Creating a Basic Pan in Toon Boom Animate Pro

After completing the scene, I decided that a pan was necessary to link scenes 12 and 13. Until this point I had not moved the camera so I needed to learn how to do this. As usual, Toon Boom Animate Pro made it easy.

The best explanations I found were videos made by Adam Phillips, alias Chulaid. Among his accomplishments is the creation of the Bitey Castle website and the Brackenwood Series. I think it says a lot that Chulaid switched from Flash to Toon Boom to make his animation.

I recommend Chulaid's videos in addition to those produced by Toon Boom. If you know of any useful Toon Boom Storyboard Pro or Animate Pro video tutorials, please share in the comments section. Thanks!

Be Quick But Don't Hurry!

Since I had been working on Scene 13 since July, 2012, I was eager to get through the cleanup stage. As a result I ended up with 19 drawings of Honey with a stiff and wonky neck which I didn't see until after doing all of the drawings, importing it into Toon Boom Animate Pro then exporting the Quicktime video.

It was bugging me so I fixed it.

The lesson learned: I knew the neck should not be that straight but I did it anyway in the interest of getting it done. But it wasn't worth the 30 minutes I had to take to redraw it and the time spent re-scanning the drawings.

As the great basketball coach and teacher John Wooden said, "Be quick but don't hurry!"

Creating a Camera Shake in Toon Boom Animate Pro

This is a prime example as to why I invested in the Toon Boom software and why I'm glad I made that investment.

For scene 14 of my film, Honey slams shut a bathroom door. I wanted the door to shake a little when it shuts. Traditionally that would mean making about three drawings of the door at slightly different positions and cycling them on one's. Instead of me having to do that work, I simply searched the Toon Boom site for "camera shake" and immediately found the answer HERE.

The explanation was clear and illustrated so I was able to complete the effect in a few minutes. And it came out EXACTLY as I imagined!