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The Dragonframe keypad
Dragonframe
Definition
The Dragonframe keypad is a small dedicated controller, sold by Dragonframe to licence holders and connected over Bluetooth or USB. It puts the capture software's core animation commands (shoot, step, play, live-view toggles, onion skin, short play and cut back) on a hand-held number pad, so the animator can shoot and check each frame from the set instead of from the computer.
Overview
Stop-motion animation is done with the hands at the puppet and the eyes on the monitor, and every trip back to a mouse breaks that loop. Dragonframe's answer is a small dedicated keypad: its user guide says it "makes it easy to move away from your computer and still control Dragonframe." The guide also notes how little is truly essential. With only SHOOT, STEP and PLAY an animator could animate a whole scene: capture a frame, step back through what has been shot, play it at speed. Everything else on the pad refines that three-key cycle.
The default layout is a numeric pad, which is why the same commands also work on the number pad of an ordinary computer keyboard (only MUTE, DELETE and ONIONSKIN sit in slightly different places). In the mapping documented in Dragonframe's user guide, ENTER shoots, 1 and 2 step, 0 plays, 3 jumps to the live view, 5 toggles between live and captured frames while held, 4 auto-toggles at an adjustable rate, and plus and minus fade an onion skin of a shot frame over the live view. 6 is SHORT PLAY, which by default plays only the last twelve frames (hold it to change the count). 8 loops, and holding it switches to ping-pong. 7 adds a second of black at the end of playback. The decimal key swaps the low-resolution video-assist frames for proxies of the full-resolution captures.
Read as a set, most of those keys answer one question the animator asks after every move: did the puppet go where I meant it to? Live toggle, auto-toggle and onion skin compare the next pose with the last frame, short play and loop judge the motion in context, and high-res confirms that the final capture holds up. That is the real design idea. The keypad keeps the comparison step within arm's reach of the set, so checking stays cheap enough to do on every frame rather than once a shot.
The pad also makes mistakes recoverable. A double press of DELETE removes the last frame with all of its exposures. CUT BACK (key 9) jumps to a frame number the animator types in, a point "before the animation went awry" in the guide's words, and can optionally delete the frames in between. Dragonframe puts deleted frames in a backup folder rather than discarding them, so an aggressive cut back can still be undone. Because the pad has a number row, that frame number can be typed on the keypad itself, away from the keyboard.
The current hardware is Dragonframe's Bluetooth/USB controller. It has scissor-mechanism keys, rubber moulding against drops, an angled body, and locator nubs on the stepping and number keys so they can be found by touch. It measures 5.75 × 3.75 × 1.00 in and weighs 7 oz with its two AA batteries. On a USB cable it needs no batteries. Dragonframe sells it only to licence holders (not trial users) and states that its hotkeys are fully configurable, so the layout above is a starting point, not a fixed standard.
Workflow
- Install Dragonframe before plugging in the keypad; otherwise the operating system asks you to identify it as a keyboard.
- Open Window > Show Keypad and choose the Remote Keypad layout; the on-screen window is a learning aid while the key positions become habit.
- Pose the puppet and press SHOOT (Enter) to capture the frame.
- Before the next move, compare against the last frame with LIVE TOGGLE, AUTO-TOGGLE or the onion-skin keys.
- Judge motion with SHORT PLAY (last twelve frames by default), PLAY or LOOP, and press HIGH-RES to review proxies of the full-resolution captures.
- If a move went wrong, double-press DELETE to remove the last frame, or press CUT BACK and enter the frame to return to; deleted frames go to the backup folder.
- Assign any other frequently used command, such as 3-step, under Preferences > Hot Keys.