 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
In honor of Episode 3 being released on cable this week (as if I needed a reason), let’s spend some time using Toon Boom Studio to recreate some of the most interesting special effects from the Star Wars saga. Of course, you can’t talk about Star Wars special effects without starting with the lightsaber.
I know what you’re thinking. Why would I want to know how to make an animated gif? Didn’t that stop being cool in 1998? Absolutely. However, when used properly an animated gif can be a useful and entertaining tool in your Toon Boom arsenal. In addition, animated gifs are actually recognized by Google and Yahoo. Links inside SWF files continue to elude the search engines.
Toon Boom is a very powerful animation program, and like many programs it is not always as user-friendly as it should be. This is a very basic Toon Boom tutorial, and will show you how to create your own cartoon of a nice looping walk cycle, shown here. We’ll also cover the basics of creating parent/child relationships and adjusting pivot points.
Animating is far more enjoyable when the characters you’re working with have a strong personality, and the recorded voice audio is of high quality. Cheese is an amazingly funny character from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, a great show on Cartoon Network. This Toon Boom tutorial will walk you through recreating this short commercial found on YouTube:
This development entry will show the process of creating a scene, and its evolution from sketch into full blown animation. The scene I’m detailing is when Sparky turns quickly to face Meat, and then rushes towards him.
The first step has been shown before, creating the storyboard:
Toon Boom’s peg system is a vital part of the animation process, and is one of the main reasons animating with Toon Boom is easier than animating in Flash.
The concept of pegs is not new. Traditional animation studios have always used pegs as a registration system to properly line up the many drawings that must be created. This is especially useful when a series of drawings such as a walk cycle must be moved across the screen. Toon Boom builds on the peg system in a digital fashion, offering the animator helpful tools to move characters.
Kroaky, a new Toon Boom user on the well-maintained forums expressed some frustration while trying to animate glass breaking. This tutorial is in response to his post, and hopefully can help him with his questions. Credit goes Ugo, the omnipresent helpful administrator of the Toon Boom forums for answering his question initially.
You can download the complete Toon Boom file used in this tutorial here (Mac formatted).