
Learn to rig a simple 2D cut-out character in Toon Boom Harmony and animate a walk cycle, using Pepper as the example, with studio-style tips.
Customize Toon Boom Harmony by adjusting preferences: enable focus on mouse enter, set auto save, and toggle animate using animation tools under advanced options, then apply and proceed.
Learn how to manage resource files in Toon Boom Harmony by downloading, unzipping, navigating the pepper asset folders, and sharing the full project folder as a compressed file.
Explore a quick overview of setting up a simple cut-out character rig in Toon Boom Harmony, including layers, drawing substitutions, and using the timeline and tools to animate.
Learn to set drawing pivots for each layer in Toon Boom Harmony, using the rotate tool or advanced animation tools to anchor pivots at eyes, mouth, and limbs.
Parent the mouth, eyebrows, eyes, nose, hat, and hairpiece to the body, then use nudging with option/alt and down arrow to bring pieces forward so they rotate with the body.
Add a bone deformer or curve deformer to a cut-out character in Harmony, set up pivot and articulator with the deformation toolbar, then test bone movement with the transform tool.
Apply kinematic output to the hat and face parts so they move with the body but do not distort as it bends.
Create an arm rig in Toon Boom Harmony using the curve deformer (premium) to bend the arm and apply a kinematic output so the hand moves with the arm.
Rig an arm in Toon Boom Harmony using the bone deformer with joints at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Adjust the articulator size to simulate a curved former.
Rig the legs using the bone and the rigging tool, adjust the hip, knee, and ankle, and test distortion with the transform tool.
Learn drawing substitutions in Harmony to swap drawings on the timeline, manage exposures, and use the library and bracket keys to animate blinking and speech in cut-out characters.
Place all layers and reformers into a master peg to centralize control, enable rotation, and simplify animation and timeline management.
Store a character in Harmony's library to reuse across documents, drag it into your timeline, and manage symbols and premium libraries for cross-document animation.
Learn to build a simple walk cycle in Toon Boom Harmony using two poses, the contact pose and the passing pose, flipped for direction on a rigged character.
Duplicate keyframes two to four, adjust the pose, and move the character and camera to create a subtle bob and prepare for hat secondary motion.
Add secondary motion by rotating the hair and applying a phase peg to eyes, eyebrows, and mouth, so the face shifts with the body for a subtle 3-d look.
Set timing for key poses and finish the walk cycle by placing keys on all layers and spacing frames on odd numbers for a convincing, looping walk.
Close out your simple cut-out 2D animation in Toon Boom Harmony, invite feedback, and explore more courses with a $15 coupon, plus join us on YouTube for additional tutorials.
So, what exactly is “Cut-Out Animation”?
In 2D animation, there are 2 different types of animation. One is hand drawn, or full animation, and the other is cut-out or limited animation. With cutout animation you are basically working with a puppet. A good comparison is like of the Halloween decoration of the skeleton that is hinged together. It's because of this hinging that you can pose the skeleton in different positions.
Cut-out animation became very popular with the advent of television, and a need to provide animated content much quicker than it had been produced. A good comparison would be full animation is Bugs Bunny this animation was in theaters, playing before movies. In contrast cut-out animation is like Fred Flintstone, So by creating a system where not every frame of animation had to be completely drawn out, characters were broken down into pieces (head, torso, arms, legs, etc) or cut out. This way you didn't have to draw the head more than once, or different mouth movements or hands. A modern day example of cut-out animation is the cartoon South Park. Think about the basic mouth movements of the characters. They were created once, and then used over, and over. This helps speed up the production, as new mouth drawings are rarely needed, if at all.
Even though 2D animation is rarely in theaters in the US, because of new networks like Netflix or Amazon as well as mobile games and Ebooks, 2D animation is still In high demand.
Our character, The Pepper, was designed to imitate the simplicity of the character Plankton for the cartoon Sponge Bob Square Pants. A basic oval-shape that encompasses his torso, head, and tail, with simple arms and legs attached.
This course shows you how simple it is to create 2D animation using Toon Boom Harmony, an industry standard for producing animated television shows, and films.
In this course, I can show you how to:
This course was designed so you could follow along, and learn not only Toon Boom Harmony, but some of the basic principles of animation itself!
So, enroll in this course, and let's get this Pepper character moving!