A Text Scrolling Technique In Perspective

As frequently happens, this tutorial was inspired by a question on the Toon Boom Studio User Forums. The question was "is it possible to do a perspective style scroll similar to the Star Wars opening title sequence using TBS?" So here is a brief tutorial showing one possible technique that will give you that effect. I also included some applications of the TBS Color Transform Effect in animating the text. You can view the final movie first and then come back and read how to create this effect.

The Sample Star Wars Style Perspective Text Scroll
(click on this link to watch the movie)

To start, of course we need a new animation project. And the first thing we will need is to create a drawing element for the classic opening text "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away....". Now I need to put my usual reminder in at this point. It is the technique that we are discussing here and the technique is practical and usable by itself. All text and images used in this tutorial are just here to demonstrate this technique. You can use any text and images in your own work and how you name your elements in your own work is your personal preference. You can adopt my naming conventions or not as you so choose.



The default drawing element in TBS projects is named "drawing 1", so you could leave it that way. I am going to rename it to "a" because I typically name my drawing elements as alphabet letters. To do this I select the timeline track label for this element and right click to get the context menu. I then select "Rename Element".



A dialog opens and I can change the name from "drawing 1" to "a" and click the "OK" button.



To make the text on my first cell, I select the "text" tool from the drawing tool palette.



I select a font style and size and just type in the desired text (all personal preferences). I centered this text on my field guide, but in scene planning I'll adjust its size and location as desired using the scene planning operations select tool (6).



I want to have a "fade in and fade out" for this opening text in my movie so I will do this using a color transform effect. I will add this element by clicking on the "+" icon at the top of the timeline.



I use the pull-down menu on the element type box to select "Color Transform Effect".



A new track label appears in my timeline track label list and the default 20 frame color transform effect shows in the time line. I am going to select that transform effect and drag it to line up with the first frame of my "a" drawing element which is frame 34 in my example. This is a repositioning of the start of the color transform effect in time. I also named the color transform effect "ca", which is my standard way of naming color transforms to match the element they will control. I will also drag the "a" element track label on top of the "ca" element track label to "attach" the child to its parent.




I want this "fade in and fade out" effect to run from frame 34 to frame 120, so I grab the end of the color transform and drag it out to frame 120. I'm not repositioning the effect this time, I'm stretching its duration.



I now select the track for element "a" and move the cursor to frame 120 and right click to get the context menu. I choose "Extend Exposure" to add "hold" exposures for cell a-1 from frame 34 to frame 120.



Now I select the "ca" color transform effect and move my frame slider to frame 34. I want to set a key frame here to initialize this transform. I want my text to be "invisible" to start the effect so I set the Multiplicative Alpha value to 0 (zero). This makes the text totally transparent.



I move the frame slider 25 frames to frame 58 and add a new keyframe to the "ca" color transform. This time I want the text to be totally visible so I set the Multiplicative Alpha value to 1 (one). This make the text totally opaque. I'm also going to do a color change during this "fade in" just to show you how to do that as well. So at frame 58 I also change the Additive values for Red, Green and Blue. My text on cell "a-1" was set to "black" originally which is R=0, G=0, B=0. So I want to get a yellow color by adding 255 to the red value and 215 to the green value. I'm not setting the end RGB value numerically, instead I am creating that end value by adding an offset to the initial RGB value. The color transform effect will gradually animate this color change between frame 34 and frame 58 along with the fade in from transparent to opaque. The transition is linear. I control how long the transition takes by the number of frames between keyframes.



To create the "fade out" part of the effect I move the frame slider to frame 96 and add a keyframe to the "ca" color transform. I don't need to modify any values on this keyframe, I'm just initializing the start of my "fade out". The reason I need this initial keyframe at frame 96 is to control when the transition of the "fade out" begins. I wanted a period of time between the end of the "fade in" and the beginning of the "fade out" where nothing changed regarding this text. (frames 58 to 96 is the equivalent of a constant segment)



I want to finish my "fade out" at frame 120. So I just need to set the Multiplicative Alpha value for the "ca" color transform effect to zero. To "fade in" I went from transparent to opaque and to "fade out" I'm going from opaque to transparent.


Cell b-1

Now I need to create three new drawing elements for my scrolling text. The number of elements is a function of what I'm trying to accomplish. I basically decided that I would do a separate element for each paragraph of text so that I could individually "fade out" the paragraphs as the text reached "deep space". If all I was doing was just the scrolling without individual "fade outs", I could have just used a single element for the text.


