This lends a more realistic feel to animations, and brings a sophistication to vector animation that is sure to impress. All of your characters and objects are flat, mind you, but cameras can be animated to relate to the scenes in ways that simulate 3D relations between objects. Perhaps the most interesting and desirable feature of the program lies in the fact that the scenes can be assembled and animated in a three dimensional space. Although the timeline here is Flash-like in its frame layout, much of this interface is unique to Toon Boom Studio. The Scene Planning mode is much more complex than the Drawing mode, and will take some studying of the manual to figure out. It is simply too difficult to try to draw with a mouse, especially in an application like this where you are trying to achieve a more natural, artistic look. I would highly recommend purchasing a digital tablet for use with this application, if you do not already own one. Of course, the variable widths only work in conjunction with a pressure-sensitive pen and digital tablet. The “pen palette” offers a number of selectable drawing points that can feature variable widths and different smoothing settings. The toolset is refined and simple and features everything you need to draw, paint, and edit your characters. If you are at all familiar with traditional cel animation, this setup will make you feel at home. This is somewhat like Flash’s onion-skinning feature, but with an “exposure sheet” that refers to drawings rather than frames. The Drawing View window is the primary interface and functions as a digital version of a traditional cel animator’s light table. Drawing is where you assemble your character animations Scene Planning is where you animate your sets and cameras. It basically consists of two modes: Drawing and Scene Planning. All of the tools are fairly self-explanatory, so much so that it is easy to get started without looking at the manual or any tutorials. The environment is very conducive to character animation. Toon Boom Studio’s interface is well laid out and fairly intuitive. Toon Boom Studio is specifically an authoring environment for character/set animation, and thus does not offer the complex interactivity provided by Flash MX. Although you can use Toon Boom to produce standalone SWF files, it’s likely that your cartoons will be integrated with files/interfaces produced in Flash. In fact, Flash MX ships with a special importer for Toon Boom Studio files, similar to the importer Flash uses for Electric Rain’s Swift 3D files. Think of it more as a cooperative or supplemental application. This is not to say that Toon Boom is a direct competitor for Macromedia. Its rich feature set and ease of use will make it attractive to traditional animators wanting to go digital, as well as designers and artists who are interested in exploring character animation for the first time. Toon Boom Studio is an impressive software application aimed at animators who are delivering in SWF and Quicktime formats. But those with traditional character animation backgrounds may have found the tools and production environment within Flash somewhat difficult and lacking. Share your comments on this topic with other web professionalsįor years, Flash has enabled animators to produce some inspiring results.
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