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Tutorials and Online Help

The good folks at Toon Boom like to brag about how easy it is to create animation using Toon Boom Studio. In a way, they're right. It's certainly easier than doing all of this by hand, especially for those of us just getting into the medium and who may not have much talent when it comes to actually, you know, drawing. However, it's not as easy as hiring someone else to do it for you. Toon Boom Studio (TBS) is a big program that requires plenty of practice to use properly. There's a lot to learn inside the program, and you should know a bit about illustration before you even come into TBS.

Of course, we can't expect a printed manual to help out these days. This gap is usually filled by third-party manuals, but quick searches of Amazon.com and BN.com turned up nothing for TBS (although there do appear to be numerous books that offer a good look at animation in general). Toon Boom includes a nearly 450 page PDF manual, along with an eight page PDF of shortcuts. That's right, eight pages, which means your shortcuts are going to be pretty hard to get to. And because TBS allows you to create your own shortcuts, it could all end up being irrelevant anyway.

Thankfully, Toon Boom doesn't stop with the PDFs. They also don't stop with Apple's Help feature. They support it, of course, and their implementation is fine, but I'm still not a fan of Help. It gets in the way of what I'm doing, and I'd just as soon have my manuals lying on the desk in front of me as opposed to blocking the program on the computer screen. No, where Toon Boom really focuses their support is on their online tutorials.

These tutorials are presented mostly in PDF format with accompanying files you can download. Obviously, it's tremendously helpful to be given the files mentioned in the tutorial, as you can learn how to use the program before you start worrying about your own ability to draw or import your work.

The current trouble is that many of the tutorials are for v2 and v2.5, and there's even one up for v1. These may still be applicable for v3, but I didn't give them a try. Most aren't appropriately identified to their proper version, either, which is a little annoying.

When the tutorials do match up, however, they're great. For example, there's a great tutorial for Toon Boom Studio v3's new Cut Out feature. Cut Outs allow you to prepare your templates for reuse in your animations, which can greatly improve your workflow. It's also one of the features which makes animation much easier for those of us who are new to all of this, so it's great that Toon Boom was so quick to get that particular tutorial up. Now, if they could just hurry up and put a few more.

Sticking with the Cut Out tutorial, unlike the others, it's presented as seven QuickTime movies:

1. Introduction
2. Peg Hierarchy
3. Pivot Points
4. Cut Out Joints
5. Preparing Cut Out Templates
6. Simple Cut Out Animation
7. Timeline and Keyframe Preferences

The narration is clear and it's easy to follow along with the movies, but again, they take up retail space on your computer screen so you can't see your tools while following along. Also, no sample files are given, so you're mainly just receiving instruction and left on your own.

Although Toon Boom leaves you hanging here, they're happy to accept help. User written tutorials are welcome, and, after being approved by the Toon Boom team, are posted on the site. There aren't a lot there right now, but this will hopefully improve. If the activity in the Toon Boom forums is indication, I'm certain it will.

The forum is split into numerous categories, which is a bit disorienting at first, but will ultimately help you channel your search to the right area. Some threads tend to see much more action than others, but responses seem to come fairly quickly, and the users are polite and informative. Administrator activity is higher than in most forums I visit for other programs, so it shouldn't take you too long to receive an "official" answer to your question.

All of these are good places to turn for help, and although the online tutorials have some room to grow, the seven step tutorial included with your purchase is probably the best place to start. And so, in my next column, I'll do just that.

All Entries:

1. Project Introduction
2. Tutorials and Online Help
3. Overview of the Seven Step Tutorial

Learn more about Toon Boom Studio.