PhotoPuppet Go! makes animation easy – you can capture almost any content and use it as “puppets”.

• Record animation simply by moving the puppets with your fingers.
• When you’re done – post your video to YouTube, email to your friends or even exchange your animation content with other PhotoPuppet users!

For the first time animation is fun and easy to create.

What can be animated and how?

Animation scenes are created out of puppets (actors) and backgrounds.
It’s as simple as following an equation:

Therefore on the startscreen you’ll find all 3 categories of objects on 3 different tabs: puppets, scenes, backgrounds. Create, edit or reuse any of them. You can make new elements for later use and store them as puppets/backgrounds (just click the “New” button).

When you scroll through each category – the selected element will be previewed automatically to display its own animation. PhotoPuppet combines 2 animation techniques:

• flicker animation - each object (puppet or background) can contain one or more frames. If there’s more than one and each shows a different position of your character’s body then by flipping frames you can animate it.
• tracked movement – when you move any object on the screen with your fingers – a record of its repositioning can be replayed later as tracked animation. This way scale and position can be recorded.

Let’s create an animation!

It’s easy:

open tab on the main window and tap on the button “NEW”

Now you can use available puppets (on the left roll) and backgrounds (on the right roll) to set the contents of your animation – just drag them to the centre.
After you’re done – consider which scene elements should be at the front and which at the back.
You can change their depth in the scene by dragging their icons on the scale displayed on top of the screen.

After you’re done – tap “ANIMATE” and begin to record the animation movement by using the control buttons.

Press “RECORD” and move your scene elements.

• If a puppet consists of more than one frame – after touching it – frame-switch will appear on the screen edge.
• Slide your finger up and down to change frames.

All this, together with puppet moves, will be recorded. Rewind or play to see how you’re doing – just as in a camcorder!

At any time if you want to return and change the contents of your animation

• open the advanced editing pane by tapping on “Advanced edit pane” and then use  “Contents” .

You can always return to the main window by using the “Exit to main window” button (located close to the control buttons) or if you’re in any other window.
Your animation will be saved every time as “Current Project” on “Scenes” tab.

In order to save it under a different name

- open the advanced animation tab with “Advanced edit pane” and use save.

Here you can rename your animation or save it as a background for later use.

Remember that you can use predefined content already made for you – nicely rendered backgrounds or ready-to-use puppets with photo-dropzones.

Tap on it to insert a photo (see step 1 below).

Then using scissors cut out the unwanted background of your photo (as illustrated in steps 2 and 3).

Now the dropzone has been replaced with your desired photo

(see step 4):

You can always add more frame-based animation by selecting areas of the photo to be moved and saved as subsequent frames.

Once you have created your animation – share it with the rest of the world!

Select it in the main window and tap on the ‘Rocket icon’ - you can then render your video and save it in Camera Roll, email it or directly publish your animation on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube!
You can also email the source of your animation project to another PhotoPuppet Go! user.

Just remember that not all these options are available for each object – for instance; you can’t render a puppet to a movie (since a puppet alone is not yet animation), but you can e-mail it to someone else.

Advanced animation?

From the scene-animation window – this will be your key to the advanced animation capabilities of PhotoPuppet Go!

Trackview gives you enhanced editing options. Each recorded puppet movement becomes a track which can be edited. Double-tapping a track activates editing features such as cut, copy, delete, split or paste. Touch and hold the track to move it along the timeline.

Each track has its own control buttons – so you can control if you want to disable recording on a track, lock it from selection (so it won’t move) or even hide it from animation.

Scroll with the vertical slider to move between tracks.
To scroll through time – slide tracks to left and right.

You can use double-tap on each track to perform editing – like splitting tracks, deleting them or repositioning.
If anything goes wrong – use undo.

We’re sure this crash-course can’t possibly show you all capabilities of PhotoPuppet Go!.
…but for now..
HAVE FUN!