250ms. 300% playback speed would cause a 500ms panel to be shown for 166.6ms and so on. This would give animators granular control over their production! If panels generate with default display times pre-determined this would be transparent to the non-interested or more casual (read: more sane) animators who could just use the main speed slider to control their animation at a steady rate without doing fine timing.

`TeeEffDee` for delay per frame there are no technical problems so it will be added soon enough (I added it to my local todo list at least) however the relative speed part could be tricky .. (so if it's added it will be some time long after per frame delay is added)

Peyo, that's amazing news, I am really happy to hear that! That's going to really add an amazing element to the animation process.

I'm not sure where to put this since I don't want to just start a new thread for it, so I'll put it here. This is another bonus idea thing I had that should be easy to put in if you like it, and would be handy. But an optional "Information" text box at the top of strips might be useful where people starting a strip can give advanced instructions or notes on the strip, or explain the idea or background info for it. I'd say having it be toggle-able on and off would be good and it should probably stay editable. This would be something of fairly uncommon but profound usefulness.

`TeeEffDee` hmm.. maybe I could add something like this in the strip settings under 'extra' .. but I'm not sure how to make it more useful than just putting it in a comment (maybe a comment could be marked as the instruction and show up in the drawing tool?)

I'd say anything where the originator of the project can leave information or instructions would be great, wherever it shows up. That is one shortfall, is that it's really hard to give any kind of info where people will see it for sure. Having it appear in the drawing tool would be pretty amazing I think!

`Peyo` Possible bug, when I check the user list, and I press the 1 at the bottom to see the next page, it takes me to the front page.

`TeeEffDee` thank you! I made a quick fix

`Peyo` I am loving the site of course but I am actually myself starting to run into confusion about how things work! I'm not just complaining, however, instead if you'd be willing to provide me with a list of functions or instructions, I'd be happy to write them up into a plain language help manual for users to refer to (Including myself). If you already have this covered and plan to write a help document, great but if you weren't, I'd be happy to. Maybe we could link it on the site as instructions. This was brought on by me planning a submission then coming to a stop because I couldn't remember in what way things were done.

`TeeEffDee` sure if you want to I was planning to make some simple drawing based one but couldn't get to it yet

`Peyo` If you already had plans for it nevermind me, but if you do want some docs written I'd be happy to help! Good documentation is getting rare in general.

`TeeEffDee` I was just gonna do this 3-4 panel mini comic just to cover the basics (like the mini tutorial on PJ on top of the page when you are not logged in) and I thought maybe people could figure out the advanced stuff for themselves which part made you confused btw? (maybe we should concentrate on that as well)

I wanted to do some animation with a background from another strip, but I was under the impression only the first panel in a strip could be used as a background. But then I saw you doing the background dump strip and went "Wait, I can use any panel from a strip as a background?" So then I was like "So which instructions have been deprecated and what's the procedure now?"

`TeeEffDee` the procedure itself has not changed (only the interface a bit) I'll just write it down here for now: any strip can be used as the backdrop you can use a panel from the same strip as well Backdrop Strip ID is the id of the strip (from the url) Image Index is the panel from the strip to use Start Frame the first animation frame also the very first panel in a strip is always used as the thumbnail

and the examples: backdrop from different strip: Backdrop Strip ID 214 Image Index 1 Start Frame 1 [/strip/216](/strip/216) fully self contained: Backdrop Strip ID 223 Image Index 2 Start Frame 3 [/strip/223](/strip/223)

Thanks for the clarification!

the site definitely would benefit from a page that explains how all the features work since not everything is super obvious, especially for people who arent as tech savvy people would still have the choice to try to figure stuff out on their own if they wanted, but being able to have documentation to look over to figure out how to make a specific idea you want to make work would be excellent itd also be a good place to just get an overview of all the features the site offers and get inspiration from the options available

I rather we had the help on the new/edit strip page itself maybe with hintboxes and/or making the settings names and symbols clearer somehow (before we end up with a whole wiki or something) but i'm not sure.. I definitely need at least some list of what seems tricky as for me everything is just way too obvious (obviously because i'm familiar with all the internals and such)

hintboxes would definitely be helpful

Okay I thought about it more decided that my new main priority will be to create a wiki for PanelChutney with detailed documentation. Also `Carrot^abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqr new line` is a very cool and awesome person