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Legal Notices

Corporate Headquarter5530 St. Patrick, Suite 2210Montreal, Quebec Canada H4E 1A8Tel: (514) 278-8666 Fax: (514) 278-2666

toonboom.com

DisclaimerThe content of this manual is covered by a specific limited warranty and exclusions and limit of liability under the applicable License Agreement as supplemented by the special terms and conditions for Adobe®Flash® File Format (SWF). Please refer to the License Agreement and to those special terms and conditions for details.

The content of this manual is the property of Toon Boom Animation Inc. and is copyrighted.

Any reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited. For additional copies of this manual, please contact Toon Boom Animation Inc. at the Corporate Headquarters address.

Copyright © 2010 by Toon Boom Animation Inc. All rights reserved.

TrademarksFlip Boom Classic is a trademark owned by Toon Boom Animation Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CreditsDocumentation Development: Peter Cawthorne and Shabana Ali.

Content Development: Marie-Eve Chartrand, Anouk Whissell, Shabana Ali

Art Development: Marie-Eve Chartrand, Anouk Whissell, Shabana Ali

Publication DateMarch 2010

Published by Toon Boom Animation Inc.

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Contents

Flip Boom Classic Tutorials - Introduction..................................................................3The Lessons ...................................................................................................................................................3More Cartoons ...............................................................................................................................................3

Lesson 1 What is Animation?..................................................................................................4Animation ......................................................................................................................................................4Flip Boom Classic Interface .............................................................................................................................5

The Drawing Space ..................................................................................................................................6The Tools ................................................................................................................................................6

The Brush Tool ..................................................................................................................................7Colour Palette ...................................................................................................................................7The Eraser Tool .................................................................................................................................8The Painting Tool ..............................................................................................................................9The Select Tool ...............................................................................................................................11

The Library ............................................................................................................................................12Bookshelf .......................................................................................................................................12

The Drawing Sequence ..........................................................................................................................13The Play Button .....................................................................................................................................13The Loop Button ....................................................................................................................................13

Animating in Flip Boom Classic ......................................................................................................................14

Lesson 2 The Bouncing Ball ...................................................................................................16Show Previous/Next Pages ............................................................................................................................16Animating the Ball ........................................................................................................................................17

Lesson 3 Colouring the Bouncing Ball and More...............................................23The Painting Tool .........................................................................................................................................24Draw Behind ................................................................................................................................................28The Colour Palette .......................................................................................................................................30Using the Paint Tools together ......................................................................................................................31

Lesson 4 Creating Fun Animated Words ...................................................................33Animating Letters .........................................................................................................................................33Animating Colours .......................................................................................................................................35

Lesson 5 Creating Animation with Basic Shapes ................................................38Animating Basic Shapes ................................................................................................................................38

Lesson 6 Animating a Simple Walk Cycle .................................................................43Animating the Walk Cycle .............................................................................................................................43Learning to use the Library ............................................................................................................................47

Lesson 7 Creating a Small Movie ......................................................................................49Preparing Your Animation .............................................................................................................................49Adding a Title and an End Credit ...................................................................................................................52

Lesson 8 Using the Record Sound Feature..............................................................54Before you Start to Record Sounds ................................................................................................................54Recording Sound .........................................................................................................................................54

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Lesson 9 Publishing Your Movie ........................................................................................56Formats .......................................................................................................................................................56

iPod (.m4v) ............................................................................................................................................56QuickTime (.mov) ...................................................................................................................................56Flash (.swf) ............................................................................................................................................56YouTube (.mov) .....................................................................................................................................56Facebook (.mov) ....................................................................................................................................56

Publishing Your Work ...................................................................................................................................57Watching animation on iPod or iPhone ....................................................................................................58

Printing out your Animation ..........................................................................................................................58

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Lesson 1 What is Animation?

Have you always wanted to create your own cartoons but never really knew how to do it? With Flip Boom Classic, it’s now easier to create your very own animation. But what is animation?

AnimationAnimation is when you create more than one drawing of the same character, but with small modifications. Because of these changes, the illusion of movement will be created when you flip through your drawings.

What is so great about animation is that you do not need to draw complex characters to create a film. It can be basic shapes like circles, squares, triangles or even just lines and colour! Once you feel that you are ready to move on to more difficult shapes or even characters, Flip Boom Classic will still have all the tools you need.

It only takes a few pages to create movement. This cat is grabbing a string in three pages.

Animation can be done with simple shapes!

How about an animation of the phases of the moon?

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Flip Boom Classic Interface

Flip Boom Classic InterfaceThe interface is what you see when you start Flip Boom Classic, it’s where you draw, colour and play your animated creation! It’s like having a large drawing pad with all of the pencils, paints and tools you need to make a picture and then turn it into a cartoon.

The interface is made of several sections, let’s see what some of the sections are used for while we make our very first animation.

As you work through each of the lessons, you will learn about new tools and features you can use to help you have fun making your animation.

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The Drawing SpaceFirst, we need a canvas to work on. In Flip Boom Classic that canvas is called the Drawing Space. It’s the large empty area right in the middle of the interface. On some computers, there could be some extra space beside your drawing area. Just remember, only the images inside the grey box will be part of your final movie.

