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 layers in the Timeline view 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 four art layers.

Overlay
Line Art
Colour Art
Underlay

You can access the art layers through the Art Layer toolbar. By default, only the Line Art and Colour Art are displayed. You need to enable the Support Overlay and Underlay Arts option in the Preferences dialog box.

Art Layer Toolbar

Advanced Art Layer Toolbar

Each layer can be used for separate hand-drawn animation tasks, letting you organize your work and facilitate creation and revision.

Creating Strokes

A drawing is composed of Line and Colour filling layers. Lines and colours can be separated or kept together, depending on which animation process you use. The following diagram presents Line Art and Colour Art recommendations based on the selected animation workflow.

When a traditional drawing is scanned, strokes are automatically created in the Colour Art from the Line Art when drawings are vectorized unless you specified otherwise.

When working with Cut-out animation, we recommend that you do all of the work in the Line Art.

Once the drawing sequence is completed for paperless drawings, you can proceed with creating Colour Art strokes if you plan to paint the animation in the Colour Art. Use the Create Colour Art from Line Art option to create strokes from your lines.

You can create strokes in the Colour Art during the following stages:

After the full drawing is completed in Line Art
While drawing in Line Art

You may have some traditional drawings that need to be fixed; for example, needing extra lines to patch gaps. Use the Auto-Create Colour Art from Brush option to create the strokes at the same time as the lines are drawn. This creates strokes from the lines and brush strokes created in the Line Art while you draw and is useful for fixing drawings. However, if you are drawing a new sketch, it is better to create the strokes afterward using the Create Colour Art from Line Art option.