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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.