Art Layers
Art layers give you the possibility to divide the artwork in your drawing on different layers. For example, you can separate the outline and colour fill on two art layers, similar to 1950s traditional cell animation. These art layers are contained within a single drawing as opposed to the timeline layers or Xsheet columns where individual drawings with individual timing are stacked one on top of the other—see Creating Strokes .
Toon Boom Harmony drawings include
• | Line Art |
• | Colour Art |
Each layer can be used for separate hand-drawn animation tasks, letting you organize your work and facilitate creation and revision.
In hand-drawn animation, the Line Art layer is mainly used to trace and clean up animation. The outline is drawn in the Line Art layer and colour is painted in the Colour Art layer.
In hand-drawn animation, you use the Colour Art layer to paint your animation. The outline is drawn in the Line Art layer and colour is painted in the Colour Art layer. Strokes (invisible lines) are generated from Line Art to contain the painted area.
When you are doing rough animation, you may want to send a clip to somebody for feedback or approval before carrying on with your work. If you have several characters in your project that are overlapping, it may be difficult to understand what is going on as you can see through the characters. Toon Boom Harmony can generate a matte automatically in the Colour Art layer, and fill all the zones inside your characters making them opaque. This process is fast and easy and allows you to send easy-to-understand movies.
1. | Do one of the following: |
‣ | In the Drawing view, right-click and select Switch to Colour Art/Switch to Line Art or press L. |
‣ | In the Colour view, click the Colour Art button. |
‣ | In the Colour view, click the Line Art button. |
2. | To preview the Line Art and Colour Art at the same time: |
‣ | In the Drawing view, right-click and select Preview Line Art and Colour Art or press Shift + P. While using the Preview mode, you still edit one mode at a time. |
‣ | In the Colour view, click the Preview button. |
To edit both Line Art and Colour Art at the same time, you must enable the Apply to Line Art and Colour Art button in the Tool Properties of the tools supporting the operation.