There are only a couple of instances where a Puppet/Bone tool might be useful:ġ) When doing subtle animations on a bitmap image (think the cats in the Meow-Meow commercials)Ģ) When you want to work with a character that it wearing clothes that have textures on them, like a plaid shirt for example. In my humble opinion, for most scenarios, I still prefer a traditional cut-out puppet scenario. Morphing artwork with bones might look good on simple artwork but how does it look on a more complex character with multiple tones and a more dynamic range of motion being used in the animation? How much control do you have over joint deformation? I wish they would post some actual examples of bone animation in the Toon Boom Studio forum as opposed to a very brief overview so I could look for myself without having to ask some of these questions. Toon Boom Studio is being marketed to home enthusiasts who may be more concerned with production speed and less with the animation quality, especially in the case of cut-out or limited animation. If the only difference is the speed of bones I’ rather use the hierarchy system in Animate II and put it a bit of extra work to get a superior look.
Besides the speed of creating the rig are there any other advantages to the bone tool over a hierarchy / pivot point system? I know that with the hierarchy system in Animate II you can still take advantage of an IK rigging system easily swap out drawing substitutions when the character changes angles or creates movement beyond the IK joint set up and eliminate deformations to the joints during movement by careful clean up, line work and tonal painting. I’m guessing that bones is the faster way to get a character rigged for animation as it can actually morph the artwork underneath with or without the preparation required to create a cutout hierarchy? Does anyone who’s used both methods have an opinion about the quality of the animation when you compare the two? I see a lot of people requesting or wishing for a bone feature in Animate II like the one in Toon Boom Studio.