If you harbor the ambition to become an animator, getting to know the tools of the trade should be one of your first priorities.

You may already be used to one of many free animation software systems. You might also be familiar with traditional animation, which is a worthwhile skill to have. But if the idea of officially joining the industry excites you, the industry standard is what you should set your sights on.

In the world of digital animation, the industry standard is Toon Boom Harmony. This walkthrough covers the bare necessities required to get started with Harmony 20 in the most rudimentary sense.

What Is Toon Boom Harmony?

Toon Boom Harmony is one of the most enjoyable experiences that a digital animator can partake in professionally. It's an end-to-end animation system capable of both cut-out animation and paperless animation. Just pick your poison and you're off to the races.

Many will cite the learning curve associated with Harmony, but we encourage you to pay them no heed. The suite of tools that Toon Boom offers is enormous and can be a bit overwhelming at first; this will generally be the case no matter what type of software you're learning. Once you're familiar with each feature and its purpose, however, Harmony becomes a language that is very easy to attain fluency in.

Some of the advanced features that it offers include deformers, cut-out puppets, and an automated lip-sync feature, complete with a digital XSheet. For now, we're going to focus on the simplest type of animation, just to get the ball rolling.

While we'll be going over Harmony 20 in this article, Harmony 21 is the newest version of the software at this time of writing. You can purchase a subscription for Harmony 21 on Toon Boom's website. The subscription starts at $25.50/month for the most basic version of the software. For more features, you can opt for the Advanced plan at $64.50/month, or the Premium plan at $117.50/month.

Related: A Beginner's Guide to Animating Speech

Creating a Scene in Harmony 20

To begin, fire up whichever version of Harmony 20 you're working with. You'll be able to specify the resolution, frame rate, and field of view for your project, as well as the width and the height of the stage itself.

creating-a-new-scene
Creating a new scene in Harmony 20

Name your project, select a destination, and hit Create Scene to continue.

Getting a Feel for the Harmony 20 UI

Soon, you'll see a grey stage, a timeline below, and a bunch of random-looking windows and toolbars. The natural reaction is to panic, but we urge you to push through. A moment of scrutiny will help untangle what's in front of you.

The UI in Harmony 20 immediately after booting up

Each dockable window in Harmony is called a View; the tabs are labeled so you can see which one you're dealing with at any given time. Much like the panels in Adobe Premiere Pro, these so-called Views lock into place and can be rearranged or grouped together as you see fit. To add a new View to a docked group, click the plus (+) symbol.

Adding a View in Toon Boom Harmony 20

There are many Views, and several of them come with dedicated Toolbars. For somebody just starting out, a couple of these Views will be more immediately useful than others.

The Camera View

Most of what you'll be doing in Harmony 20 is done through the Camera View. You draw here, move things around, and view your animation frame-by-frame and in real-time.

The Camera View in Toon Boom Harmony 20

Underneath the staging area, some display options line the bottom of the frame. The Light Table is one that you will probably end up using a lot. Aside from that, you'll also find masking and safe zone overlays, a Snapshot tool, the Zoom menu, the tool and color selected currently, and other display options.

The Camera View options in Harmony 20

To the right, the Camera Toolbar lets you toggle the Grid on and off, among other things. When you have more than one frame in your timeline, the Onion Skin options will also be lit up.

The Tool Properties View

Next to the Camera Toolbar, you should find your Tool Properties. This is where you can adjust all of your tools, such as the line weight and smoothing of the Pencil. Some tools also offer alternate modes, which are found here as well.

The Tool Properties View in Toon Boom Harmony 20

The Color View

More than a simple color selector, the Color View can actually keep track of many different color palette profiles. This feature makes painting each character, prop, and scene a breeze.

The Color View in Toon Boom Harmony 20

These palettes are dynamic. If you adjust the color of the outline, the change will be made globally wherever you applied the selection. Using this feature will save you a ton of time.

