Learn Toon Boom Harmony Essentials: Simple Turnaround Rigs

Design characters within harmony essentials by sketching with translucent blue tones, considering software limitations, planning head, shoulders, body connections, and layers for animation.

Learn how to clean up a character's linework in Toon Boom Harmony, adjusting line colors, building layered ink and color workflows, and refining strokes for clean, expressive turnaround rigs.

Borrow palettes from Disney and classic cartoons to guide skin tones, adjust colors for contrast, and use layered brushes to tighten details.

Learn to separate character artwork into layers in Toon Boom Harmony, creating layers for head, torso, arms, legs, eyes, and mouth, then arrange stacking order for proper animation.

Set up front, side, and three-quarter views by aligning head and torso layers, pasting drawings across frames, and preserving positions for smooth turn animations in Harmony.

Learn drawing substitutions for mouth, eyes, and head views across frames, extend exposure, and use the library to insert blank drawings for front and three-quarter perspectives.

Explore the difference between animating drawing objects and pegs in Toon Boom Harmony, with a simple arrow example, pivot points, and when to use each for your characters.

Learn to set permanent and temporary drawing pivots in harmony using the transform tool for temporary pivots and the rotate tool in advanced animation tools for permanent pivots.

Set peg pivots in harmony essentials by moving the peg on the peg layer, animating the peg while the drawing stays put and using peg selection to control the motion.

Learn to set up character pivots in Toon Boom Harmony using the rotatable tool for drawing or peg pivots, aligning at the head, torso, wrists, and ensuring correct rotation.

Explore bone deformer rigging basics in Toon Boom Harmony Essentials, creating rigid and rubber hose deformations with pivots, articulators, and selected deformation chains for flexible character animation.

Center the torso pivot at the waist in Toon Boom Harmony Essentials, set the bend at the belly button, and use a bone-to-former with curve reformers or envelope to form.

Rig the arms of a simple character by placing the shoulder pivot and elbow to wrist bones, then use rigging and transform tools and render to verify articulation.

Rig the legs in Toon Boom Harmony by treating the leg as an object, place pivot points at the hip and ankle, and use bones and articulators to enable walking.

Place and adjust a bone deformer on the hair, stretch a large articulator, and shorten the last bone to create the illusion of multiple drawing substitutions.

Master parent-child rigging by making the head control the mouth and hair so the eyes and mouth follow head movement; adjust layers to establish the head as the pivot.

Use the transform tool to nudge the mouse layer forward on the z axis so the mouth stays visible above the head, using option/alt and arrow keys.

Learn how to use kinematic output in Toon Boom Harmony to parent the head and arms to the torso while preserving separate deformations for hair and mouth, preventing unwanted distortion.

Add a peg to the arm bone, reposition the pivot at the shoulder, and nudge the peg to place the arm behind the torso for consistent peg-driven movement.

Explore how to create and edit symbols in Harmony essentials, using the symbols library and dragging frames to the library for reuse.

Create seamless leg rigs in Harmony by using patch layers and symbols to cover outlines, offset colors on the z axis, and parent limbs for fluid motion.

Learn advanced arm rigging techniques in Toon Boom Harmony by creating lower arm and hand rigs, using patching, symbols, and nudging for seamless, interlocking artwork.

Explore advanced hair rigging in Toon Boom Harmony Essentials by using symbols to separate front and back hair, adjust z-order with nudging, and animate with a custom pivot and articulator.

Create a symbol from the eyes, separate whites and pupils on their own layers, and push the whites back on the Z axis to sandwich them between the eyelids.

Place the eye symbol on the main timeline, adjust z-order so whites sit back and hair comes forward, then clone the layer to use as a mask.

Create a clone of the eyes layer using drawings and timing, rename it mask, and ensure the original and clone share the same drawing substitution for eye open and closed.

Mask the pupil with layer masks in Toon Boom Harmony 15, using direct masking on the layer and a clone to create an eye mask, unlike the color filter method.

Use the cutter filter on a clone of the ice layer to mask the pupils, invert the mask, and reveal the eyes for a clean turnaround rig.

Add a peg to the pupils to make them more flexible, then use pivot and transform to adjust position and rotation for different views, avoiding extra drawing substitutions.

Create a mouth symbol in Harmony Essentials on a new drawing layer using roughs. Use automatic lip sync as a guide to shape frames and refine outlines.

Clean up roughs and ink the mouth for turnaround rigs in Toon Boom Harmony. Build the inside mouth shapes with new layers, refined lines, and filled details.

Create two separate mouth layers for teeth and tongue in Toon Boom Harmony, using outlines and fills, drawing keyframes, duplicating frames, and applying masking to reveal each element.

Mask the tongue and teeth layers to build an advanced mouth rig in Toon Boom Harmony, using masking, matting, and layer order to reveal correct line art and controls.

Learn how to rename drawing substitutions in Toon Boom Harmony Essentials for turnaround rigs, including front, three-quarter, and side views, and note that you cannot rename symbols on the timeline.

Learn to adjust frame exposure in Toon Boom Harmony by expanding the timeline and shifting frames with plus and minus keys to align front, three-quarter, and side views.

Learn to create a master peg in Toon Boom Harmony by grouping torso, head, arms, and legs, setting a base pivot, and saving templates for quick animation.

Learn to nudge limbs along the z-axis in Toon Boom Harmony Essentials using animate button and keyframes at frames 21 and 41 to align arms in front and side views.

Create a simple eye blink in Toon Boom Harmony by using a master template and drawing substitutions to hold eye and mouth drawings, adjust frames, and move pupils for direction.

Create and save reusable animations as action templates in Toon Boom Harmony, using keyframes on the master peg to tilt the head and blink, then drag templates into the timeline.