Cells

Toonboom is sort of stuck between the traditional animation and the digital mentalities. When it first starts up, over on the right is a traditional dope sheet (exposure sheet, x-sheet, etc.). Those familiar with timing things out before animating will be on familiar ground -- you can even time the animation out in Toonboom without having any artwork. But in Sceneplanning mode, Toonboom has a timeline much like other non-linear editors. How the two interact is a little odd, and even after a week or so using Toonboom I still do not have a good grasp of how it works.

One of the first thing you learn when using Flash is to make everything a symbol. Usually, when doing linear animation, it would be a Graphic symbol. You can then grab those symbols from the Library, switch them out, and generally make a nice collection of body parts and props. Maybe even sorted into folders, or shared among a team. One of the most annoying things about Flash is how the Library doesn't automatically show when opening a file, seeing as though it is so useful.

When Toonboom opens, there isn't a Library either. But just like Flash, there is one, you just have to show it. And it works in much the same way. There are two big differences:

1. Everything you draw in an Element cell automatically becomes a symbol


2. Those symbols are automatically named for the Element is was drawn in, appended with a number.

While this took me some time to get around, I now think its pretty darn cool. It does, however, require some thought when creating artwork. Elements, the vertical columns in the exposure sheet, need to be named clearly, and attention should be paid to what you draw in each column. Open your Library, and check out how symbols are made as you draw and add new exposures.

A cool benefit to this is changing the symbols around. With Flash, the best you could hope for is to name symbols well, and put them in clear folders. When it came to switch symbols around, you could click the "Swap Symbol" button, and find your replacement symbol (as long as the folder it is in is open in the Library. Bad, bad bug). With Toonboom, you can select a bunch of cells, and using the Cell palette set the symbol to what you're after.



I look forward to finding out more how this could be used in production.

Drawing

I appreciate that one can just start drawing in Toonboom. Sure, it would probably help to know about exposures, Libraries, etc. But for the initial tryout, I want to be able to try out the drawing.

I started with the mouse, and it fared well. Drawing is similar to the brush in Flash -- but only on the surface. This is best described when using the Pen tool. Toonboom offers different pen styles, where the user is able to define the width, pressure, and other variables, and can save the brush for later. Very cool, especially when your animation style has a lot of thick/thin brushwork. Define one brush for wide work, and another one for detail, and away you go. The Wacom support is great... except that my damn Graphire pen nib keeps sticking, and will not stop drawing. Very, very frustrating, but nothing to do with Toonboom. One cool feature is that you can extract the center line from a brush stroke, which can be copied out and used elsewhere.

Again, in the 12-field drawing layout, you can rotate the drawing in 45 degree increments, just like a real animation table. This is very useful if you are drawing directly into Toonboom without any prior scan. Keystrokes for this are a convenient "c" and "v".

Onion skinning is easily turned on for up to three drawings, forward and backward.

Initial Impressions

First impressions of the application, from user interface to documentation.

I purchased the download version, and did not receive any packaging or paper documentation. The pdf documentation has a nice table of contents, which is very useful. Also useful are the "See Also" listings at the end of each section, hot-linked to their destination. The actual content of the documentation is not as great. Its strength is that it works as a reference document, and looking things up is very easy. I have had to struggle with figuring out how to actually use the application, which as far as I can tell from a rough poll of associates is a common problem. I think the main problem is that after using Flash for so long, I am very set in the Macromedia way of doing things, and the Toonboom documentation does little to address "making the switch". Hopefully this blog might shed some light.

The user interface has a ton of potential. I love the idea of being able to rotate the workspace, and having multiplane is very cool (especially coming from Flash, where making camera moves is a pain). Just opening up the application tickles my animator bone -- right there is a 12-field grid, and a traditional dopesheet. Tablet support is ready to go (more on this later), and onion-skinning is much more obviously available than in Flash. In all, first impressions of the UI is promising.

Introduction

I have been animating professionally in Flash for seven years, and know my way around the Flash environment. It is, by far, the most popular application to use; however it has never been a great environment, with awkward setups and animation, glitchy interfaces, etc. Of late, the new versions have been much more geared towards website development, with the animation features taking a back seat. Recently I purchased ToonBoom, which claims to allow the user to make Flash animations from the approach of an animator. Having been trained as a classical animator, this was very appealing to me. The purpose of this blog is to journal my experiences learning Toonboom.