This is a straightforward tutorial on how to use Toon Boom.
It’s specifically for artists used to animating in Adobe Animate or Flash, but you can still
use this tutorial without experience.
Launch Toon Boom.
Browse to the project folder you want to save the animation you’re about to start.
Choose your project size settings.
Create Scene.
Toom Boom creates a folder for the entire scene, so this is very different from Flash.
Every scene has its own folder.
You need to copy this entire folder to move a scene or back it up.
The first thing that will confound you when you start using Toon Boom is everything you
draw is pixelated.
This is because Toon Boom does not render your drawings in real time.
If you want to see what your stage actually looks like, you need to click this blue flower
icon above the timeline.
Note you can’t live-playback or scrub your timeline in render view.
You have to click back to the gray flower to do that.
Being unable to see real-time results is weird, but you get used to it.
Which brings up the next conundrum: the render preview shows the stage as black, and when
your outlines are black, you can’t see anything.
To fix this, click the plus button on the timeline and choose Colour-Card.
Drag the art layer up so it isn’t nested in the color card.
By default the card is white, but you can change it by double clicking the layer.
In preview view, when you click to a different layer those squares go away.
Color cards are opaque layers, so they will export with your animation unless you hide
them by clicking these eyes before exporting.
Lock the layer so you don’t end up selecting it on accident all the time.
Moving on to drawing tools.
The keyboard shortcuts for drawing tools in Toon Boom are different from Adobe, so you
must to re-learn them.
If you absolutely need to, you can change shortcuts under Edit >> Preferences in the
Drawing Mode category.
Click and hold on any tool with a little arrow on it to access tools nested beneath it.
While you’re drawing, the abilities of whatever tool you are using show up in the Tool Properties
window.
The pencil shows the style types.
You can create a new one by clicking this arrow and then one of these tiny buttons at
the top of the window to add new or overwrite old.
Below style choice are options such as paint behind, auto fill, end trimming, and other
options Flash doesn’t have that you can play with.
There are lots of tool options you won’t be familiar with, so experiment.
Tools you won’t recognize at all include cutter, which you can slash over a hanging
line to auto delete.
Often it only selects the segment and you have to press the delete key.
Stroke and Close Gap tools work on invisible lines, which I’ll talk about later.
Drawing Pivot sets the transformation point, which you’ll need because in Toon Boom the
default pivot point for everything is the center of the stage.
Morphing Tool - think of it as advanced shape tweens.
You’ll have to watch tutorials on how to use the morphing tool if you want to do shape
tweens in Toon Boom.
Animate button, which is for tweening.
Below that, Toon Boom’s free transform tool affects the layer properties, not the art
itself.
What that means is you should use the select tool to scale, rotate, and skew art.
The transform tool is for tweens and impermanent layer adjustments you can undo by resetting
the layer properties.
See a layer’s properties by clicking the plus button on that layer.
Minus to collapse it.
Under transform is a tool you already know - onion skin - but with easy adjustment buttons
above the drawing area plus the handles on the timeline you’re used to.
To change drawing color, you need to pick a swatch from a palette.
Make a new swatch with plus, double click to edit.
All Toon Boom colors work as if they were linked swatches in Flash.
Draw anywhere in this entire scene with one swatch, and if you change that swatch, it
changes all of the places you used that swatch.
Every color you draw with must have a swatch - you can’t grab whatever random colors
you want like in Flash.
To keep things organized you can have multiple palettes.
Something very different about Toon Boom is every layer in the timeline has a layer for
line art and a layer for color art within it.
Higher tier versions of Toon Boom let you turn on an overlay and underlay layer in addition
to that under Edit >> Preferences >> Advanced >> Support Overlay and Underlay Arts.
To change which layer you are drawing on, click this bar.
Can’t see the bar?
Right click in >> Art Layer.
A best practice is to draw line art on the line layer.
Select the art, then click Create Color Art from Line Art button in tool properties.
Now select the color layer.
Invisible outlines appear.
Use your paint bucket to fill in the outlines.
If there are gaps - indicated by these yellow nodes, close them with Close Gap tool or Stroke
tool for drawing shapes with invisible outlines.
Toon Boom gets even weirder.
Right now we are in Camera view.
Click this tab to go to Drawing View.
Suddenly all we see is the color art.
Drawing view shows us only the layer we are working on, and it hides any transformations
you might have made to the layer itself.
So say in camera view you grab the transform tool and rotate your art.
Go to drawing view.
Those transformations are hidden.
Maybe you can tell already, but drawing view is incredibly useful.
If you do want to see all of the layers at once in drawing view, click the eye at the
top of the column.
To display all of the layers in the timeline, click the light above the drawing area.
Unlike Flash, drawing tools only work on the part of the layer you’re working on, and
all strokes are independent entities, so you’ll never worry about lining over colors or coloring
over lines or erasing a hole through all of your unlocked layers.
However, you will accidentally forget to switch back to the line art layer and have to cut
the stuff you made on the color layer and paste it to the line layer.
Sometimes you will want to edit line art and color art at the same time, and you can do
that by picking a tool like the eraser and turning on this option.