The Timeline View

This Timeline View is one of the parts that many newcomers will understand right off the bat. It's just about what you'd expect: an account of everything you've got going on in your project. All of your animation layers will be stacked up on top of each other. Each frame on each layer will be displayed along the Timeline itself temporally.

Everything that you need to navigate the Timeline View will be found right above. The Playback controls are in blue; the nearby pair of jogging wheels is useful when reviewing short sequences of action for timing and flow.

The Timeline View in Toon Boom Harmony 20

The Start and Stop dropdowns act as a pair of in and out points for your Timeline. If you want to loop through one part of your animation, you can use these to control how long the loop runs. You can also choose how quickly your animation plays back to you with the FPS dropdown.

Further along are some other animation options, including Eases and the option to add a new Frame, Keyframe, or Keyframe Exposure. You also have the ability to fill in a row of empty cells with a previous drawing or to duplicate the drawing normally.

Working in Layers in Harmony 20

By default, a new project will already have a single Drawing layer, ready to go. To create another layer, click on the plus (+) icon right above the Timeline. You can also create a new layer from the Insert dropdown above.

Creating layers in Harmony 20

Once created, each layer can be locked, hidden, grouped, and shuffled around within the Timeline View. You can navigate between them by simply clicking on the one that you need.

Creating a New Frame in Harmony 20

To create a new blank frame, click on the layer that you want to draw on, and tap the staging area with the Pencil tool. A new blank frame should appear automatically.

Drawing your first frame is as easy as selecting the Pencil tool and getting down to business. In this case, we're going to draw a ball bouncing off of the ground.

Creating a blank frame in Harmony 20

Using the < and > keys advances the playhead by one frame backward or forward, respectively. Hit > once to begin drawing your second frame.

Adding a new frame in Harmony 20

Nice—it's looking a little lonely, though. To enable Onion Skins, press Alt + O.

An Onion Skin layer in Harmony 20

Seeing the previous frame will make drawing our in-betweens much easier. Before that, however, we're going to add a third pose and separate frame, leaving a blank space on the Timeline between each one.

Selecting a frame in Harmony 20

To hustle one of your frames up or down the Timeline, click on the frame once to select it.

Moving a frame in Toon boom Harmony 20

Once it's been selected, drag it one frame forward.

Deleting a frame in Harmony 20

Harmony fills in the gap with an extension of the frame that came before. You can use this extension as a placeholder if you're just working on timing. If you intend to draw an in-between on that frame, you can simply select the duplicate and remove it using the Delete key.

Next: more in-betweens, completing the action of the sequence.

The Onion Skin display in Harmony 20

You can add or subtract Onion Skin layers with the four buttons from the Camera Toolbar mentioned previously. You can also drag the red and green in and out points connected to the Playhead on the Timeline to cover everything that you need to see in Onion Skin mode.

With Onion Skins enabled, it's easy to pick out any frames that feel out-of-line. When you can check the whole progression out at once, any issues with your line of action or arcing will become apparent immediately.

Play your animation back once or twice. If it feels right, the final step is to export the project.

Related: How to Animate a Walk Cycle for Beginners

How to Export Animation in Harmony 20

Harmony gives you the option of exporting your project as an Image Sequence, a Movie (MP4 or WMV), a GIF, or as an SWF file.

You can find these four options by heading to File > Export. Choose the one that you need, and make any necessary adjustments to your export settings

Exporting from Harmony 20

From there, this final step is pretty straightforward. Your project should be exported and ready to go.

Taking Things One Step at a Time

This extremely simple paperless animation tutorial covers only the most basic way to animate in Harmony 20. There is an entire world of symbols, rigging, deformers, and clean-up that remains to be explored. Once you've acquainted yourself with the program, the obsession can truly begin.

As the industry's animation software of choice, the creative framework that Harmony offers in support of a commercial workflow is staggeringly broad-reaching, addressing all possible needs. We discover new things that we love about it every single day; it never ceases to keep us interested, time and time again.