hello everyone, jan suggested i do a separate thread for these thoughts so here goes.
i am proposing a functionality where the animation is playing on your drawing window but the active frame stays persistent for you to draw.
That would have the following result> in a loop, when the frame’s time comes, it locks with the rest of the animation, but you are able to keep working at it and checking it with the moving picture in the same window.
Having a persistent frame that you work on, you could make judgments on your drawing choices 1000% more to the point of what the animation needs for fluidity and timing and details and the such. its the closest possible to the dream of ‘real time’ animating, where you ultimately build the animation as a sculpture
The closest i am to that as it stands is drawing the frame at a fairly big window not following the animation with the animation playing at a much smaller window positioned somehow in my line of sight.
The unique mechanics of PromotionNG to draw/play is at the core of this,
and it feels since i am able to draw on a certain frame while the project is running it might be even possible to see that frame on the playing window. or vice versa 
having the active frame persistent should save tones of time, and might add a million possibilities to how we draw still pictures that become moving pictures.
i’ll finish this with a few disclaimers so that jan doesnt waste his time with a niche request (though i think there should be huge merit for those working commercial pixel art)
i come from a fine-art background, and when i do visual art on a computer, by definition i consider it pixel art.
promotionNG is the only software i’ve found from the hundreds i’ve paid for, that allows me to be honest with my pixels.
so i use ProMotion for a variety of non-traditional ‘pixel art’ work. i consider it more like my honest digital drawing/painting software. for me promotionNG is where i do my visual ‘theatre’ before i go on to make the project a movie or smth…
when it comes to animating it’s much similar.whatever frames i move, they have somehow emerged from PromotionNG because everything else feels fkng dishonest. i mean cmn the current trend is to have the anti-aliasing so ingrained in the software that you’re not even allowed to look at your animation’s pixels without hacks… anyways… i also have to disclose that these quirks were enough for me to more or less stop my digital drawing until i rediscovered ProMotion, so yeah it’s important to me …
So here it is,… suggesting the possibility of proper realtime animating.
from what i’ve thought and i see so far, the very basic mechanics are there since i can draw on a specific frame whilst the animation is playing and i can navigate and do all functions while it’s playing. so all that’s left is for me to see the active frame enough so i can make my decisions.
a mid solution would be to detach the light-table (make it follow the active frame without following the animation)… that feels it cant go far.
A better way would be to stick on the active frame (painting) paradigm and underlay the animation playing some-how, (even managing the opacity of the 2 windows and overlaying them manually would do my job)
ultimately a magic way could be having a selector on each layer (similar to whether it uses the lightable) whether it will play as animation or as fixed frame editor.
and that would be the closest i can imagine to building an animation as a sculptor.
these are my thoughts,
be well all 