Animating to music - Soundtrack vs. Scene Planning

Hi once more,

I would like to continue an older thread on this forum (
http://www.toonboom.com/support/forums/toonBoomStudio/index.php?board=26;action=display;threadid=1064), since this is from 2005 (TBS Version 2?) and I don’t really know if and how the sound editing possibilities have been improved up to version 4.0

I am working on a cut out animation music video clip. this means, I have my soundtrack finished already (the song) and movie and track will be exactly the same length. All the character layout is done. Now I am pushing around stills from youtube in my TBS Animated Storyboard to get timing and different camera angles etc. right. So, before it comes to importing the sound file, I wondered, if any of you TBS cracks out there have already done something like this before? How do you approach such a project?

I will have scenes with my “animated band”, shot from different angles and in different light settings, and then I’ve got some short mini stories featuring the same protagonists in different settings - so from a storytelling point of view I think, this has to be organized in multiple scenes within TBS.
On the other hand, I got this soundtrack, which has to be in sync with the motion onscreen to the point. So cutting the soundtrack into pieces (although not really cutting but telling the editor which frame range to play) for each scene sounds problematic to me from a musical point of view.
And, btw, if I want to use the lip sync feature of TBS, do I have to import a solo vocal track instead of the full audio mixdown?

This is really about creating the illusion of cartoon musicians performing a song. Any suggestions where to start?

Thx in advance & Greetings,
Peter

A trick, which I learned in Flash when doing a piece that was end to end music and where sync to sound was important, was to create scenes inside symbols and then integrate the symbols into a single scene’s timeline with the music. The equivalent of that in TBS would be to create templates out of your individual scenes and then composite those templates into a single scene with your music track. You can chop up your sound to make the scenes but don’t include the snippits of sound in your templates. All your final sound will be in the “composited” scene. Again food for thought.

One caution, set your final value for FPS before you import any sound files and don’t change it after you import your sound. Changing the FPS setting after sound import is a “no-no”. -JK

You’re a genius!

That’s what I did in Flash some years ago. Only that I couldn’t figure out how to do something like that in TBS. (Too little knowledge on Templates so far)

I recorded the song in Logic Studio and set the same Framerate as in TBS (24 fps, I won’t change) to be displayed. This way I am able to export sound files and tell exactly what frame they belong to.

Thank you,
Peter