Cell e-1


Cell h-1

One trick that I employed in creating my paragraphs was to use different font sizes for each paragraph. The top paragraph is 36 pica. The second paragraph is 46 pica and the last paragraph is 48 pica. The idea is that things closer to you in perspective are larger than things farther away, so as the text scrolls away in perspective the relative size of the text in the paragraphs helps the visual effect. I also made sure that each successive line of text was longer that the previous line as well as centered on the previous lime which also enhances the perspective look of the scroll. (kind of like visual vanishing point lines converging)



Before I begin animating the actual scrolling of the text, I added a "space" background. This could easily be just a black matte. I happened to have a library template of a space background that I used in a previous tutorial (Using A Subtractive Animation Technique) so I included it here just to dress up the final movie.



The picture above shows how my final timeline track label list will look. Each text paragraph drawing element is attached to a color transform effect for its individual fade out into "deep space". Each drawing element and its color transform are attached to a parent peg and the three paragraph parent pegs are all attached to a top level peg that will actually control the scrolling of the text. The background is at the bottom of the list along with the opening title drawing element with its attached color transform from the opening "fade in" and "fade out" effect.




As I mentioned earlier, I will initialize the size and location of the text paragraphs prior to animating the scroll in scene planning view. I use the scene planning operations select tool (6) to do this. You can get a good idea of the relative size of the text with respect to the camera view frame prior to starting the scroll by looking at the picture above.



Click on the image above to see a larger view

To animate the scroll, I'm going to use the scene planning operations transform tool (7). I collapse the top level parent peg, "Peg 4" in my timeline track label list. When you collapse a peg it not only hides the children elements attached to that peg, it also lets you set keyframes on all elements in a ripple down. A perspective scroll requires the text to scroll up across the screen while it is moving away from the viewer. If you viewed the scroll in terms on 3D space it is a diagonal plane sloping up away from the viewer. We construct this using the top and side view panels. I'm going to be scrolling from frame 126 to frame 720, so I will stretch the duration of "Peg 4" from frame 126 to frame 720, then I right click to open the context menu and select "Extend children exposure" to make sure that I have exposures for all attached elements for the entire scroll duration. We begin by setting a keyframe on "Peg 4" at frame 126 . This is the initial frame for starting the scroll. The scroll lasts until frame 720 so that's where we will also set a keyframe on "Peg 4". Remember the transform tool (7) is actively selected before I set any of these keyframes. Once I set the keyframe at frame 720, I'm ready to reposition "Peg 4" in the top and side view panels. The frame slider is sitting on frame 720. I start in the side view panel and drag the red circle for "Peg 4" up to the top edge of the side view angle. As I do this I can see the text in camera view move across the screen vertically. Then I go to the top view panel and drag the red circle for "Peg 4" back away from the view point in the view angle. As I do this I can see the text getting smaller in the scene planning camera view panel. I now have a vertical slant visible in my side view panel. It may take you some playing around in these two panels to get the effect that you want. It just takes a bit of practice moving things in the top and side view while watching the camera view to see the results. I just need to set the segment between the keyframes on "Peg 4" at frame 126 and frame 720 to non-constant and I'll also use the function editor panel to set the velocity curve for this non-constant segment to the standard ease-in ease-out curve. See Key Framed Animation to refresh your knowledge of these concepts of segments and function curves.


Click on the picture to see a larger view


Click on the picture to see a larger view

Now that I have my text scroll done, I just need to do the "fade outs" for each text paragraph. I position my color transform effects at the desired starting frames for each paragraph and stretch their durations for the length of the effect as desired (all personal preferences).



The initial setting of a "fade out" is opaque so we set the Multiplicative Alpha value to 1.



The final setting of a "fade out" is transparent so I set the Multiplicative Alpha value to 0 (zero) on the last keyframe of the color transform effect. I have to repeat this process of setting the values of the color transform effects for each of the three text paragraphs in my example.

The Sample Star Wars Style Perspective Text Scroll
(click on this link to watch the movie)

As you can see this effect is probably more complicated to explain than it is to create. So give it a try, I hope you learned a new trick or two.

Creating Multiple Shots In A Single Scene

This tutorial is focused on using Toon Boom Studio to make a cartoon short. It is intended to provide an overview of some of the steps in creating a one scene short that is composed of several view point changes more technically referred to as "shots".

