I have Toon Boom Animate: should I get Toon Boom Studio?

Hi,

I have a problem that has been bugging me for a few weeks. I am a novice animator and I recently purchased Toon Boom Animate, but I’m beginning to wonder if I made a mistake.

This is not because Toon Boom Animate isn’t any good - it’s almost too good. You see, I don’t have much free time to learn how to animate and I really want to be able to start actually making stuff as soon as possible. Plus, I’m not exactly technically minded. So quite a bit recently, I’ve found myself frustrated by not knowing how the program works yet and by the feeling that I can’t really get good results in the (very limited) time I have available.

I’ve started to wonder if maybe I didn’t get the wrong program. Should I have bought Toon Boom Studio in the first place? Would that allow me to get “up and running” so to speak much more quickly?

I thought I’d throw this rather odd question open to the community here and see if anyone had any thoughts.

personally, it didn’t take much for me to learn Toon Boom Animate. once i read the quick getting started guide i was ok to get going. the rest i learned while animating, mind you i am still clueless about certain functions and effects. whenever i get stuck i consult the user guide or ask here, then i go back to animating. so i am as well still learning.

i haven’t used Studio before so i can’t compare the two but if you are a tradigital animator, you would take much less time to learn Animate. if you intend, however, to animate cut out, then you will have to learn rigging and all that.

there are tutorials on the toonboom website that are very helpful, check them out.

I learned animation with Toon Boom Studio 4.5. Most of the work on my YouTube channel was done with it. It is definitely simpler and easier to learn than Animate. I’m very happy to have learned many of the basic concepts of animation and how the software worked before getting into Animate which has a lot more features and flexibility.

Having said that, if I were you, I wouldn’t go back. The basic functions are the same and you’ll still be faced with timelines, keyframes, layers and pivot points. Ha! Animation is what it is and it just takes time to learn. The problem I had was that I’d do some stuff or study some tutorials and then set the software aside for a month and come back only to find I’d forgotten most of what I worked so hard to learn!

Hi

I went the Studio to Animate root. It would have saved me time going direct to animate.

In my opinion, both products take a lot of effort to learn. In addition, if you’re not a competent artist yet, it will be hard to get good results from either product.

If I was starting again I might start with one of the “Toon Boom” “Fun” products or something of that nature from another supplier.

Hope this is of some help

Bob


Just practice. Nothing comes completly naturally. When you have done things a few times you will probably realise why it was done that way.

I think video tutorials really help you where you can follow and do the same thing.

Just want to point out here that if you want to take a look at some of the Tutorials in the HowTo section, there are step-by-step videos that will help you to get a handle on the software.

~Lilly