So, are there any tutorials that Toon Boom made that are actually in order of experience? The way they arrange the tutorials is odd. They’re just five videos per random tutorial, each tutorial helps, but there’s no order to go in and it’s confusing. I’m trying to animate and am sick of animating with photoshop but I have never used this before so I need help learning everything I’d use. So any advice? Sorry if this doesn’t make sense.
If I were you I’d start here https://www.toonboom.com/learn. After that, I highly recommend the tutorials by Stylus Rumble - https://youtu.be/U3Kt6FJ8x_Y.
Welcome to our forum Shaktiman,
Zebtoonz is absolutely right, you can find great tutorials at learn.toonboom.com
Best Regards,
Edgar
Technical Support Specialist
Toon Boom Animation
Yeah those tutorials are a little…odd. Luckily there are some good videos on YouTube, but they’re a little hard to track down. Here are some playlists to start though… Frank Summers has a good intro series. Stylus Rumble is a treasure trove. Her series on rigging is very in depth. Finally, there are a lot of great tips on Onion Skin.
Happy animating, and hope this helps!
Can you elaborate on what you mean by the tutorials being “odd”? We are always looking for feedback on our portal so that we can iterate and make improvements, and feedback goes a long way to helping us with that.
Are there any tutorials Toon Boom made that are actually in order of experience? The way they arrange the tutorials is odd. They’re just five videos per random tutorial, each tutorial helps, but there’s no order to go in and it’s confusing.
Regards,
Part 1:
To address the official TB sources of tutorials, some touch upon various features and processes using the software. They are presented well although they may not go deep into the capabilities. On the other hand some appear to be mere token introductions created by random professional users Toon Boom reached out to. Nothing compares to when Lilly Vogelesang was regularly posting tutorials and responding to questions. She presented the information with the depth it begged for.
It would be great if someone created an in depth sequenced course that introduced everything and built upon previous experience leading to advanced levels of proficiency. WHat we have instead only gives an idea of what and how then you are left to work the rest out on your own.
You can gain from everything even the worst videos have something that may only make you wonder and seek more information but that could be something you would not have noticed because you were looking/focused on another aspect. I have gained something watching a video in a foreign language I do not speak.
The version of software is not a reason to avoid a video. You can gain from watching tutorials made using previous versions and even other forms of Toon Boom software (mostly TB Animate-Harmony, not TB Studio so much as it was a relatively unique approach). Things have changed but there is still value to be derived from these older videos.
Part 2:
I have not been there in over a year but there were people on Twitch using Harmony and Toon Boom Animate (not to be confused with Adobe Animate). Everyone there has been interested in answering questions and some will even stop what they are doing and demonstrate the answer to a question.
Just watching animators work is valuable.
We all have preferences and ideals when it comes to how we learn. Some are visual, some audio, some need to read text some need to hear an explanation, some need various combinations of modalities, and so on.
Some sources to seek out aside from those already mentioned:
Digital Tutors (now Pluralsight).
Jessie J Jones
Adam Philips
Lynda.com
It’s Alex Clark
Tony Teach
Bloop Animation
Kyu-bum Lee
John McCaffrey
The Part-Time Professor
Twiin Studios
Crowne Prince
Vince Bell
You can sort the courses by experience level. The Learning Portal is very well organized.
I’m glad you mentioned those Lilly Vogelsang tutorials. I remember having gone through a bunch of those and filled a whole notebook with tons of useful info.
Part 3:
Oli Putland: I enjoyed his TB Animate Pro videos. I did not know until now he has created these Harmony videos.
Thank you for the amazing feedback so far everyone. I’ll be reading it all, compiling it and sending it off to the teams that handle the Learn Portal.
Knowing all the resources all of you use also goes a long way to helping is design better, more effective content that helps everyone learn, so thanks for including examples of channels, people and ideas that work for all of you!
You should check out “Onion Skin” on YouTube. Watch every video from the start. He’s really good at fun tutorials and explaining in simple terms.