Drawing

Everything you draw in Zoetrope is vector art: crisp at any size, light in exported files, and animatable.

Shape tools

Tool	Key	How to use it
Rectangle	`R`	Drag. `Shift`: square. `Alt`: from the center.
Ellipse	`O`	Drag. `Shift`: circle. `Alt`: from the center.
Polygon / star	`U`	Drag from the center outward; the drag direction sets the rotation. Set Sides, tick Star, and set the Inner radius % in the toolbar.
Line	`N`	Drag. `Shift`: snap to 45°.
Pen	`P`	Click to place corner points, drag to pull out curve handles. Click the first point to close the shape. `Enter`, `Esc` or a double-click finishes an open path.
Pencil	`Y`	Draw freehand. In the toolbar, Smooth fits curves through your stroke; Ink keeps straight segments.

New shapes use the Fill and Stroke under the tools. Click the color to change it, ■/▤/◎ to cycle solid, linear and radial fills, ⌀ for none, and set the stroke width in the number box.

With Snap objects on (toolbar), shapes and drags snap to other objects' edges and centers and to the stage, with pink guide lines. Snap grid snaps to the grid; set its size next to Grid.

Selecting and transforming

The Selection tool (V) selects objects. Click one, Shift-click to add more, or drag a marquee on empty stage. Then:

Move: drag, or nudge with the arrow keys (Shift = 10 px).
Scale: drag a square handle. Shift keeps proportions, Alt scales around the center.
Rotate: drag just outside a corner. Shift steps by 15°.
Skew: drag just outside an edge's middle.
Pivot: drag the white dot. Rotation and scaling happen around it.

The Properties panel has exact values for position, size, scale, rotation, skew and pivot, plus Appearance: opacity, blend mode (Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken, Lighten, Hard light, Difference, Add, and Layer), and a Tint color with an amount.

Editing points

The Subselection tool (A) edits a shape's anchors and curve handles:

Click a shape to see its anchors; click or Shift-click anchors to select them, then drag.
Drag a handle to reshape a curve.
Alt-click a segment to add an anchor there; Delete removes the selected anchors.
Double-click an anchor to switch it between corner and smooth.

Rectangles, ellipses, polygons and lines stay editable as primitives until you need more. Convert to path (⌘B / Ctrl+B, or to path in Properties) turns them into free-form paths.

Fill, stroke and gradients

In Properties → Fill & stroke, choose None, Solid, Linear or Radial for each. Under the gradient preview, each stop has a color and a position (%); ✕ removes a stop and ＋ stop adds one in the widest gap.
Strokes have width, caps (butt, round, square), joins (miter, round, bevel), miter limit and dash patterns.
Fill rule (Non-zero or Even-odd) decides whether overlapping parts of a path become holes.
The Gradient transform tool (F) shows on-canvas handles: start and end for linear gradients; center, radius and focal point for radial ones.
The Eyedropper (I) picks up a shape's fill or stroke into the tool style. The Paint bucket (K) applies the current fill; Shift-click applies the stroke color.

Images

Import… (⌘I) or drag PNG, JPEG and GIF files onto the stage. Images are embedded in the project, so there are no broken links. They scale, rotate, fade and tint like any other object.

Copy and paste

⌘C / ⌘X / ⌘V copy, cut and paste the selection (Ctrl on Windows and Linux). Each paste steps 10 px down and right; ⇧⌘V pastes in place.
Copies carry everything they need: symbols (and the symbols inside them), images, fonts and sounds. Paste into another project, or another Zoetrope window, and it all comes along. Symbols and assets the project already has are reused, not duplicated.
Pasting text copied from another app creates a text object; pasting an image (from a screenshot tool or browser) imports it.
A paste goes on top of the active layer at the current frame, and is a single undo step.

Arranging and aligning

Order within a layer: ⌘] / ⌘[ bring forward / send backward. Add Shift to bring to front or send to back. The buttons are in Properties.
Align and distribute in Properties: left, centers, right, top, middle, bottom, and even spacing. Tick to stage to align to the stage instead of the selection.
Duplicate: ⌘D. Move to another layer: the Layer menu in Properties.