# Keyframes & Transitions

**Track:** Video — beginner → intermediate — Generative AI Video — proposed
**Framework / surface:** ij8 Studio (start/end frame)
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** Directing the Lens

**In one line:** Anchor opening and closing composition for clean morphs.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Supplying both an opening and a closing frame turns generation into interpolation: the model must invent a plausible path between two fixed compositions rather than improvise forward from one. The concept descends from traditional animation, where senior artists drew the extreme poses—the keyframes—and assistants filled the in-betweens. Anchoring both ends disciplines the morph, preventing the drift and identity loss that unconstrained image-to-video tends toward. Aesthetically it foregrounds the transition itself: a transformation, a reveal, a match cut across two states. The clarity of a sequence depends on the clarity of its extremes, and well-chosen endpoints make the journey between them legible.