Manual

Getting it running.

No installer and no account. Unzip the folder anywhere and run douga.exe. It writes its starter brushes beside itself the first time; delete the folder and it's gone.

Windows may still warn you. The download is code‑signed, but SmartScreen wants a reputation as well as a signature, and a new certificate earns that one run at a time. If the blue "Windows protected your PC" panel shows, click More info, then Run anyway. Every install teaches it the build is fine.
CUT 01

Tools

Nine tools that aim, plus brush, eraser and fill which live with the brush sliders. Each has a single‑key shortcut.

BBrush — lay down paint at the pressure you press with
EEraser — take paint back off
FFill — flood the region under the click
IEyedropper — take the color under the click onto the brush
NLine — drag a straight segment; Shift snaps the angle
CCamera — drag the export crop, keyed at the playhead; it moves the camera, not the artwork
MMarquee — drag out a rectangular selection
LLasso — draw a freehand selection
WMagic wand — select the region that matches what you click
TTransform — move / scale / rotate what's selected
YText — click the paper to aim, type into the card; Place lands the letters as paint
HHand — drag the paper around
CUT 02

Keyboard

Every key below is a default, not a law. Preferences has a keyboard section that rebinds any of them, and the menus and tooltips follow.

drawing frames
KNew cel on the active layer at the playhead
DDuplicate the previous cel
, / .Flip back / forward — drawing to drawing, so a hold is one tap
OOnion skin on / off
0 / 1Fit canvas / zoom to 100% (the numpad pair works too)
/Flip the paper horizontally to check the drawing
Shift+, / .Rotate the canvas left / right; Shift+/ levels it
playback
SpacePlay / stop
/ Previous / next frame; Shift makes it a jump
Home / EndFirst / last frame
Shift+I / OMark the loop start / end; loop the marked range from the Playback menu
layers
Ctrl+Shift+NNew layer
Ctrl+J / EDuplicate layer / merge down
Ctrl+] / [Move the layer up / down the stack
Alt+] / [Select the layer above / below
Ctrl+Shift+HLayer visibility on / off
paint
XSwap the foreground and background colors
[ / ]Brush smaller / bigger
file & edit
Ctrl+N / O / SNew · Open · Save (Ctrl+Shift+S for Save As)
Ctrl+Z / YUndo / redo — through structure as well as strokes (Ctrl+Shift+Z also redoes)
Ctrl+X/C/VCut / copy / paste — frames in the sheet, pixels in a selection
Ctrl+A / D / ISelect all / deselect / invert
DelClear the selection
F11Fullscreen
Ctrl+,Preferences
CUT 03

Getting ffmpeg, if you want video

PNG sequences, animated GIFs, APNGs and audio are built in and need nothing installed. Only MP4 out and the video‑import add‑on need ffmpeg, which Douga doesn't bundle.

01

Get the build

Download ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip from gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds (linked from ffmpeg.org's download page) and unzip it. The file that matters is ffmpeg.exe, in the bin folder.

02

Drop it beside Douga

Put that ffmpeg.exe into the Douga folder, next to douga.exe. Douga looks there first, so there's nothing else to set up.

03

Or point at it

Rather keep it elsewhere? Paste the full path into the ffmpeg path box in Preferences and every video verb finds it there.

CUT 04

The menus

動画 · douga — the inbetween drawings of a Japanese animation pipeline made by one person, Kei Hoag · r/douga · tell me what broke · license · privacy