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Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/7575
114 MacDirectory
REVIEW
TOON BOOM STUDIO 5 > DRAWING ON TRADITION
When we think of "animation," what we
think of is probably skewed by a high-tech
bias. The word now brings up images of
Pixar and ILM, of Flash, Motion, Maya
and After Effects. It becomes all too easy
to forget about the kind most of us grew
up with (and probably still watch):
cartoons. However, the ream of acetate,
paint, brushes and patience has not been
bypassed by technology and has migrated
quite successfully to the computer
desktop. One program in particular has
been leading the pack and is being used
to help produce many popular cartoons
from
The Simpsons to Sponge Bob.
Toon Boom Studio 5
, the latest release of
the venerable 2D animation toolbox,
recently made its debut on the Mac,
adding Snow Leopard compatibility. At its
roots, it maintains a profound respect for
the animator's art. In fact, in many senses,
it is easier to approach the program from
the perspective of acetate and ink in than
it is from After Effects and Flash. It is truly
an artist's tool, true to the workflow of
traditional animation.
As you would expect, Toon Boom
possesses some very powerful drawing
tools. They do take a bit of a mind-shift if
you're used to software that was originally
designed to create still graphics and were
later adapted to motion. For example, the
brush tools create closed, Bezier shapes.
This gives you the flexibility to transform a
sketch into a piece of finished artwork, yet
each stroke can remain an independent
object that can be moved and reshaped
for naturally fluid motion.
Toon Boom Studio allows you to scan in
artwork, instantly transforming it into a
vector graphic. And for those of us who
are better mechanics than artists, you can
import any sort of image and cut it up
into chunks that can be animated (it's hard
not to think back to Terry Gilliam's
animated clips from
Monty Python's Flying
Circus
when pondering the possibilities).
You can also take advantage of the virtual
rotoscoping tool that lets you trace
movement in an underlying movie clip to
get more realistic motion. Toon Boom will
also let you perform stop-motion
animation and use green-screen keying to
combine and layer real objects with hand-
drawn and imported graphics.
Name That Color
In a cartoon animation project, color
continuity becomes singularly important.
For this reason, Toon Boom has an
unusually powerful palletizing system. A
project can have multiple pallets within
which are a variety of sub-palettes
("styles") and swatches, all of which can be
appropriately named. In this way, the color
of a character's feature along with all the
shading variations can be shared easily
among all of a project's personnel.
Again taking its cue from traditional
animation processes, each animated
element is created as a group of cells as
an Exposure Sheet, with the requisite
onion-skinning capabilities to offer the
smoothest possible motion. These
elements are then combined on a
timeline, a familiar setup for the After
Effects generation. But even here, things
are a bit different. Movement is based on
a point of reference that act like the
physical pegs in a drawing board used in
conventional animation. These pegs act as
pivot or alignment point for single or
groups of elements.
Even though it's a very different
environment from other computer
animation programs, it plays very nicely
with them. You can export your
animations in a variety of video formats
and there's even a free Flash plug-in to
directly import Toon Boom projects.
Smoothing the Learning Curve
Learning how to use Too Boom Studio is
not a trivial undertaking. It is, indeed, a
professional tool. However, the program is
graced with a beautifully written user
guide and a downloadable tutorial that
walks through the basics using a sample
project. The Toon Boom site also offers a
variety of instructional videos for sale if
you need something more than the
tutorial and manual provide.
Animation, by its nature, is not nor it will
ever be an easy undertaking. It requires
equal measures patience and skill. Toon
Boom Studio 5's will empower those with
the talent and dedication to perform their
craft extremely well.
WORDS BY RIC GETTER
Product Toon Boom Studio 5
Made by Toon Boom Animation Inc.