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00:00 Toon Boom gives you the ability to convert the lines or the brush strokes that you create
00:08 from one into another.
00:10 If you look under the Tools menu, you'll be able to convert a line to a brush stroke or
00:15 extract a center line to turn it more like a pencil stroke.
00:19 Now let me go ahead and show you what I'm talking about.
00:21 I'm going to grab my brush and I'm going to simply draw out a stroke like this.
00:27 Then I'll go ahead and click on it with the Select tool.
00:30 You'll notice that we have this orange outline, which tells me that if I go back here again
00:35 and click and grab my Contour Editor and I click very close to the edge, I can see all
00:41 the points that make up this object.
00:44 So let me go ahead and show you.
00:45 I'll try to click on the point itself.
00:47 Sometimes it's a little hard to do that.
00:50 There we go.
00:51 Now I have one.
00:52 I can just take these points here and I can change the shape of this object.
00:58 Now that's really hard to do if you just have a regular old pencil stroke.
01:02 So let me go ahead and get rid of this.
01:05 Now let's go ahead and grab the Pencil tool and watch what happens when I draw.
01:10 And I grab the Select tool.
01:13 Notice that orange line that was on the outside of the stroke last time?
01:17 It's on the inside.
01:18 This is a center line and this is what you get with the Pencil tool.
01:22 So if I try to go to the Contour Editor, I can't get those little blue dots or points
01:28 on the outside.
01:30 So I can't add any thickness here.
01:32 I can only reshape the line.
01:35 But if I want to convert this into a brush stroke, I can.
01:38 So I can click here on the line anywhere, go to Tools, and Convert the Lines to Brush.
01:46 Look at the orange outline this time.
01:49 It's now on the outside of that line.
01:51 So I can go to my Contour Editor and voila!
01:54 I now have all those points which will allow me to click and convert that.
02:00 Now one thing that's interesting to note by the way is if we go crazy on this line and
02:06 we convert it back to a regular pencil stroke, we're going to lose a lot of this detail.
02:10 So it really is not going to work for you going the opposite direction.
02:16 So I'm going to go and grab my Select tool, go to Tools, and we'll extract that center
02:21 line.
02:22 Notice that a lot of that detail kind of goes away and collapses in on itself.
02:28 So you can get some interesting results like that.
02:31 For example, this could be a lightning burst or a rune if you're doing some kind of Dungeons
02:36 and Dragons kind of animation and you have these magical languages.
02:40 This could be some kind of rune or some kind of letter.
02:43 But as you can see, we lost a lot of that detail.
02:45 I'll undo that to show you.
02:47 This whole area here just completely collapsed in on itself.
02:51 I'll go ahead and redo that to show you.
02:54 So once again, you can definitely go back and forth between the two types of lines in
02:59 Toon Boom Studio.
03:00 Just keep in mind that if you go from a brush stroke to a center line, you're going to lose
03:04 a lot of that detail.
03:10 Toon Boom has some tools that will allow you to add more detail to your artwork by allowing
03:16 you to cut it.
03:17 If you look at the Eraser tool and you hold your mouse down, you'll find that we have
03:22 a Cutter and a Scissor tool.
03:24 The Cutter tool gives you a tip like an X-Acto blade.
03:28 This is something artists use to cut through paper and all kinds of things.
03:33 You have to be extremely careful because they are very sharp.
03:36 And yes, I have cut myself by mistake.
03:39 Now what I'm going to do with this tool is I'm going to simply slice a shape right through
03:44 my artwork like so.
03:46 Now at first you might be saying to yourself, "I don't see anything."
03:49 We can go to the View menu and we can go to Show Strokes.
03:53 Now you see the path that I just cut through this artwork.
03:56 This wasn't here before.
03:58 Now what I can do is also grab my Select tool and I can click on this piece and move it
04:04 out.
04:05 Let's go back and turn those strokes off.
04:08 So as you can see here, I have a brand new piece of artwork.
04:12 Now I really don't have to move it if I don't want to.
04:14 I can just go ahead and put it back.
04:16 But I can color it with a different color if I want to with the Paint Bucket.
04:21 So that's really, really handy.
04:23 This is really great to add additional detail.
04:26 So let's say you want to draw a cobblestone street.
