Shape Tool Options
When you select a shape tool (Rectangle, Ellipse, Line), its properties and options appear in the Tool Properties view.
Move the Size slider left to reduce the line thickness and to the right to increase its width.
You can adjust the start, end, and joint style of a selected pencil line.
• | Start: Lets you select the style of the start tip, which is the first tip you drew. You can choose between Round or Flat style. |
• | End: Lets you select the style of the end tip, which is the last tip you drew. You can choose between Round or Flat style. |
• | Join: Lets you select the joint style. The joints are where the line curves abruptly. You could also define the Join style as the corner style. You can choose between Round, Mitre and Bevel style. |
Toon Boom Harmony provides a variety of thickness stencils and also lets you create and save your own. It is a good idea to create and save pencils with precise sizes and parameters when you draw and design.
A thickness stencil saves a preset of how the thickness information looks across the length of the line. When drawing with a thickness stencil, the pressure sensitivity of the tablet is discarded in order to apply the thickness stencil.
A thickness stencil can be used while drawing, or applied afterwards.
You also have the possibility to apply different textures to your lines by either using the preset ones or importing your own—see Working with Pencil Presets
When the Draw Behind mode is enabled, the lines you draw will appear behind the art that already exists.
When drawing a shape, you can enable different snap modes to help you create your shape.
• | The Snap to Contour option snaps your shape to any line you position it on. |
• | The Snap and Align option snaps the selected anchor point to any existing line, while displaying temporary rulers as a guide that you can also snap your anchor point to. |
• | The Snap to Grid snaps your shape to the currently enabled grid. |
Use the Automatic Filling option to automatically fill your shape with the selected colour as you draw. By default, the Shape tool creates the contour of an empty shape that you can later fill using the Paint tool.
As you draw in the Line Art layer, the Create Colour Art Automatically option automatically creates the corresponding strokes in the Colour Art layer. To access this option, you must be in the Advanced Art mode.
When enabled, the Auto-Flatten mode automatically flattens the new lines created with the existing artwork as you draw in the
Using the Select tool, you can use the middle mouse button to select a segment of flattened pencil line. This creates a nice finish on the lines and corners of your artwork.
When enabled, the Auto-Close Gap mode automatically connects, with an invisible stroke, the pencil lines you draw close to each other in the
The Use Stored Colour Gradient option makes your tool use the previously stored gradient position. This way, every new brush line or colour fill will use the stored gradient position.
The Line Building mode is very useful when drawing long lines and curves in small increments with pencil lines. As the pencil lines are central vector lines and it may be difficult to align the line tips perfectly to create a uniform stroke and close all gaps.
In this mode, you can draw lines in small increments and the tips are merge into one single stroke.
When the Ellipse or Rectangle mode is enabled in the Tool Properties view, the Draw Circle or Draw Square option appears. When selecting these options, the shape produced will be a circle or square. Holding down the Shift key as you create your shape will maintain proportion.