Which Harmony is best for me?

Hi there, I wasn’t too sure where to ask this question, but I figured this was the best place.

I’m wanting to get into animation as a hobby, and have used adobe animate before but am not a fan of monthly payments and prefer Toon Boom Harmony’s one-time payment option, but I’m not sure whether I should choose Harmony Essentials or Harmony advanced. I only plan on animating in 2D and prefer the pricing of Essentials, but I want to make sure I’m not missing out on anything game-changing that might be offered in Advanced.

Does anyone have a good comparison between the two? As I’m just getting into animation, I don’t know all of the technical terms yet so stuff like “Variable width Pencil Lines” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you!

If you are wealthy and have money to burn buy Premium.

If do not have lots of money and you are just getting into animation do not buy the software until you have thoroughly explored all three levels of Harmony. Ultimately if you choose to purchase the software instead of doing the subscription route you will be much happier if you know what you are getting into. The only way to get your feet wet without diving in the deep end of the pool before you know how to swim is to use the trials and then subscribe for some time.

Once you are absolutely certain you want to do animation having explored Harmony, do not get less than Advanced.

Keep in mind Toon Boom releases a new version roughly every 1-1.5 years. You automatically get upgraded with a subscription. You have to buy an upgrade with a perpetual license. The best route for a perpetual license is to maintain Silver Support. If you are up to date with Silver Support upgrades are included. But you have to already be on the Silver Support plan when an upgrade is announced. Otherwise you will not be eligible for the upgrade and will have to pay the regular upgrade price.

Harmony advanced if you want to export to 4k. If it is just for simple full hd animations go for the Essentials. You can also download all the trial versions and compare them. I also did not find any good comparison cheet between the versions. It seems Toon Boom aims at selling the Premium.
If you don’t know what everything means, first whatch some youtube video’s about toon boom essentials. There is a nice course made by OnionSkin.
I too have a course on Udemy for Essentials (to squeeze a bit more of it. Though I use Advanced now (need the 4k).