Note: you can click on any image to view a larger version

In making this cartoon short, titled "A Matter of Artistic Differences", once the concept was determined and visualized in a rough storyboard, the first step was to create the sound track and the drawing elements. As you can see from the picture of the scene's exposure sheet in figure 2 below, there were 3 sound track elements and 26 drawing elements utilized. Now before you panic about the number of drawing elements used, only about 7 of these drawing elements contained more than one or two actual cells. Most are just occupied by a single drawing and only the main character elements have numerous drawings. The sound track was split up into three elements due to the need for overlapping of sounds in two places along the time line.

Note: Normally we name elements as a single letter: a,b,c,d,e,.... and put the descriptions in element notes, but for this "how to" example we used more descriptive names for clarity.

Figure 1: the library view of "agile4" drawing element cells

Figure 2: the scene's exposure sheet

Although some of the picture composition was done using the "auto light table" to view cells across an exposure sheet frame, we normally do most picture composition in camera view. So we end up doing a great deal of the production work in the time line once the drawn cells are created. We try to avoid doing any drawing in camera view, all drawing is done in drawing view and camera view is where we composite the final scenes. As you can see by figure 3, the time line track list gets quite long. So we use peg elements like file folders to group and manage the clutter.

Figure 3: uncluttered track list with collapsed peg folders

As a note of interest, because we are using TBS V3.5 or higher, there are almost no separate peg elements being used which greatly reduces the number of time line tracks. Most of the separate pegs elements we used were as grouping devices like file folders just to be better organized. Most keyed frame work is done using animated drawing elements which now include their own integrated peg. Figure 4 below shows the expanded view of the track list.

Figure 4: the final expanded time line track list

This cartoon is shot as one actual scene. The opening sequence simulates the "on screen" presentation of our character Agile Ant as he is being blown about in a snow storm on a mountain top. When Agile yells "cut, cut, cut!" out of total frustration, we see via a "pull back and pan" of the camera, that this is in fact a movie set. Then as Agile begins his angry determined walk across the sound stage, we cut to a wide shot that reveals that this is a table top set much like one that would be used in a "stop frame" puppet cartoon like Wallace and Gromit. Figure 5 shows the camera's view point framing the opening shot.

Figure 5: the opening sequence shot

The second camera shot for our short is a "pull back and pan" reveal of the "real world" of the cartoon movie set. It is all done with the TBS camera. The initial art work was scaled only once as we set it up for the opening sequence. (see figure 8 below) The camera, which is attached to a peg element, is positioned to give us the tight shot of the mountain top with Agile blowing in the wind. Then when we are ready to make our pull back and pan move, we first set a key frame of the camera's attributes at time line frame 240. This is done to lock down the start of our camera for a motion tween. So having set the starting position of our camera move at frame 240, we move to the ending frame for this shot which we determined we wanted to be frame 356. With the transform scene planning tool selected, we move the red time line frame marker to frame 356 and use the up and down arrow keys and the left and right arrow keys of our keyboard to reposition the camera viewport to the desired ending position for our move. We also use the Top View panel to move the camera back away from the picture plane. This sets our ending keyed frame attributes. Now all that is needed is to go back to frame 240 on our camera peg and set the constant segment to non-constant and we have our camera move. We normally work with constant segments as a default setting and then we can switch the desired segment between key frames to non-constant as desired. We can adjust the velocity of the camera move using a customized function curve, but for this move we stayed with the default linear curve.

Figure 6: the time line at the beginning of the "Pull Back and Pan" shot

Figure 7: the time line at the end of the "Pull Back and Pan" shot

Figure 8: the relative size of the art work VS the camera viewport frame

Now comes a more complex shot sequence as we pick up Agile Ant in his determined walk across the set, first in a normal long shot, then in a really distant wide shot that reveals the true scope of our movie set and then in a closer tracking shot as he approaches the target of his wrath, that "prince" of a cartoon director, Marty.

Figure 9: the first shot of Agile walking

This shot sequence is made in three parts, but don't think of it as three separate sections of art work. It is one set of art work with three camera set ups. The actual character walking is a cycle that is key framed to move across the table top set. All the set and props have been scaled together as a composite picture and the character is scaled to match the same relative size as the props and set. The changes in viewpoint are all done with the camera set ups. So before we do the camera work we will animate Agile's entire walk across the whole set completely as if there were not going to be any changes in camera position. Once that's done it is all about using the TBS camera. For the first part of the sequence we position the camera viewport and create a motion tweened shot between frames 380 and 448. This is done in a similar manner to the way we did the pull back and pan including using the Top View panel to help us move the camera back farther from the picture plane.

