Chapter 11: How to Paint

Toon Boom Harmony has some very powerful colouring features when it comes to painting. To paint your drawings, you will use different colour swatches, unlike some other painting programs where you modify the main swatch each time you want to paint with a different colour.

In the Colour view, you choose a different colour swatch for each colour you want to paint in your drawing. You can add as many swatches as you want. You can also rename them and modify existing ones.

When you modify the colour of an existing swatch, it automatically updates all the zones painted with this swatch throughout the entire project. The colour swatch has a unique ID number that associates it with the painted zones. This way, you can change the look of your character at any time without having to repaint it!

In animation, specific colours are used to paint each particular character. In order to maintain absolute consistency, a colour palette is created for each character, prop and effect throughout the production. This is referred to as a master palette.

Master palettes contain a colour swatch for each zone to colour with a precise RGBA colour value.

Using a master colour palette has many benefits, including:

Each character consistently retains their dedicated colours.
You cannot accidentally use a colour which is not in the master palette.
Standardization and colour consistency throughout the production
Multiple artists can use the same colour palette and produce the same results.

Toon Boom Harmony uses palettes to hold all the colours needed to paint your elements, allowing complete control and consistency in your painting process.

A palette is created by assigning a set of colours to each character, prop or effect. You will create a new palette and add a new colour, known as a colour swatch, for each zone of the character, such as the skin, hair, tongue, shirt, pants, and so on.

Closing Gaps

When painting, notice that some of your drawing areas are not closed. To close the zone, you can draw the missing line with the Brush or Pencil tool or close the gap with an invisible line. To do so, you will use the Close Gap tool.

The Close Gap tool lets you close small gaps in a drawing. The Paint tool only paints closed areas. The Close Gap tool creates small, invisible strokes between the two closest points to close the colour zone. You do not need to trace directly over the gap. You can draw it a few millimetres away and the Close Gap tool will automatically choose the two closest points and close the gap.