Hi
I’m quite new to Toon Boom - I am a Flash animator. But now I’ve got a project that I would like to do in Toon Boom. I did work in TB before – on a classical animation project, and it proved to be quite easy, and of course far better than Flash. But it was a basic rough classical animation - not much to know. This time it’s cut-outs animation - hand drawn, scanned and photoshopped.
I imported a PSD file with all the necessary layers.
After hitting my head into the table several times, I have figured out that I need to vectorize the bitmaps and create symbols in order to animate them. But creating symbols is a bit cumbersome: if I don’t select “convert to symbols” on import, then it creates layers with drawings, so I need to create symbols myself manually selecting each layer at a time. But I also need to delete each drawing layer, that’s left behind, which is an unnecessary time consuming task. If I do select “convert to symbols” in the import options, then it creates one symbol with all the frames inside it, and then distributes this symbol on layers, with the correct frame setting. But it’s no good either - cause I don’t need them all into one symbol - I need hands to be in the hands, legs in the legs, mouths in the mouths, etc.
Basically - I need every layer that I import to become a symbol, not an instance of the same symbol with a different frame - is it possible?
Thanks.
Actually you should avoid using symbols as anything other than containers for elements that move in a fixed relationship to each other such as a tattoo on an arm (for example). Otherwise it requires and extra step to enter into the symbol to edit it’s elements on its own timeline.
So vectorize your drawing element - yes
Convert element to symbol - no