From editing properties to shaping actions: our approach to animation
When you imagine a character entering a scene, you probably picture an action: she steps forward, turns toward the viewer, and comes to a stop. That action may involve position, size, rotation, and visibility. Our starting question for Vexo was how to make those related changes feel like one moment you can shape.
Illustrator and SVGator are useful reference points because they approach different parts of the creative process. Vexo brings drawing and animation together around two ideas: clips that collect related changes, and reusable animated parts you can develop separately.
Where Illustrator and SVGator fit
Illustrator is a vector illustration and design tool. In Adobe’s 2D animation workflow, artwork made in Illustrator can be brought into an animation application. Vexo’s focus is a continuous workspace for drawing a scene and shaping its movement. That focus does not make it a replacement for every illustration or production task.
SVGator already brings vector drawing and animation together. Its animators and keyframes let creators animate properties such as position, scale, rotation, fill, and opacity. Its keyframe editing tools also support selecting and moving multiple keyframes. Vexo’s distinction is the way related changes are organised around an editable clip and reusable animated objects.
One clip can describe one creative action
A keyframe records how something looks at a particular moment. In Vexo, you begin with the starting scene, open a later clip, and edit the canvas to show the end of that action. Changes made in that clip are recorded together, and playback moves from the previous state to the new one.
For a title entrance, you might move the title upward, enlarge it slightly, change its colour, and bring its opacity up to full visibility. Those changes can belong to one clip with one duration and easing choice. You can return to that clip and revise the end result directly on the canvas.
- Compose the moment. Decide how the objects should look when the action finishes.
- Keep connected changes together. Edit several properties, and several shapes in the same timeline, within one clip.
- Adjust the pace. Change the clip’s length to give the action more room or make it quicker.
- Separate independent movement. Use other timelines or tracks when different parts need their own timing.
We are trying to make keyframe editing feel closer to arranging a sequence of meaningful actions. It is a deliberate choice about how to organise the work. When several changes share a duration, a clip keeps them together; when they need different rhythms, you can split them into additional clips or tracks. Timing and judgement remain part of the craft.
The second challenge: a scene can become too much to manage at once
Even a clear timeline can become crowded when a scene contains a character, a moving vehicle, changing captions, and effects. Each part has its own details, while the final scene needs all of them to work together. We took a sprite-based direction to give those details a home of their own.
In Vexo, a sprite sheet is a reusable drawing workspace. You draw the artwork yourself with the same tools available in the scene editor. Each page holds one animation: a character’s walk, wave, jump, or another performance. You can refine that animation before placing it in the larger scene.
The scene uses the sprite as a reference to that source artwork. You can position it on the canvas and choose which animation to play without turning all of its internal drawing into scene-level editing work. This is how we aim to keep a growing story manageable: give each animated part its own workspace, then compose those parts together.
Build separately, then bring the story together
Consider a small concert animation. Create the guitarist’s playing loop, the pianist’s hand movement, and the drummer’s performance as separate sprites. Give the dancer different animation pages for different steps. Then bring the cast onto the stage and arrange their timing.
The band can repeat its movements while the dancer changes steps. A speech bubble can be another reusable sprite with a message control. A larger sprite can contain smaller sprites, so a moving object can be built from independently animated pieces. All of these assets are available across the project’s pages.
Placing a sprite creates an animation clip in the current timeline. Choose the start and end of the source animation to play a particular section; the clip’s length follows that choice. You can also adjust a clip’s duration to stretch the selected movement across that time.
Expose the choices a scene actually needs
A reusable character does not always need a different drawing. Sometimes it needs a different message, a changed angle, or an element switched on or off. Sprite controls let the creator expose those choices. Each appearance can have its own values while the source artwork remains in the sprite editor.
That separation gives the scene a more focused role: decide where a character appears, what it does, when it does it, and which controls should change. Develop the drawing and the performance in their own place, then use them as ingredients in the composition.
A different way to organise the creative process
We do not claim to have invented reusable artwork or the ability to animate several properties. Our contribution is the workflow we are building around them: edit a meaningful action in a clip, develop animated parts in their own workspaces, and assemble those parts into scenes.
Vexo is still evolving. Our goal is to help illustrators, designers, and animators keep their attention on the story as its complexity grows. If this way of working fits a project you have in mind, we would love to hear about it.