Digit's filthy casual animation tutorials

The goal is to have fun and get over the technical aspects of harmony in order to use it like a filthy casual - just like me !

[casualtoonboom]

Will you be doing more animation tutorials? I recently downloaded the program and your animation style is what im looking for. Could you do more beginner tutorials, or have any good recommendations for beginners?

I would love to ! I love to teach and do tutorials I’ve just been very busy at work. its def always on my mind and I hope over the summer I can get more time to start from a nice beginner level. 

I would say program wise that toonboom has a lot of video tutorials on how to get started , and then try to start with the very basics like a bouncing ball. if you’re looking on ANIMATION tutorials then start with looking up the principles of animation . once you know what the principles are you can find a lot of tutorials on timing, spacing, squash and stretch , all sorts of things. but thats your beginner level is looking up those basics ! also the animators survival kit is also a good book to get if you are looking to get into animation :) 

[casualtoonboom]

RIGS 2 

Going over auto patches , rigging an arm and changing cells on your elements. Not to mention a little tease on how to use the overlay layer. 

This was done in toonboom harmony so I apologize if some people came here looking for how to rig in other toonboom products.

Hope this helps feel free to ask me any questions or let me know if you would like something clarified !

[casualtoonboom]

Rigs 1 - Pegs, elements and a smidge of deformers

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Since everyone has been asking I did a quick run through on how to do a ball and tail and went through some of my thought process for making rigs. I’ll be making another video this week that goes into some other things but using these basic building blocks you can work your way up to doing something more complicated or at least become familiar enough to play around with making your own rigs ! 

This was done in toonboom harmony so I apologize if some people came here looking for how to rig in other toonboom products.

Hope this helps feel free to ask me any questions or let me know if you would like something clarified ! 

[littledigits]

Hope this helps ! 

also more tutorials @casualtoonboom  if anyone is interested in more program specific stuff ! 

[casualtoonboom]

also i got a new mic and a mic cover so I shouldnt have the same problem i did before with it randomly cutting out . NOW I DONT HAVE TO EDIT AROUND IT. JOY 

[casualtoonboom]

Battling a cold this weekend so my brain is a lil bleh from medicine but I hope this helps ! 

[casualtoonboom]

what version of toon boom harmony are you using? i have harmony essentials and i can't find the node view, but i can't figure out if that's because the function is hidden or this version just isn't capable of nodes.

toonboom harmony pro , i feel like you’d have it somewhere though ! i think a lot of toonboom versions have some sort of rig capacity it may just be called something else. 

[casualtoonboom]

You should do a tutorial about creating a character rig. It could be really helpful.

I’ll do a short tutorial on how to get into it at least - making a full rig is a HUGE process and even my way of doing it can be confusing since they are not the most ....streamlined of rigs. But I can do something to at least help people get started. 

[littledigits]

Hey anon  - thank you so much ! i hope this helps a bit - basically the blue ovals are ‘ handles ‘ that i attach to things that dont have lines or sometimes line width. Stuff that can be picky to grab from zoomed out. I attach them to the cels in my rig but then put a transparency mod on them so they dont show up in render. They dont do anything fancy , its just ease of work flow :) 

[casualtoonboom]

might as well reblog this to my toonboom blog !

[casualtoonboom]

Whats the best method for cleanin up in toonboom? I'm trying to make a Gumball Style rig and it looks fine but when i animate it and have specific acting and have to make new elements I cant get it to lok consistent in the clean up

Im not 100% sure im following correctly so let me know if im wrong 

I’m guessing when you mean making new elements you are talking about doing a cell swap . For example you have a hand element , and then you will draw a new cell to match the pose or acting you want ? You may end up with 5 hands , I’ve used cels with librarys of 20 hands in the hand element ! 

If this IS what you’re talking about then thats the most common way that people do it because splitting the hand up can be complicated. 

I’m not sure what you mean by clean up but I’ll take it to mean final animation - and by inconsistant I’ll guess that means that the cels are popping and are not looking smooth in the final animation. 

The way to fix this is to do the cel swap during the FASTEST part of the action - if a hand is swinging forward and you have a large spacing , do the swap on the frame after the biggest spacing gap. This way the cel swap is hidden. If the spacing is very small and you go to change the hand cel then it will look like a sudden drawing pop , try to hide these technical pops within motions :) hope that helps ! 

[littledigits]

toonboom stream tonight

gonna stream some toonboom animation im working on at 8pm  eastern time , which is 5pm on the west coast.

im just working on my own animation but if you have questions about toonboom , harmony or animation i’d be happy to answer them ! :) ! 

[casualtoonboom]

ok…im sorry this one turned out fuzzy and its hard to see the timeline. : / I dont know what messed up in my recording settings and at one point the screen shifts but this is my 3rd time trying to upload it and its getting late and I DONT CARE ANY MORE. ALSO MY MIC STILL CUTS OUT..I tried to edit around it but I may have to get a new mic for my next video because its annoying and makes editing so time consuming. 

ITS SUPPOSE TO BE CASUAL SO ..WHO CARES IF ITS NOT PERFECT. 

 (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

HUFF HUFF

I get into animation with this one - if there is anything you want me to go more indepth on , or pick out to have its own video please let me know . 

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edit : I want to apologize for the sound being down so low ,I guess my headphones arnt really true to..how things are, or I turn my volume up way too high ! but I adjusted it and re-uploaded the video so hopefully thats better. I’ll keep this in mind for other tutorials and boost my mic volume more before I export. 

[casualtoonboom]

reblog for new video , heres hoping the volume is better for everyone :) thanks for your patience. 

[casualtoonboom]

You might want to normalize the volume levels before uploading, your voice is super quiet, while the yakety sax is really loud (at least in comparison)

I’ll keep that in mind for next time ! I’ve always been worried my voice is too LOUD but I think I pulled my mic too far away and then didnt think about the volume of the dumb filler music haha. Thanks for the crit. 

[casualtoonboom]

ok...im sorry this one turned out fuzzy and its hard to see the timeline. : / I dont know what messed up in my recording settings and at one point the screen shifts but this is my 3rd time trying to upload it and its getting late and I DONT CARE ANY MORE. ALSO MY MIC STILL CUTS OUT..I tried to edit around it but I may have to get a new mic for my next video because its annoying and makes editing so time consuming. 

ITS SUPPOSE TO BE CASUAL SO ..WHO CARES IF ITS NOT PERFECT. 

 (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)

HUFF HUFF

I get into animation with this one - if there is anything you want me to go more indepth on , or pick out to have its own video please let me know . 

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edit : I want to apologize for the sound being down so low ,I guess my headphones arnt really true to..how things are, or I turn my volume up way too high ! but I adjusted it and re-uploaded the video so hopefully thats better. I’ll keep this in mind for other tutorials and boost my mic volume more before I export. 

[casualtoonboom]

Hey!! I don't know why but your blog theme doesn't have a follow button. Wanted to give you a heads up!

dang ! you’re right - must be somewhere in the custom HTML. It totally shows up in the archive link so im not sure why its not in the main. I’ll have to fiddle with it. thanks for letting me know ! 

edit: FIXED yay ! 

[casualtoonboom]

FIRST TOONBOOM HARMONY TUTORIAL. sorry for my mic cutting out..maybe the battery was dying . This is a tutorial on pegs in harmony and what they mean. Some will see this as basic but to me its really important information to absorb before I move onto anything larger ! 

Hope it works out for everyone :)