You can use the Drawing Space to draw, colour, copy and paste your work. You can also use it to place objects that you have imported from the Library.

The ToolsYou might decide that you would prefer to use your own drawings when it comes to making your animation. Flip Boom Classic comes fully equipped with a set of drawing and painting tools. To access these tools, simply click on the Swap for Drawing Tools button.

On the left of the Drawing Space, there are four round buttons, each button is a different tool and is used for a different task.

When you click on a tool it will turn yellow to show you that it is activated and ready for you to use. You can only activate one tool at a time.

Click on this tool and use it to select items in the drawing space.

Click on this tool and use it to draw or paint in the drawing space.

Click on this tool and use it to paint inside closed figures.

Click on this tool and use it to erase parts of your drawing.Dow

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The Brush Tool

allows you to paint strokes in your Drawing Space. Go ahead and click on this button , it’s called the Brush tool. Remember, it will change to yellow when it is ready for you to use. Then, simply paint a line, like this:

When you open a new project in Flip Boom Classic, the colour you use to draw or paint with is set to black, this is called the default (or starting) colour. You can change it to any colour you wish by clicking the coloured swatch you want to use.

Colour PaletteTo the left side of the Drawing Space is a series of round coloured circles with a multi-coloured square at the bottom, this is the Colour Palette. The colour palette allows you to select any colour you wish to draw or paint your work with.

This line is called a stroke. Each time you draw a new line, it is a new stroke.

To change your colour, click on any of these coloured swatches.

To change a colour, select a swatch, then press the rainbow button to open the Colour Wheel or simply double-click directly on a swatch to open the Colour Wheel.

The yellow ring indicates the colour that is currently selected.

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Animating in Flip Boom Classic

Animating in Flip Boom ClassicWe have covered some of the very basic and essential tools needed to do a small animation. What’s next!

1. Let’s start with a new Flip Boom Classic project. Click . Flip Boom Classic might ask if you wish to save the current project, if this happens click on the NO button. Your Drawing Space should now be empty.

2. Select and draw a circle in the upper left corner of your Drawing Space

3. Select and also select a new colour swatch (for this example we used dark blue). Paint the circle.

4. We will now make the circle move across the screen. To do this, we will first create a copy of Page 1. Click

on . A new page will appear in the Drawing Sequence. It should be a perfect copy of Page 1.

Draw a circle here

Paint the circle here

An exact copy of Page 1 is made and is called Page 2.

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Lesson 2 The Bouncing Ball

In Lesson 2 you will take the circle which you created in lesson one and animate it by making it move up and down so that it bounces.

Show Previous/Next PagesAs you might have noticed with the circle, you can easily move it around by guessing where it should be placed on the next page. You can however, get a much more accurate idea of where the circle should be placed by making use of the Show Previous/Next Pages feature. You can activate the Show Previous/Next Pages option

by clicking on this button . It’s called Show Previous/Next Pages because it makes the pages of your animation semi-transparent like the skin of a real onion, so that you can see what is behind and in this case, what

is in front as well. Remember, it will change to yellow when it is ready for you to use:

In the following example, the option is activated. This will allow you to see one page previous and one page forward. In the current page (Page 2), you can see the blue circle. The previous page (Page 1) is shown in a faded red colour, while the next page (Page 3) is shown in a faded green. Being able to compare the current image with the previous and next images makes it very easy to position or reposition the current image.

Page 1

Page 2

In this example Page 2 is the current page.

Page 3

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Animating the Ball

Animating the Ball

Now that we know about , let’s put it to good use!

1. Make sure you create a new file by clicking . You may see a message asking if you wish to save the current project, click on the YES button if it is needed.

2. Next, you should also activate ,it will turn yellow like this when it’s active:

3. Click on and then draw a line in the drawing space for Page 1. This line will be used as the floor on which the ball will bounce.

4. Click on the button. Do this five times, each time you click on the button a new page appears in the Drawing Sequence.

Look carefully at each page as it appears in the Drawing Sequence, see how each page is a copy, or duplicate, of Page 1 and includes the line which you drew.

Now you should have six pages (the first page plus the five new ones) where each page has the floor line.

Why did we do this? Well, you will need a floor for the ball to bounce on and by making a duplicate of Page 1 and the line you will have a floor on each page of your animation.

When you draw the line here...

... it also shows in Page 1 here.

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5. Now, let’s go back to Page 1.

6. Click on , you will use this tool to draw the first ball. Draw the ball to show where it will start as it touches the floor.

You will need to make the ball look squashed, this will help give it a nice bouncy look when you animate it later on.

OK, so now you have drawn one squashed ball in Page 1. Next, you will draw another ball in Page 2.

7. Click on Page 2 in the Drawing Sequence.

Try to draw the ball to look something like this, it doesn’t have to look exactly the same, just make it look squashed....Like this!

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Notice, that Page 2 appears in the Drawing Space and because you have the activated, the ball from Page1 is shown as a faded red image. Use this ball as a guide to help you, draw and place the new ball.

