#animation mode

FireAlpaca Ver 2.14.1

( 2026/01/22 )

When multiple layers are selected, adding a layer folder now automatically groups the selected layers into that folder.

Fixed rasterization and onion skin generation issues in animation mode.

I was recently reminded of how old Firealpaca animation mode actually is, so I thought I would write about it!

This blog hasn't always archived all the updates from Firealpaca so I thought I would go looking if there were any posts about one of the biggest feature updates Firealpaca has had: animation mode

Animation mode released on 28th of October 2015. So it's already over 10 years old! Here's some fun animations done with it by the Ever-Blue webcomic author Ten. If you want to remember what it looked like, a tutorial was also posted by Obtusity on DeviantArt in 2015.

Animation mode was called "Onion Skin Display Mode" and came with 3 important features once you switched to it from the View menu: "Show Next/Prev Frame" as well as "Select Next (Upper) Frame" + "Select Previous (Lower) Frame" and "Autoplay". You could also export your frames when in Onionskin Mode. This feature works the same way as it did then: the PNG frames are numbered from 000 and you can select a folder to export them into.

The Onionskin Mode did not feature a "Export GIF" function however, so the makers of Firealpaca released a website just for that: AlpacaDouga. Obtusity posted a tutorial about this on October 12th, 2016.

In 2018, the "Always display the first frame" feature was added with version 1.9.1. This meant that if someone had a background or a non-animated graphic they wanted under the animated part, it would always be displayed as the bottom layer! An earlier update also added the “Import frames as Layers” feature.

With the update 2.3.11 released 2020-09-07, Onion Skin Mode was renamed into Animation Mode

Frrom 2020-10-12, it was possible now to export GIFs from Firealpaca directly with version 2.3.17 and onwards.

Starting from 2021-07-12 and version 2.5.7, all animation mode features were moved under their own menu. File exports were still handled from the File menu, but you could now export more than still frame PNG sequences. It also became possible to specify the display time of frames in auto-playback - change the fps. This meant the autoplay function now let you set the fps. A/N: Although I personally remember that changing the fps settings was always a feature, I might remember wrong - so if anyone has screenshots of that, reply in the comments!

In 2021, this update also meant that the AlpacaDouga service was discontinued:

But the Animation Mode itself got more quality updates, such as extra onion skin settings (changing the color of the onion skin frames) as well as onion skin numbering.

This is what the animation menu has looked like now from 2021 to now in version 2.14.1 (january 2026 update)

Now it is possible to export as frames, as GIF, APNG and even MP4.

For the sake of archiving this log, especially since it's not documented on this blog, here's the old update log from 2015, google translated from the japanese update log:

FireAlpaca version 1.5.0 released (2015-10-21)

Add pattern brush and bitmap watercolor brush

Allows free deformation of folders (applies to 1,8,32bpp layers)

Supports parsing correction during free deformation

Added Onion Skin Display Mode

Added layer sequential PNG output function (in onion skin mode)

Layer auto-play function (in Onion Skin mode)

Change UI color to blue base

Move the filter to an independent menu

Enables movement lock of color palette

Fixed some bugs

And that's it! I can't believe Animation mode in Firealpaca is already more than 10 years old! Thank you for reading this far and I hope this helps more people become interested in using this under-appreciated feature of Firealpaca!

New update! This one people have been waiting for a long time.

FireAlpaca Ver 2.11.5 (2023/08/10)

Added time-lapse recording feature (start and end from file menu or alpaca button).

At the end of time-lapse recording, you can convert to animated GIF.

When opening an APNG file, you can now select "Convert to animated GIF" or "Import as canvas".

Very exciting update, and one I myself could not have foreseen for this 2023 summer. Try it out! Observations from my own test:

you can set the speed at the end of a recording (press firealpaca button for "end recording") 5, 10, 15, 30 and 60 seconds are available

Ending the recording pop-up window will display also the number of frames in the drawing.

you can draw and then save a GIF/APNG only once

you can start at the beginning of your drawing and it will even record animation frames correctly (one frame layer at a time)

Official timelapse tutorial (in images) from FA official EN on twitter:firealalpaca

Firealpaca update Ver 2.5.7 is out! (2021/07/12)

* the animation functions now have a dedicated Animation menu (yay!) * it's possible to specify the display time of frames in auto-playback * APNG and GIF output now reflect the display time of the frame * bug fix for the background color during autoplay and improved processing for scaling images

FireAlpaca version 2.3.17(2020/10/12)

You can now export animations as animated GIFs

You can now open files from recently used folders

Added Transform / Free Transform / Mesh Transform buttons to the options bar

Added support for layer display / non-display shortcut keys