Once you’re used to the tools you can do things that would be unimaginable in Flash,
like turn an entire layer into color art, then color every single frame with one click.
This trick only works with small spacing, i.e. the art can’t move too far from its
start point.
Now let’s talk about differences in frame-by-frame animation.
For the most part it’s what you would expect - draw a picture.
Click the next frame.
Draw the next picture.
Click once, click again, hold, and drag a frame to change timing.
Use the + and - keys to lengthen or shorten a frame’s duration.
Click and drag over blank frames and then hit this button to fill in gaps.
The weird thing about Toon Boom is that drawings are linked.
So if you copy one drawing and paste it over here, then draw something new, it affects
your original drawing too!
The way to stop this from happening is to copy your drawing, paste it, then click this
Duplicate Drawing button to create a new drawing.
You’ll notice the name of the drawing changes too.
Now when you draw, the first picture stays the same.
Do not expect to be able to copy drawings from one layer and paste them into another.
You can do this in Flash.
You can not do it in Toon Boom.
You’ll have to use the select tool to copy the art, then go to the new layer and paste
the art.
Don’t try to paste frames to and from different layers.
It’ll mess things up.
To make an animation loop, you copy and paste drawings.
It’s not the greatest, but it works.
For tweening animations, there are no symbols.
Toon Boom has symbols, but forget about them.
You don’t need them.
Click on the layer you want to tween.
Then click this orange curve button in the timeline.
This makes a peg.
In Toon Boom, you animate pegs, not the art itself.
Once you have a peg, make sure the animate button is turned on, then select the free
transform tool.
Click the peg layer.
Drag your art where you want it to go.
The tween appears on the peg layer.
Tools in the timeline allow you to add or remove keyframes and set easing type for selected
keyframes.
These two buttons switch keyframes between tweens and stop motion.
Stop motion keyframes let the art jump from one position to the next without sliding around
in between.
The transform tool isn’t the only tool you can use for making tweens.
Any of the blue “Advanced Animation” tools up here are for tweening as well.
You can nest layers within layers, pegs within pegs, and do all of the layer building to
make a puppet directly in the timeline without ever touching a symbol.
To add and animate a camera, plus button, Camera.
Add a peg to the camera.
Animate the peg like you would anything else.
If your camera is being stupid, click the peg, right click the drawing area >> Show
Path and Control Parameters.
Get your transform tool.
Click a node.
In the menu, Animation >> Linear Motion.
Click the next node.
Keep doing this.
It’s annoying and tedious, but I haven’t found a more efficient way to fix it.
When finished, click the peg layer, right click the drawing area and pick the option
again to hide the curve.
Masks in Toon Boom are called a Cutter Effect.
To apply an effect to a layer, click it, then plus button >> Effects >> Cutter.
Uncollapse cutter.
You need a matte layer.
Duplicate the layer you want to use as a mask.
Click and drag the layer to the matte box.
Finally, double click on cutter and check “inverted.”
There’s your mask.
Effects only work on individual layers.
If you need to put a single effect on a set of multiple layers, you’ll have to select
all of the layers, right click, group selection.
Click on the group, not the layers, plus button, effect, pick an effect.
Most effects won’t show up unless you are in render view, so you’ll need to click
the blue flower to see if it looks right.
On to the library!
Works like Flash, but not really.
First, start a new library by right clicking >> Open Library.
Choose a place to create a library you want to save puppets and art in for use in other
Toon Boom animations.
Select Folder.
Right click on the library >> Right To Modify.
Highlight, drag, and drop art and animations you want to reuse into the library.
If you want to edit something in the library, you must make sure you have right to modify
checked for the library, then right click the item >> Edit Template.
Open any Toon Boom scene and drag things from the library into the scene to use them.
To preview your animation click the play button.
Turns sound playback on or off with the audio buttons.
Loop the preview with the loop button.
Change which section is looping by adjusting the black stop and start arrows.
Create a render preview with the starred play button.
This exports every frame in your selection to the frames folder in your scene, then loads
them into a player and previews them for you.
Remember to delete these images at some point to free up file space.
I usually clean out all of the frames folders in my scenes when an animation is finished
and online.
Finally, exporting.
File >> Export >> Movie.
You don’t get many options.
To preserve the integrity of anything you imported to toon boom, say, painted backgrounds,
you need to export every keyframe at the highest quality.
For After Effects or any other type of compositing you plan to do outside Toon Boom that involves
putting things with transparent backgrounds on top of other things, everybody recommends
exporting a PNG sequence instead of a movie file with alpha channel.
Use PNGs.
It takes up less file space.
You can export SWFs out of Toon Boom, but they only work for very specific things: basic
lines and colors without any effects or textured lines.
HUFF That is a really solid, condensed tutorial on getting started with Toon Boom.
This doesn’t cover any of the Toon Boom Premium features (that tier is too expensive
for my budget) but it is everything you’ll need to know to get started without all that
awkward flailing because it’s so different from Flash.
Make some great animations!
If you’re looking for more straight-to-the-point tutorials I’ve made, see description below.