8. In the Drawing Space for Page 2, you will draw a new ball.

Be sure to make the ball a different more stretched shape from the ball you drew in Page 1 and also you will need to place it so that it is just above the floor. This will help give the illusion that the ball is bouncing.

9. Click on Page 3 in the Drawing Sequence. This displays Page 3 in the Drawing Space.

Notice that the ball from Page 2 now appears in the Drawing Space as a faded red image.

Because the Show Previous Page button is activated you can see the ball from Page 1.

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Lesson 3 Colouring the Bouncing Ball and More

In Lesson 3, we will be using the bouncing ball previously made in lesson two. Remember, you called it lesson02.fbp when you saved it.

Click , the open window appears. Select the file called lesson02.fbp and click on Open.

The scene from Lesson 2 will open.

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials The Painting Tool

The Painting Tool

Using , you can easily paint all of the pages of the bouncing ball in just a few minutes. You simply select a new colour in the colour palette, then click inside of the closed shape, like this:

While this does look nice, you might wonder how you could do even more, for example by giving your ball more

than one colour. Somehow it doesn’t seem possible with just . But by combining and , we can make our ball even more colourful, without putting that much time into it. Let’s remove the blue colour by

clicking the undo button .

Now we can start.

1. Select .

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials The Painting Tool

2. Pick two colours in the Colour Palette. Select one of those two colours.

For this example, we use red. Make sure you are on Page 1. Start by drawing a curved line through the ball. Make sure your line closes the two sides of the ball.

3. Now select and colour half of the ball.

4. Select the second colour for your pattern, for this example we use yellow. Now colour the other half of the ball, like this:

5. Repeat Step 2 to Step 4 for all the drawings of the ball including the last drawing on Page 6. We turned the Show Previous Page off momentarily, but if you still have it on, you will notice that the ball in the

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Using the Paint Tools together

Using the Paint Tools together

Let’s have some fun using the and exploring new colours from the Colour Wheel.

1. Make sure you create a new file by clicking .

2. Draw a tree like this using the :

3. Select new colours from the colour wheel. Choose brown for the tree trunk and dark green for the leaves.

Fill in the chosen colours using .

4. Now let’s add some grey clouds behind the tree. Select a grey colour from the colour wheel.

5. Make sure is activated.

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Using the Paint Tools together

6. Choose the and make it larger.

7. Now let’s draw some clouds right over part of the tree.

As soon as you stop drawing, you will see that even though you drew over your leaves, the clouds appear behind the leaves. The leaves were not affected at all!

You do not need to save your project, just remember how the draw behind works so you can use it later on.

Congratulations! You have now finished Lesson 3!

Go to Lesson 4 Creating Fun Animated Words >>

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Lesson 7 Creating a Small Movie

Now that we have a few quick animations done, you might want to use them to make a full movie. How about adding a title and an end credit to your work?

Preparing Your AnimationUse the character poses that you saved as a new collection in your Library to recreate the five page walk-cycle.

1. Make sure you create a new file by clicking . You may see a message asking if you wish to save the current project, make sure to do so if it is needed.

2. Find your Library Collection (it should be a blue book) from the bookshelf. Click on it to reveal its contents in the book-shaped window below.

,

3. From the Collection Contents window, click on the first thumbnail (small image) of your character and then click on the top yellow arrow.

4. In the Drawing Sequence, click on Page 2 and then click on the second thumbnail of your character in the Library Collection window. This time you can click and drag the thumbnail directly onto the drawing space.

Either way works. If you chose to click and drag the thumbnail, make sure that the Show Previous Page

button is on, so that you can align the bodies of your character.

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Flip Boom Classic Tutorials Preparing Your Animation

5. Repeat Step 3 and Step 4 for Pages 3, 4 and 5, placing the 3rd, 4th and 5th poses on each page respectively.

6. Your walk cycle should now be completed.

If you want the animation cycle to play more than once in your movie, you will need to make the sequence longer. To do that you will need to copy and paste your sequence of five pages a couple of times in your Drawing Sequence.

Go to the Drawing Sequence and select all of your pages. To do this, you will have to use your keyboard. Click on Page 1, then hold [Shift] on your keyboard while clicking on Page 5. All of your pages should now be highlighted in yellow, like this:

7. Now that your pages are highlighted, click . This will make a copy of all the pages you selected.

8. Go back to the Drawing Sequence and click on the empty page after Page 5, which is the last page in your walk cycle.

9. You can now click . Your pages should now be pasted in your Drawing Sequence.

Notice that even though you only clicked on an empty Page 6, all five pages that you copied are now added to the page sequence. You should now have ten pages.

10. Repeat Step 8 and Step 9 at least two or three times, each time clicking on the last page in the Drawing

Sequence before clicking . This will make the walk cycle long enough to be interesting and to create the length of a short animation.

11. Next, you have to save the new walk cycle project.

YOU MUST SAVE THE NEW PROJECT WITH A DIFFERENT NAME THAN THE FIRST WALK CYCLE PROJECT. IF YOU DO NOT, YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF THE WORK YOU DID IN THE FIRST WALK CYCLE PROJECT.

To be sure to save this new version of your animation as a different file, click File > Save As.

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