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Friday, May 11, 2007

Cut Out Tutorial Parts 2-4

Well, I finally got a day off & I didn't have to move furniture, work around a carpenter, or do anything else for that matter. So I was able to get the remaining parts of the cut out tutorial uploaded. Parts 2-4 are all in one big file. You can view it through the embedded player below, or through this link: Cut Out Tutorial Parts 2-4. If it doesn't look good or appears stretched it's because I don't know what I'm doing, but if you right click the video after it loads, you can select zoom, then full screen, & it should look fine.





I really hope some people find these usefull. I apologize once again for taking so much longer than promised, it was admittedly more than I expected. I will continue to make these, but I think in the future I will try to keep them MUCH shorter & more concise. These ended up turning out fairly well, allthough there are certainly improvements to be made. Any places that get a little choppy, or seem like bad editing, are probably just that. But for a first & second attempt I'm pleased. Anyway, please leave some feedback, I'm curious to hear people's opinions.

12 comments:

Jerry Keslensky said...

Pat,
A really good first tutorial. I look forward to watching the evolution of your tutorials. Like anything, each future effort will be better than the previous one as you learn more and get feedback. My only major input is that there were times when I wasn't sure it was clear exactly what you were doing as to keyboard short cuts etc. I'm not sure exactly the best way to communicate this as your keystrokes aren't visible on the screen. Perhaps you will want to use the menus and just reference that there are keyboard shortcuts that save a user time. But perhaps for the viewer it might be more useful to see the actual menu commands as you use them. A serious accomplishment and you should be very pleased at your success. Nice job.

Pat the Pirate said...

Thanks, JK. I see what you're saying about shortcuts & such. It's funny too, I was wondering about some of that when making it, and sometimes decided to articulate what I was doing: "Hit K to show all strokes", while other times I know I didn't, like chen cycling through elements on the x-sheet. I say it's funny because I just read your post on the tbs forum regarding such decisions when writing an article. It is indeed a tricky science, but I guess I didn't make this tut for people opening TBS for the first time. Going along with your earlier suggestion of shorter tutorials though, I think I may go back & do a few that illustrate some of the basic shortcuts as well as go over the various tools & their uses. I'll try to get a few of them done soon, but I haven't been spending as much time as I'd like on my toon lately, so I need to really concentrate on that for a bit. Thanks as always for the feedback.

Jerry Keslensky said...

You are most welcomed. And yes, your toon work should take priority to making tutorials. As to making things clear and simple who would have thought someone would be confused when the tutorial omitted to say that naming elements required the user to change the default name. As authors we don't want to come across as treating the reader / viewer as total newbies and yet you can't assume too much experience until you build up a foundation of lessons that get people past the very basics.

Pat the Pirate said...

Well I've posted them on the toonboom myspace page as well, and I was just contacted by Karen from the toon boom staff asking to link them on their blog as well. I know it's not a huge deal, but I was/am extremely flattered. Whether it's a toon or not, it's the first time I've received such a request, so I'm pretty pumped. I told her I'd be thrilled & let her know that I'll be covering more of the fundamental stuff soon. Pretty cool stuff though, eh?

Jerry Keslensky said...

Absolutely cool stuff. Except that occasionally we run into people who question our motives for providing help to others, It always feels good to know that someone out there somewhere is getting helped because of our efforts. So as Will always says, rock on. And hopefully the grumps and trolls will get a sense of humor or just dry up and blow away. -lol-

Unknown said...

Pat,
I am a new ToonBoom user and I found your tutorials to be EXCELLENT. Obviously they are not high def, but I thought your content was a nice balance of keeping things simple and also explaining some of the more sophisticated parts of ToonBoom. They were very helpful to me and I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to make them. Way to go!

Pat the Pirate said...

Thanks a lot, Kent. I'm glad you found some value in them. I have plans for more to come soon, but I think it will cover some of the basics that I didn't address in this one.

Check out the link on the TBS forums to the new lip sync tut on youtube. I'm not sure who made it but its excellent, & one that I don't have to make now :)

Anonymous said...

man watch this my cutout animation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1QqIMy1hmM

Ruban said...

thanks so much for this tutorial. It was the only vid tutorial that I watched that addressed the particular problem I had, which was making child element appear to be in front of their parent elements. Very helpful!

Pat the Pirate said...

Thanks for the comment, Ruban. Glad you found my tut helpful.

The Z axis in TBS is a really powerful asset, certainly for character rigging like in the tutorial, but also for positioning bacground elements & such. It can give a much more realistic sense of depth than just scaling objects to different sizes on the same plane. Using the Z axis & virtual 3D space is what allows for the cool camera moves & giving the illusion of a 3D environment.

Anyway glad you liked it & found it helpful. :)

Terry said...

Hi Pat,

I'm a newbie to TBS4, and I just wanted to say thanks for the video tutorial. I really needed to see the tools in use, in a video.
TBS4 isn't an extremely complex program however I really needed for someone literally demonstrate how to use it.
Thanks, man.

Terry

Pat the Pirate said...

Hey Terry,

Thanks a lot for the kind words. It's good to hear that this long after I posted them people are still seeing these tuts & getting some use out of them. Really glad to hear you found them helpful, is there anything in particular you'd like to see another tut on? I really should put another together soon. God knows I've talked about it enough...

Anyway, if there's something you'd like to see just let me know & I'll do my best to accomodate.