Figure 10: the wide shot of Agile walking

At frame 449 we begin the wide shot part of the sequence (figure 10). The first thing we have to do at frame 449 is reposition the camera. We have the camera positioned at frame 448 with the ending keyframe of our prior move. So at 449 we completely reposition the camera using the Top View panel again to move the camera back from the picture plane to give us the complete view of the set. Once we get the right camera set up, we add a keyframe at frame 449 to lock down our starting camera position. This wide shot lasts until frame 552 where we have made a slight adjustment of the camera to give us a really small pan during our wide shot. The shot is created by key framing the camera start position at 449 then moving the camera at frame 552 and key framing that ending position and then creating a non-constant segment between 449 and 552. The walk and the art work are never changed.

Figure 11: back to the closer tracking shot of Agile walking

The last part of this sequence is the close tracking shot (figure 11). It starts at frame 553. So once again we need to start by making the beginning camera position for this shot and keyframe it at 553. The ending of the shot is at 777 with Agile right in front of Marty's face. Again we used the Top View panel to adjust our camera's distance from the picture plane to get the desired viewpoint. We haven't needed to use the Side View panel because although we are changing our cameras distance from the picture plane we are staying at the same horizontal eye level.

Figure 12: the last camera set up of this cartoon scene

At frame 780 we are ready for the final shot of the cartoon which is focused in on Agile as he delivers his frustrated speech to Marty. Figure 12 shows the camera viewport for this shot and the Top View panel where we are adjusting the distance between the camera and the picture plane.

As you hopefully are beginning to see, making a cartoon sequence in Toon Boom Studio is a combination of drawing and composition and cinematography. It is easy to design and produce multiple shots with in a single scene. It just takes a bit of planning up front.

Figure 13: cells from the "agile1" drawing element

Figure 14: cells from the "agile2" drawing element

I am always glad to answer questions about making cartoons and about using Toon Boom Studio and I actively frequent the TBS User Forums. -JK

Re-watch the cartoon : A Matter of Artistic Differences

Note: This blog post is an updated version of an article which I originally wrote and published as part of our web site's TBS FAQ section which we are slowly phasing out and replacing with this blog and the Cartooning in Toon Boom WIKI.

Key Framed Animation Part 5

Please be sure to review Key Framed Animation – Part 1 and Key Framed Animation – Part 2 and Key Framed Animation - Part 3 and Key Framed Animation - Part 4 before you continue with this final part of this series. You can also review the demonstration scene .

In Part 3 we constructed the underwater environment for our demonstration scene. In Part 4 we created the swimming cycle for our fish and we animated his swimming into the scene using a motion guide. The storyline calls for Filbert, the fish, to tread water briefly after he reaches mid-scene before he reacts to seeing the shark. To accentuate the surprise factor of this scene we have determined in the storyboards that animating the camera is appropriate at this time. In a cinematic scene we may stay within a common setting but the use of multiple shots or view points is useful in adding to the storytelling. We are going to move in close on Filbert before he reacts and then after his reaction fills the screen, we will “hard cut” back to a reveal shot of the source of his panic.

In order to animate the camera we need to attach the camera element to a peg element, the easiest way to do that is to use the “add parent peg” icon at the top of the timeline track label list while we have the camera element’s track selected. Once the camera is attached to a parent peg, which is named Camera-P a standard naming convention for a single element parent peg, we need to go to frame 1 of Camera -P and make the transform tool active and set our initializing keyframe. This is to lock down our starting characteristics for the camera. It is always a good practice to set a transform group of keyframes on the first frame of any peg to initialize the peg. This is true for separate peg elements or integrated pegs on image or drawing elements. Next we will move to frame 671 on the Camera-P peg and add a second key frame being sure the transform tool is still active. Again prior to starting a camera move it is advised to lock down the end of any previous shot. We will start out trucking in shot on frame 672. We need to make the motion tool active and set a motion keyframe. The camera’s point of view at frame 672 is the beginning of our trucking shot.

(click on to enlarge)

Next we need to move to the ending frame of the shot at frame 710. With the motion tool still active we need to set a key frame. Now we can execute the shot by selecting the end of the motion path at frame 710 and dragging it to position our camera view point to the ending view of this shot. I usually do this in Top view first while visually watching the view point change in Camera view. I may, and usually do, make additional adjustments by dragging the end of the motion guide in the Side view as well.

Now that I have "trucked in" to the ending position of this shot, I need to go back to frame 672, the beginning position and on the Camera-P peg, I want to set the segment between frames 672’s motion key and frame 710’s motion key to be a non-constant segment. I set my TBS preferences to always create constant segments on my pegs as I prefer to set my non-constant segments manually when needed. Be sure you still have the motion tool active when setting this segment to tell TBS you are setting a motion key segment. The solid line between the motion keyframes indicates the segment is now a non-constant segment.

