Toon Boom Studio Tutorial - Cartoon Animation Made Simple

Learn to set up a new Toon Boom Studio project, name it, choose size and frame, select presets for web, mobile, or HDTV, and navigate default and custom workspaces.

Customize Toon Boom Studio workspaces by arranging windows, adding a camera view, and saving a new layout like Tony 0 1; reopen keeps your open views.

Explore the Timbales interface in Toon Boom Studio, navigating camera, drawing, bone, and scene planning tools along with side, top, and drawing views; manage tools and animations via the timeline.

Learn to use onion skin and light table in Toon Boom Studio to compare previous and next frames, adjust eye pupils, and switch between camera and drawing views for animation.

Explore shape tools: rectangle, ellipse, and line. Adjust stroke thickness with pen window’s min size and max size and smoothness; hold shift to lock proportions or draw from center with option.

Explore the brush tool in Toon Boom Studio to vary line weight with stylus pressure, while mouse input remains uniform. Adjust minimum and maximum pen sizes and smooth lines.

Master pen tools in Toon Boom Studio by adjusting minimum and maximum stroke sizes, using pressure with a stylus or mouse, and selecting end shapes or custom pens for lines.

Learn to transform a basic rectangle with the contour editor: edit anchor points, adjust the path, add points with option-click, and refine curves using direction handles.

Master erasing, cutting, and scissoring in Toon Boom Studio to remove marks, cut shapes, and refine strokes. Learn quick shortcuts for selecting, undoing, and moving parts to create precise edits.

Group all sketch lines in Toon Boom Studio into a single unit with the select tool and a plus registration mark, then ungroup with command shift G for flexible editing.

Flatten connected strokes in Toon Boom Studio to create a single solid drawing you can move, color, and manipulate, then decide when to group versus flatten.

Duplicate the current palette to create a new custom palette for a character, then build styles like bob regular, bob night, and bob greyscale via hue, saturation, brightness, and blending.

Import sound files into Toon Boom Studio to create a timeline layer from AIFF, MP3, WAV, or M4A, then scrub, play, and edit for lip sync and music layering.

Import sketches from a file, set to black and white with no filter, preview and adjust thresholds, then vectorize solid black lines and refine with smoothing and the contour editor.

Import video into Toon Boom Studio by choosing AVI or MPEG formats, adjusting opacity, and using the footage as reference for rotoscoping or animation.

Learn to manage complex animations by pairing layers in a parent-child hierarchy, making the arm the parent and the boomerang the child to move together and save time.

Learn how to use the X-sheet in Toon Boom Studio, compare it with the timeline, and manage drawings, frames, onion skin, thumbnails, and layer organization.

Compare straight ahead animation and pose to pose animation, highlighting live feel, timing control, and risks to volume and scale in character work, using onion skin and layers.

Explore pose-to-pose animation, contrasting with straight-ahead methods by building key frames at 1 and 5, then create in-between breakdowns (2–4) with onion skin to control timing and beats.

Create cycles in Toon Boom Studio by drawing frames, setting exposure, and using simple and advanced cycle options to extend animation across multiple frames.

Learn rough animations and pencil tests in Toon Boom Studio, then clean up with solid lines on a clean layer. Use a two-color palette and in-between sketches with smoothing.

Master best practices for cutout animation in Toon Boom Studio by building a layered character with anchor points, rotating parts, and swapping drawings to create illusion of a single drawing.

Learn to hide hinges in Toon Boom Studio by layering and nudging parts in z space to create a single straight drawing, using delete, opacity tweaks, and forward/backward adjustments.

Learn to animate cutout characters in Toon Boom Studio using keyframes, constant vs nonconstant segments, and pivot point control with the Transform Tool, including squash and stretch for balance.

Master drawing substitutions in Toon Boom to add life to a character, enabling blinks, tongue movements, and eye squash and stretch through duplication, frame edits, and repainting.

Create a master peg to form a master pack, store it in the library, and reuse it across projects as a puppet template.

Learn to create and manipulate a skeleton rig in Toon Boom Studio using the bone creator to add joints, bend segments, and animate a single drawing line on the timeline.

Apply deformable textures with bones in Toon Boom Studio, using the deformable by bones option to make plaid patterns bend with the skeleton or stay fixed for tiling effects.

Animate with a skeleton using keyframes and the bone manipulator. Choose constant or non-constant frames, turn on skin, adjust the arm drawing, and explore textures and deformation to create motion.