Animation Tutorials Using Toon Boom Animate
This first lesson on animation will get you started with Toon Boom Animate and Toon Boom Animate Pro animation software by showing you how to create an animation project from the Welcome Screen. Learn how to modify your Scene Settings, including the project resolution, as well as some of the most basic preferences. Take a tour of the interface and find out about the various "views", toolbars, menus and panels.
Discover drawing basics while learning to sketch an animation character, a prop and the rudiments of a background. Draw with the Pencil and Brush tool, as well as with Line Texture. Learn the difference between drawing in the Camera view and Drawing view and the Line Art and Colour Art modes. Get an introduction to the Tool Properties panel and the options that exist for each of the Drawing tools, including the Auto-Flatten and Draw Behind features. Lastly, learn how to adjust and edit your drawn objects, such as how to convert a pencil line to a brush stroke or repositioning the pivot point to make a rotation.
Now that you have created a rough sketch of your animated character, it is time to learn how to clean up and "ink" your animation drawing in this how to animation course. At the same time, learn more about the Drawing Tools, such as the Polyline, Cutter, Perspective and Shape tools, as well as the Contour Editor. Find out how to prepare your cleaned up artwork for colouring, by using the Auto-Close Gap and Create Colour Art Automatically features.
Take some time to continue the animation background you started and to clean up the animated prop you created in Pack 2, with the use of more Drawing Tools. In this how to animate lesson, you'll learn how to smooth lines, optimize, convert and group. In addition, discover how to create text and customize it to create a title for your animation.
Enter into the world of colour by learning to paint your cleaned up and inked animated cartoon character. Learn all about the Colour Palette and Colour Swatches, including solid, gradient, textured fills, cloning a Colour Palette and importing a Colour Model. Discover how to paint multiple zones or multiple animation drawings quickly and easily and verify that they have been painted. Discover how to use Invisible Lines to free your animated character from the bounds of an outline for painting. Finally, find out about the Line Art, Colour Art, Overlay and Underlay layers.
In this how to animation tutorial series you will learn how to gather content for an animation project. Toon Boom Animate and Toon Boom Animate Pro offer you the ability to import animated artwork, such as backgrounds and props that were created in third-party software. Not only will you learn how to import a bitmap image, PSD, AI, PDF and Flash project files, you can also choose to vectorize them or keep their separate layer structure when importing. Moreover, find out now to import QuickTime movies to add a special dimension to your animation.
Animated Character Breakdown is the process of breaking down the artwork of a character into a cut-out puppet, so you can animate it. This process can be lengthy. Start it out right with this step by step tutorial by learning how to study your model, as well as about Line ups, Field Charts and Relative Brush Sizes with Toon Boom Animate and Toon Boom Animate Pro. Other tips include: deciding which parts to cut and which to keep together, mixing hand-drawn animation with your cut-out, flipping logos and completing overlapping pieces. Learn how professionals animators break down the main parts, secondary parts and extra views.
In this second Animated Character Breakdown Tutorial we continue to discover how to set the pivots and clean up the body parts of your animated character that was cut from the source artwork, so that all the joints rotate smoothly and naturally. Discover what Ghost Drawings are and decide if they are important for your character. Find out how to create extra drawings for your animated character such as extra hand and mouth positions in Toon Boom Animate and Toon Boom Animate Pro.
Character Rigging is probably the lengthiest and most challenging series to follow, this learning pack is divided into two parts. The first 7 videos detail the rigging process in the Network view for Toon Boom Animate Pro. The second 5 videos show you how to rig through the Timeline view in Toon Boom Animate. Learn how to create a Mixed Rig, including setting the pivots, creating patches at the elbows and knees and fixing the animated character's mouth with Effects. Finish these lessons by discovering how to create a reusable template of your rigged character and store it in your Library.
One of the advantages to the cut-out animation style is the reusability factor. In this how to do an animation lesson you'll learn all about animation libraries and folders, including Symbols and Templates and see how to store your own animation creations for reuse. Find out about the different parts of the library, such as the Preview and Drawing Substitution window. You will also learn how to create and structure your own animation libraries and folders.
