Defining the Animation Length with Keyframes

To define the length of the animation, proceed as follows:

1. Click on the cell that you just defined with the Motion property.
   
   
The square which appears under the cursor means that you can move this cell through the timeline.

But just moving the cell will not define the animation length (a frame number higher than 1). To define the number of frames in your animation sequence, the cell must span several timeline frames:


2. Press the Ctrl key, hold it down and click on the cell. The square under the cursor will now show a cross. Move the cell through the timeline up to frame 20 and release the mouse button.
   
   


Figure 6: the appearance of the cursor corresponds to the actions you can carry out with it.

You have now set the start and end points of your animation. These limits are necessary otherwise there would be no animation. The cells corresponding to these points are called keyframes.