Animation Tip: In-Betweens After Keyframes

While this may seem like second nature to veteran animators, many animation beginners don't realize that animation generally isn't drawn in sequential order. Animators don't stack frames 1-30 and draw them one after the other; instead we draw key points in an animated movement, such as the beginning, middle, and major pivot points. This is where the term "keyframe" came from. These are major markers that catch a motion at some extreme, and serve as a frame of reference.

Those keyframes are then used as a reference points to interpolate the frames in between - thus spawning the term "in-betweens." For example, if you have keys at frames one and five, you'd layer the two and then use them to figure out where between those two frames the various aspects of your animated figure would be at frame three. Then you'd use frame three to figure out frame two (between one and three) and frame four (between three and five). This helps maintain continuity and accuracy while avoiding distortion.