Now that you've created your animated characters, props and background elements, it's time to set them up in your Camera frame. In this series of lessons we'll go over the entire animation scene setup and show you how to setup your Camera as well as how to position your scene elements. You'll discover how to do these things in the Timeline in Toon Boom Animate and through the Network view in Toon Boom Animate Pro. Lastly, find out how to distribute your element along the z-axis, using the Top, Side and Perspective (Animate Pro only) views, to create a multiplane.
Creating animation paths can be both a simple and a complex process. Upon watching these animation video tutorials, you'll discover how simple it is to add and delete keyframes in the timeline view. Discover the various ways that you can animate such as directly on a layer, using pegs and using the Layer Properties panel. See how to animate, not just your drawn elements, but also the Camera, to create interesting pans and truck-ins.
Now that you've learned the basics of animating we'll move on to the more complex end of the animation process in Part II of the animation paths series. After watching the following lessons you'll discover how to take a mechanical movement and make it look life-like. Learn how to do this by shaping the path of your elements, by creating function curves to describe these movements and by adjusting the velocity of these motions.
Animating a prop or a camera movement is one thing, but animating a full cut-out puppet is quite another. Learn how to navigate the cut-out character's hierarchy in the Timeline view in Toon Boom Animate, and the Network view in Toon Boom Animate Pro, and then animate those parts through the Timeline view. Learn when and when not to use the Animate Mode, Transform tool and Motion and Stop-Motion keyframes. Find out when to swap drawings, create new drawings, create cycles and much, much, more.
Not to be confused as an animation style in and of itself, in this tutorial you'll learn what Inverse Kinematics is and when it is best to use it. In this animation course there are two separate videos that will illustrate how to setup your character with the Inverse Kinematics rig in Toon Boom Animate and Toon Boom Animate Pro, respectively. Lastly, learn how to animate with the Inverse Kinematics tools, as well as additional tips and tricks when using the IK process.
Up to now, these tutorials have focused on the Cut-out Animation style. This series which covers Tradigital Animation Techniques, you show you how to integrate free-flowing organic elements animated in traditional animation style but done completely digitally hence the name Tradigital. Learn about the Tradigital Animation tools and the basics to creating a traditional animated sequence directly in animation software.
In addition to using functions, the timing for animation is an equally important factor in giving your animation a life-like quality. In this how to animation learning series you will be trained on the Timeline, Xsheet and Data views in relation to one another and the timing for animation. Learn about Exposures, Frames, Layers and Columns and what they have to do with timing.
Also not to be confused as an animation style, learn how to use Morphing to create rich, organic movements, such as fire, smoke, clouds, hair or cloth blowing in the wind, as an alternative to the Traditional Animation process. With this animation course you will learn what Morphing rules are and how to use the Morphing tools. Discover how to adjust the velocity and timing of a morphed sequence, as well as additional morphing tips and tricks.
These how to animation lessons are designed exclusively for Toon Boom Animate Pro. They take multiplane one step further by showing you how to construct your background, by flipping planes, in True 3D Space also known as the Parallax Effect. You can have a multitude of camera angles from which to film your animated scene. Learn how to plan and layout your background elements for rotation. Find out how to use the 3D tools, as well as how to position your pieces, manage the Network and create a 3D Camera motion.
In this learning series, we will demonstrate how to enhance sound in animation software. Whether you would like to add sound effects, dialogue or background music, no third-party software is necessary. Learn how to import a sound file into your project, playback your sound and sound scrub. Find out how to edit your sound file, including, timing, trimming, looping and mixing the animation sound volume. Lastly, discover how to use the powerful Lip-Sync detection feature to have your animated character mouth follow a clip of dialogue.
Learn how to add animation effects through the Timeline in Toon Boom Animate, and through the Network view in Toon Boom Animate Pro. Discover how to tailor animation effects to your specific tastes by adjusting its parameters in the Layer Properties panel. Lastly, find out how to animate these effects over time. Some of the animation effects shown in these videos include: Motion Blur, Glow, Shadow, Highlight, Transparency and Colour Scale.
Now that you’ve finally completed all the scenes required for your animation, it is finally time to learn how to export and composite animation files together into a single video file. Find out what export formats are available and about their properties. Learn how to create multiple renders in Toon Boom Animate Pro, as well as how to scale or crop your final output. Lastly, discover how to composite your rendered scenes in a 3rd party software, including how to choose the best animation project settings, how to import your animation scenes, create transitions, edit animation sound and produce your final export.
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