VPaint: A Beginner’s Guide to Vector Painting

Create Smooth Animations Fast with VPaint: Step-by-Step Tutorial

VPaint is a lightweight vector animation tool designed for frame-by-frame and inbetweening workflows. This tutorial walks you through creating a short, smooth animation quickly, covering setup, keyframes, inbetweening, timing, and export.

What you’ll make

A 2–3 second looping animation of a bouncing ball with squash-and-stretch and a soft shadow.

Setup

1. Create a new project: File → New. Set frame rate to 24 fps and canvas size to 1920×1080.
2. Prepare layers: Add two layers — Ball and Shadow.

Draw the ball

1. Select the Ball layer and the Shape tool. Draw a circular vector shape near the top center of the canvas.
2. Fill with a solid color and add a subtle radial gradient for volume.

Key poses (blocking)

1. Set up the major poses on frames: 1 (top), 8 (impact), 15 (top), 24 (loop end equals frame 1).
2. On frame 1, position the ball high. On frame 8, place the ball low where it hits the ground. On frame 15, raise it back up but slightly less high to imply energy loss. Copy frame 1 to frame 24 for a seamless loop.

Squash and stretch

1. On frame 8 (impact), use the Vector Transform tool to squash the ball vertically and widen it horizontally. Keep volume consistent.
2. Add intermediate shapes for smoothness: create extreme stretch on frames 6 and 10 to anticipate and follow-through.

Inbetweening

1. Select the Ball layer range between keyframes and use VPaint’s interpolation tools to generate inbetweens.
2. Inspect and tweak automatic inbetweens: adjust control points on problem frames to maintain smooth curves and consistent outlines.

Timing and spacing

1. Fine-tune spacing by nudging intermediate frames: closer spacing near impact for faster motion, wider spacing at the arcs for slower motion.
2. Use the Timeline’s onion-skinning to compare shapes across frames.

Shadow and squash contact

1. On the Shadow layer, draw an oval under the ball. Scale and flatten it on impact frames to match the ball’s squash.
2. Reduce opacity and blur slightly for a soft ground contact feel.

Polish

1. Add subtle rotation during arcs (1–2°) to sell motion.
2. Smooth stroke thickness across frames: enable Stroke Width interpolation or manually adjust on extremes.
3. Play the animation in a loop; refine any jitter by editing vector points.

Export

1. Export → Render Animation. Choose PNG sequence or GIF for quick sharing, or MP4 (H.264) for higher-quality video.
2. For looped GIFs, set frame delay consistent with 24 fps (≈41 ms per frame).

Tips for speed

• Use onion-skin and playblast frequently.
• Keep shapes simple; fewer points are easier to interpolate.
• Reuse shapes across frames and adjust transforms instead of redrawing.
• Save incremental versions before major changes.

That’s it — a smooth, polished bouncing ball animation made quickly in VPaint.