Animation Foundations
This set of 12 rules, including "Squash and Stretch," must be analyzed and applied when animating.
What are the Animation Principles?
This tool allows you to create background layouts with proper perspective.
What are Drawing Guides
This term refers to how long a specific drawing remains visible on the timeline.
What is Drawing Exposure?
This core concept involves breaking down and "parenting" character parts to make them animatable.
What is Rigging?
This interconnected network of visual blocks represents the hierarchy, compositing, and effects of a scene, separating layer order from structure.
What is the Node System?
This stage of the pipeline involves involves designing characters, building rigs, and creating animatics before the main animation work begins.
What is Pre-Production?
These are created and structured to maintain consistent character colors across a production.
What are Color Palettes?
These are created on the Timeline to mark major poses or define coordinate changes, serving as the foundation for both motion-tweened and stop-motion animation.
What are Keyframes?
These specialized elements allow for the bending and warping of drawings, such as "Bone" or "Curve."
What are Deformers?
This final step in the workflow is used to share the finished project with others.
What is Exporting?
This concept refers to the number of frames played per second to create the illusion of motion.
What is Frame Rate (or FPS)?
Unlike the Brush tool, this tool creates a central vector line that is easier to modify using control points or the Contour Editor
What is the Pencil Tool?
This is the process of positioning elements on a stage to build a final composition.
What is Staging?
This non-drawing layer is used to control the transformation (position, scale, or rotation) of one or multiple drawing layers.
What is a Peg (or Peg Layer)?
These elements allow animators to separate drawing components—such as backgrounds, characters, or props—to manipulate, reorder, and animate them independently.
What are Layers?
Toon Boom Harmony allows for three main animation styles: Cut-out, Paperless, and this "old school" method involving scanned drawings.
What is Traditional Animation?
These are used to separate artwork into specialized sections like "Overlay" and "Underlay" to simplify the rigging process.
What are Art Layers?
These specific start and end frames define the limited segment of a timeline that plays in a loop, allowing animators to focus on a small section of motion.
What is Playback Range?
This view or system allows you to structure and share assets and templates across a team / project.
What are Library and Templates?
This standard organizational practice involves naming folders, layers, and palettes consistently so multiple artists can work on the same project without confusion.
What is Naming Convention (or File Organization)?
This drawing environment uses mathematical points and curves, allowing artwork to be scalable and suited for all project steps.
What is a Vector Environment?
To create a smooth acceleration or deceleration in a movement, an animator adjusts these "Ease" parameters on a function curve.
What is Easing?
This animation style involves breaking a character down into separate layers or parts—like a puppet—and manipulating them, rather than redrawing for every frame.
What is Cut-out Animation?
* This technical skill involves bringing elements together, lighting them, and adding final effects.
What is Compositing?