Introduction to Cutout Technique Animation

An 8-week course focused on utilizing cutout techniques for animation in Toonboom Harmony

OVERVIEW

VIDEO

INSTRUCTORS

COURSE OVERVIEW

Harmony of the Cutout

THIS COURSE IS IN DEVELOPMENT

In this fun and informative course you will learn how to use Toonboom Harmony’s powerful cutout animation tools to create and bring life to animated characters. Starting from very simple, the course progresses on to using Harmony’s more advanced cutting edge tools. You’ll gain a foundational knowledge of Harmony and learn about using the animation principles from an industry veteran. Most importantly, by the end of this course you will have the knowledge and skills to create, rig, and bring to life your own character designs.

Course Format:

Standard

Duration:

8 weeks

Materials:

Toonboom Harmony Premium

Lecture Type:

Pre-recorded

Assignment:

Deadlines each week

Skills Level:

Intermediate

Feedback:

Individual recordings

Q&A:

Once a week

Prerequisites:

Basic level of drawing skill, Some familiarity with the 12 Principles of Animation, Some familiarity with Toonboom Harmony. is useful but not required. Some knowledge of the animation principles and experience creating animation useful but not required.

Course Format:

Standard

Duration:

8 weeks

Materials:

Toonboom Harmony Premium

Lecture Type:

Pre-recorded

Assignment:

Deadlines each week

Skills Level:

Intermediate

Feedback:

Individual recordings

Q&A:

Once a week

Prerequisites:

Course Format:

Standard

Duration:

8 weeks

Materials:

Toonboom Harmony Premium

Lecture Type:

Pre-recorded

Assignment:

Deadlines each week

Skills Level:

Intermediate

Feedback:

Individual recordings

Q&A:

Once a week

Prerequisites:

COURSE OVERVIEW

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

EXPAND ALL COLLAPSE ALL

The more you know, the better.

Week 1 | Introduction To Harmony's Toolsets and to the Peg System

Overview of Harmony’s interface and work areas | Drawing Tools and Color Palette | Timeline 4. Node View | Introducing the Peg and Transform Tools | Using the Peg and Transform Tools to animate a short cycle of drawings

Week 2 | Rigging a Simple Character Using Harmony's Peg System and Deformation Tools

The anatomy of a rigged character’s node hierarchy | Creating the character’s art layers | Adding pegs to the art layers and creating a peg hierarchy | Adding the bone deformer to the legs and the curve deformer to the arms | Adding the envelope deformer to the torso | Templating and saving the rigged character in Harmony’s template library

Week 3 | Animating the Simple Character

Animating the walk: setting the key and secondary poses on the rigged character | Animating the run: setting the key and secondary poses on the rigged character | Animating the jump: setting the key and secondary poses on the rigged character | Templating and saving the animation cycles in the Harmony library

Week 4 | Intermediate Rigging Part 1

Creating the art layers (including hand and mouth substitutions) | Placing the Pegs on the art layers | Creating the Peg Hierarchy in the Node View

Week 5 | Intermediate Rigging Part 2

Applying the cutter effect system to the art layers | Applying the deformers on the character | Templating and saving the character rig in Harmony’s template library

Week 6 | Animating a Short Dialogue with the Intermediate Character Rig

Important ideas and concepts about animating dialogue | Listening to and analyzing the dialogue audio | Thumbnailing the storytelling poses | Animating the storytelling and key poses on the rigged character | Fleshing out the character’s performance with breakdowns, anticipations, and overshoots | Animating the mouth shapes

Week 7 | Final Scene, Integrating Assets Created In Previous Weeks: Planning

Brainstorming/Planning: thumbnailing ideas for putting the assets you’ve created into a one-minute animation | Plan on the timeline in a new scene what will happen when in the scene, including camera moves and one effect | Plan and collect/create additional assets (sound, background/middleground/foreground artwork, additional animation)

Week 8 | Final Scene, Integrating Assets Created In Previous Weeks: Putting It Together with FX/Camera/Compositing

Importing the planned elements from the Harmony library | Arranging the planned elements in the timeline | Adding the effect from Harmony’s effects library | Applying the planned camera movements using the Peg | Adjusting all of the visual and audio scene elements

Introduction to Cutout Technique Animation

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

Instructor

Bringing out the best in talent

Mike Wiesmeier

LECTURES BY Mike Wiesmeier

Mike Wiesmeier has been working in the animation industry since 1991. Mike’s production work has included interactive, commercial, games, and feature animation projects, including six features at Walt Disney Feature Animation, work as a supervisor on a traditionally animated feature film in Barcelona, Spain, and most recently on a AAA game, interactive theme park ride, and Netflix series projects in Montréal.

Mike’s teaching career began while working at Walt Disney Feature Animation. In the years since he has taught animation, life drawing, animal drawing, and figure sculpture at institutions worldwide including The Art Institutes of California, The Getty Center museum, The Huntington Library, Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Syn Studio École d’Art in Montréal, and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy.

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