Repeat With Variation
Lesson 3 of 6 · Intermediate · 8 min
What you will make
Four cells of the same character at different heights and leg positions.
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Copy the character into all four cells, then vary only its height and foot position.
Open a 64 × 16 practice canvas with lesson examples and onion skin enabled. Your work saves automatically to My projects.
Starter files and backup import
Follow the steps
Copy the character into every cell, then change only what should move.
Start with: The finished character in cell one.
- 1
Copy, do not redraw
Select cell one and paste it into cells two, three and four at the same horizontal offset. Redrawing by hand is how palettes and outlines start to drift.
Four identical copies, correctly aligned.
- 2
Change only the vertical offset
Move the body up by one row, then up by two, then back down. This course's hop is built from four different heights, not four different drawings.
Four cells at four distinct heights.
- 3
Change the feet too
Swap between feet together, feet tucked and feet apart. Legs carry the landing; the body alone reads as floating.
Legs that agree with each pose.
- 4
Check nothing else moved
Overlay two cells and look for differences outside the body and feet. Any other difference is drift, not animation.
Four frames differing only where they should.
See the technique
Four flat copies
The same four, shaded
Learning notes and references
- Copy a frame into the next cell without shifting it sideways.
- Change vertical position and limb pose, never the character's design.
- Keep the silhouette and palette identical across all four cells.