Animating Traditionally with Toon Boom

Let's listen to our audio clip.

Before we can start drawing, we have to listen for clues that help describe our characters and scene. I'll be analyzing the provided dialogue, and you'll get to see what type of things to look for when listening to a dialogue clip for the first time.

Introduction to Storyboard Pro, and starting a new project.

Discover the interface, navigate workspaces, layers, vector vs bitmap basics, and the Select tool.

Working with Tool Properties, customize the Brush tool, working with Captions, and important hot-keys.

I create our first storyboard scene, discussing staging, perspective, and adding tones.

Here, I add a second scene, discussing more on staging/layout; as well as demonstrating the Cutter tool, and an alternative way to tone your drawings.

Create the last scene, using additional panels to depict a change of action in the scene, and the Onion Skin to see drawings between panels.

Use Storyboard Pro to create an animatic from our drawings, adding our dialogue clip, and time out the images to the audio. Then, export the animatic for Harmony/Animate/Animate Pro.

I revisit the dialogue clip listening for performance cues, and discuss acting for animation as reference, including live acting samples.

Introduction to Harmony, and opening the animatic.

Import artwork into Harmony, and create and manipulate layers.

Using the Brush vs the Pencil tools; and how to create and work with Harmony's unique Smart Colour System.

Drawing our first key poses (pose-to-pose), working with drawing exposure and the Onion Skin.

Inbetweening, arcs, S-curves, C-curves, and follow-though.

Squash and Stretch, and animating the lip sync (without using the cut-out lip-sync feature).

With the rough animation complete, clean up the drawings using a consistent line weight, and finally, add colour.

Now that the animation is done, remove or hide the unwanted layers, and export the finished animation to a QuickTime movie file.