(click on to enlarge)

Below you can see the motion paths with their corresponding spacing indicated in both the Side and Top view panels. I left the velocity function as the default even spacing because this is a really short duration move and it works well that way. Had it been a longer move I probably would have used an ease-in ease-out velocity function.

(click on to enlarge)

Filbert's screaming reaction starts at frame 723. I animated this similarly to the way I animated his swimming cycle in drawing view by drawing the various cells to create the scream. So now I just need to insert that element and these cells into the timeline starting with frame 723. I need to be sure to have the select tool active before I start trying to position this Filbert screaming element. The hardest part of keyframe animation is making sure you always have the best tool selected for what you are trying to do. You have to be paying attention to your active tool or you can make inadvertent mistakes really easily.

The shark is also animated as an element in drawing view and I have placed his swimming cycle into the time line but he is currently off camera because we are still "trucked" in tight on Filbert.

At frame 770 on the Camera-P peg I want to set a new motion key, so I have to make the motion tool active. I add a keyframe and reposition the camera’s view point to the "reveal" of the shark. I want this camera shot to be a “hard cut” so I will leave the segment between frame 710’s motion key and frame 770’s motion key as a constant segment.

(click on to enlarge)

This causes the shot to “snap” from the "trucked in" close up to the reveal shot when the movie reaches frame 770

Now it is time to have Filbert make a strategic retreat. Actually he is going to “zip” out of there for his life!! Things will happen so fast that I can save myself a lot of work by just reusing the same swim cycle I used earlier in the scene. I made it a template, so reusing it is just a matter or dragging and dropping it from my library to the timeline.

It is just one 12 frame cycle. Now you might be wondering why I used a second instance of the swimming template rather than adding to the time line of the first instance I used at the beginning of the scene. That instance has static values I applied to it to position and flip the fish. If I just advance the timeline for that instance and repositioned Filbert with the scene planning select tool so that he was facing the opposite direction it would be a global change and mess up the first bit of animation I made. It is just cleaner and easier to reuse the template as a new series of tracks just for this short “zip” off.

So, I place Filbert swimming into the scene starting at frame 795. I use the select tool to scale him to 50% but I don’t need to flip him horizontally this time. Using the transform tool I put a starting and ending keyframe on his main character peg just for good measure and I selected the 12 frames with the main character peg collapsed and copied them. I moved to the end of the cycle and pasted them using “paste special” to extend the exposure of the first cycle to a second cycle. This second cycle will totally never be seen but I wanted the extra frames to help with my “zip” motion. Now I will attach the second instance of Filbert swimming to a peg element which I added and named “Zipaway”. This is going to be my motion guide. I collapse the Zipaway peg and make the motion tool active and go to frame 795 on the Zipaway peg and set a motion key. I then move to frame 819 on the Zipaway peg and set a second motion key. I move the motion guide's end to position Filbert off screen using the Top view and Side view to get the desired location. Then I return to frame 795 on the Zipaway peg and with the motion tool active, set the segment between these two motion keys to be a non-constant segment.

(click on to enlarge)

I want the spacing for this "zip" action to be different from the default even spacing, so I need to create a different velocity curve from the default linear velocity curve.

With the “Zipaway” peg selected in the timeline, I open the function editor; I have the function editor set up as keyboard short cut key “J” which makes opening and closing the panel really convenient. I first need to select "velocity" as my function because this is a motion segment. If it had been a scale segment I would have chosen H-scale or V-scale, for a rotation segment I would have chosen Rotation, and for a skew segment I would have chosen Skewing. They are all used to set the spacing for the “tweening” just for different attribute types. I zoom in on my frames for this segment and using the "reshape" pull down at the top right corner of the function editor window, I chose a fast out/in curve shape. I’m not interested in the end of the motion’s spacing because it will be off camera, but the beginning spacing is important to getting the desired action. I want the in betweens to be farther apart as the beginning to add speed to the action.

(click on to enlarge)

I added a special effect with bubbles in element " Bubbles 3" to give the "zip" an extra impact as Filbert is really stirring up the water as he makes for cover. That’s pretty much it for this scene. I certainly hope that this series on Key Framed Animation has given you a sound foundation on keyframing and how to use this technique in animating. There are plenty of additional aspects to key framed animation but those are for future articles.

Above is a view of the track label list with pegs mostly collapsed but I wanted to show you the tracks that were the same template reused twice as well as the motion guide peg elements.