04:28 You can cut some cobblestones with the Knife tool and then you can go ahead and fill each
04:32 one of those guys with a different color.
04:35 So you can have different shades of gray, for example, to show the different bricks.
04:39 You can even draw a castle wall or anything like that.
04:42 So let me undo that and let me go to my Strokes and make sure I got rid of that completely.
04:46 And he's still there.
04:47 All I'm doing, by the way, is going to the shortcut here, Command or Control Z, to go
04:52 backwards.
04:53 You can also find that under the Edit menu.
04:56 This time I'm going to go to the Scissor tool.
05:00 The Scissor tool works in a rectangular cut.
05:05 But if you hold down the Command or Control key on your keyboard, look at the lasso that
05:10 appears.
05:11 So I let go of the Command or Control key and I have the rectangle.
05:15 Command or Control gives me the lasso.
05:18 The reason you have these options is by default the scissors will cut in a rectangular shape
05:23 and then you can simply move that element.
05:27 Notice that I did not have to go to the Select tool to do that.
05:30 So that's a square piece.
05:32 This time I'm going to hold down Command or Control and I'll just draw out a freeform
05:37 cut.
05:38 Kind of like what my barber does to my head.
05:42 So I'm going to go ahead and once again move that out of the way.
05:45 As you can see, each one of these is a separate piece of artwork that can be colored individually.
05:49 Let me go ahead and hide those strokes, grab my bucket, and I can paint them.
05:54 I can paint strokes, I can paint the insides, or whatever I need to do.
05:59 And those are the tools that you can use to cut artwork inside of Toon Boom Studio.
06:04 Coming up I'm going to show you how the Eraser tool is very similar to that.
06:08 You can also erase things with this guy and use it as a cutting tool.
06:19 Sometimes you'll have the need to make a whole bunch of some element.
06:23 For example, leaves or blades of grass or as you can see here, different shapes on the
06:30 wall.
06:32 And instead of choosing to clone the element, you might choose to copy the element.
06:38 So what really is the difference between those two options?
06:42 You'll find them under the Element menu.
06:45 Here's Clone Element and here's Duplicate Element.
06:49 Well let's think about this real fast.
06:51 When you clone something, let's say you have, well, yourself.
06:55 You make a clone of yourself.
06:58 That clone is going to take on your characteristics.
07:00 It's going to look like you, it's going to talk like you, you know, it's going to be
07:03 you.
07:06 A duplicate is going to be a copy of you, but it may necessarily not be exactly like
07:13 you.
07:14 So it may take on some of your characteristics.
07:16 So in Toon Boom, a clone will allow me to make changes to a whole bunch of things at
07:22 the same time.
07:23 Whereas when you duplicate an element, each one of these will be a separate instance of
07:28 that object.
07:29 So what are the pros and cons of this?
07:32 Well every time you make a duplicate, it adds to the file size and it adds to the memory
07:37 required to run the application.
07:39 Now trust me, it's not going to be drastic at all.
07:42 So feel free to duplicate all you want to.
07:44 But if you want to maximize the small file size that Toon Boom can provide for you, you
07:50 want to clone elements when necessary or applicable.
07:53 So I'm going to clone this fog here I have.
07:57 I'll go to Element, Clone Element, and you'll see I have Fog 1, which was my original, and
08:03 here's Fog 2.
08:05 I'm going to click and move Fog 2 up.
08:09 Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my Paint Bucket Tool and I'm going to
08:13 click on the new fog.
08:15 Now watch what happens.
08:17 As you can see, they're both green right now.
08:18 So I'm going to click.
08:20 Now they're both the same color.
08:23 That's because they're clones.
08:25 Whatever I do to one affects the other.
08:29 So what I'm going to do is I'm going to undo that now.
08:31 I'll press Command or Control Z to go back to my original fog.
08:36 This time I'll go to Element and as you can see here, let me go ahead and make sure I
08:40 have it selected, I'm going to go to Element and I'm going to choose to Duplicate this
08:46 time.
08:47 You may have noticed, by the way, that everything was ghosted out.
08:49 When you click on something and you go to the Element menu and if it's ghosted out,
08:53 just make sure you have it selected as well in your timeline.
08:56 So I'll go ahead and click on the fog itself and then if I click on something else and
09:00 I just can't grab the right thing, you can make sure you click on whatever you need and
09:05 also double check by clicking down here and make sure you see it's blue.
