Digital Cel animation

Toon Boom STUDIO


Interface

using the brush and the pencil tools

changeing the brush into a pencil type line

Animating with cells, camera layer and pegs

Draw a body with no head and add a colour palette.

rename the palette whatever you like. colour. turn on the auto light table to be able to see the other drawing layer.

Create a new drawing layer, then draw a head facing forward, right and left

right

left


Extend exposure to 50 or the same as the body layer.

The global in the library saves whatever is put in there, so if you access it from another computer and it is on the same server you can access your work. The local however you can not.



CAMERA

                                              First switch to scene planning mode

create a peg and put the head layer and body layer inside it.

this way the head will be attached to the body and we can move it as a whole instead of the head moving separate to the body.

key frame and move the character using the motion tool arrow button.

.................just a note-

The local library is where you can store the head or body layer so you can bring it out and duplicate it to create another character.................

I realy prefur the Toon boom animate version of the camera tool as it is much smoother and makes more sense in hoe you use it.

ROTATING!


Cells-

Using cells you can replace a head with another head. like the forward position head can be replace with a side view head just by selecting form the cells.

Add a camera peg so that the camera can be animated.

Toon boom Bones

create a character or in this case arm on a drawing layer and extend the exposure to whatever required, in this case it will be 60.

make the bones on the character with the bone creator tool (kite with the plus). With joints (arms and legs) go down, working from the top of the arm to the bottom where the hand is. With torso and head work from bottom to top.

You can change the influence the bones have on the objects near it using the bone influence tool (kite surrounded by marching ants) Influence has to be changed to elliptical on the drop down list.

Screen shots of creating bones on a character:

parent legs and arms to torso using the parenting tool (2 kites and arrow).

I would say that TB Studio's Bone tool is very easy to use in comparison to TB Animate. Their is only one problem however, if you have a character walking and you want the right arm in front of the other layers so it is in front of the body and not behind, i have yet to find out if it is even possible, the tutor had told us that even he is unsure if it can do it. This is a big problem with the program, in TB Animate it takes time to set a up the bones but it is a lot better as it works in layers and if i need a body part in front i just move the drawing layer above the ones i want it to be in front of.