09:09 So Element, Duplicate this time.
09:12 And once again I have a fog 2.
09:15 I'll move that up and once again I'll grab my paint bucket and I'll click.
09:22 This time the duplicate is the only element that changes whereas the original stays green.
09:29 So once again, if you have a lot of things like stars or bricks or grass or anything
09:34 that you want to just have as small a file size as possible, then what you want to use
09:41 is Clone.
09:43 This gives you a huge advantage, especially if you want to just change your mind over
09:47 time and color everything a different color at the same time.
09:51 If you want to have the ability to control things individually, then Duplicate is what
09:56 you want to use instead.
09:58 The duplicate will allow you to change things independently and not affect the original.
10:01 You can use the Eraser tool inside of Toon Boom Studio to not only remove things that
10:13 you don't want to see anymore, but also to use it as a drawing tool to add more detail
10:18 to your artwork.
10:19 I can find the Eraser tool by simply going to whatever tool you have under the paint
10:24 bucket and here's the eraser.
10:26 Typically this is the one you'll see first, but you'll also find your cutting tools.
10:30 So I'm going to grab my Eraser tool and first of all let me go ahead and just make sure
10:35 that I have, let me ungroup this real fast so we can make sure I can get some of this.
10:40 I'll grab my eraser and let me also zoom in.
10:42 So let me go to this part of the stairs.
10:45 I'll zoom in a little bit more and I'm going to simply erase back here.
10:50 Now as you see, I cut away some of the color.
10:54 Now if I grab my Select tool, you'll see that I have a separate piece.
11:00 So why would you want to do this?
11:02 Well as you can see, this is like a shark bite here.
11:04 So imagine you had a shark and you had a scene where somebody was swimming and they were
11:08 in a life raft and you wanted to cut some teeth out of that life raft.
11:13 The Eraser tool is the man for the job.
11:17 So let me undo that and I'm going to show you something else.
11:20 I can also take the Eraser tool and I can do things like add additional shadows.
11:26 So as you can see, I have a shadow on the stairs.
11:28 So let's say I wanted to add a shadow of a person, for example, and I wasn't planning
11:33 on animating it.
11:34 Just give me some examples of what you can do here.
11:37 So here is the shadow that I have and I can grab my Paint Bucket tool and I can click
11:43 on that shadow and even that little hole I just made there.
11:48 So as you can see, I can paint on whatever I erase because it's considered a separate
11:53 piece of artwork.
11:55 Now if I were to erase inside of this shape here, for example, let me go ahead and erase
12:03 inside this shape.
12:05 I can then paint not only the shape itself but also the erased part.
12:11 So once again, this is a great tool and it gives you a lot of flexibility.
12:16 I often find that I haven't added enough shadows when I draw my artwork or I haven't added
12:20 enough detail and that's when I will use the Eraser tool.
12:24 As you can see, especially here, this could have easily been drawn with the Eraser and
12:29 then filled in with the Paint Bucket.
12:31 So if I want to add more detail or anything, once again, grab your Eraser tool instead
12:35 of redrawing things or even using the Stroke tool.
12:38 It's a handy tool that's very diverse and it gives you a lot of flexibility.
12:43 So you're never really stuck.
12:44 Whenever you bring in from Illustrator or you draw here in Toon Boom Studio, you can
12:48 do some cool stuff with this tool.
12:51 Now one thing you might want to also keep in mind, you can also do things like jigsaw
12:56 puzzle parts.
12:57 So you just have to be creative.
12:58 I can just take chunks out of whatever it is I'm trying to animate and if I want to
13:05 do something like an explosion or show the reverse of an explosion with different pieces,
13:11 I have all these different parts now that I can animate.
13:15 So I can go ahead and move on.
13:16 Let me go ahead and ungroup this.
13:18 I can go ahead and grab this part and grab that part and all these pieces here and I
13:22 can have this explode away or once again show the difference, have it going back into the
13:27 object.
13:28 So feel free to experiment with this tool and see what you can come up with.
13:31 Thanks for watching.
13:32 I'll see you next time.
13:33 Bye.
13:33 Bye.
13:34 Bye.
13:34 Bye.
13:39 Bye.
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