Toon Boom launches Harmony 20 with an Inspiring Demo Pack

Toon Boom Animation has released the latest update to its award-winning Toon Boom Harmony animation production software. With Harmony 20, the company wants to challenge artists and animators to express themselves in new styles, inspiring users with a demo pack created by seven artists and their teams from around the world. The work illustrates endless possibilities with Harmony 20's advanced drawing and coloring tools, as well as a host of new features.

"The entertainment industry is becoming aware of the true value of animation, both as a means of producing content and expressing what is impossible to show in any other medium," said Stephanie Quinn, director of marketing at Toon Boom Animation. "Harmony 20 has tools and skills that challenge artists to push the limits of what audiences expect to see."

Harmony 20, the industry-leading 2D animation software, brings the ultimate in digital drawing sensitivity to your brushes - every brand, every style, every texture you want to create is natural. Rulers, guides, color control and functionality, as well as innovative warps, enrich the animation and bring your work closer to what you can imagine.

To show the flexibility and stylistic features of Harmony 20, Toon Boom invited seven artists and teams to produce a demonstration package, each with scenes inspired by a short message. These teams were selected by both the Toon Boom Ambassador Program and the international user community and had full creative freedom in their scenes.

Demo breakdown:

• First scene - Mark Borgions, illustrator and animator, Handmade Monsters | Interpretation: “In our world… // Anything is possible”, the scene by Belgian illustrator Mark Borgions begins with a squirrel climbing a huge tree as giants approach to play instruments. The scene uses imported vector and raster elements along with textured Harmony brushes and pens, warps, depth of field effects, color scale nodes and rigs with master controller.
• Second scene: Arthell Isom, studio founder and background artist, D'ART Shtajio | Founder of Tokyo-based anime studio Arthell Isom was inspired by the “You Can Be Who You Are // You Can Show Your True Self” lines and show a person exploring their true identity in a mirror. It was animated in a traditional Japanese-style pipeline, recreated in harmony. “I think D'ART Shtajio is helping to set the tone for the future of Japanese animation. The anime has always been a tradition, the next generation is coming, ”Isom said.
• Third scene: Anja Shu, animator and instructor, TUMO Center for Creative Technologies | Based in Yerevan, Armenia, Anja Shu applied her watercolor animation skills to the “Can can // // can dance” lines, illustrating an opera singer jumping from the stage to her dressing room. “I am very happy with the wide range of textured brushes and pencils that Harmony has to offer. There are so many styles to try: watercolor, pastel and chalk, ”Shu said.
• Fourth scene: Magelan Fournier, Marie Pier Larose, Matt Watts, Raymond Quigley, Andrés Martínez Vergara and Mike Morris | Inspired by “You Can Achieve”, artists Magelan Fournier and Marie Pier Larose created a 3D scene to accompany a 2D team created by Matt Watts and animated by Raymond Quigley. The complete scene was merged, 2D and 3D elements, by Andrés Martínez Vergara. Finally, the scene was originally hosted by Mike Morris for the new Toon Boom Advanced Rigging Training Courses, which showcased driving pilots and other advanced rigging features.
• Fifth scene: TMNT increase crew, Nickelodeon | The Burbank team behind the hit television series Nickelodeon Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles provided a digitally hand-drawn animated scene with its iconic characters to accompany the lines, "Acceptance is everywhere // And the possibilities are endless." This superhero scene was written by Kevin Molina-Ortiz and animated by director Sebastian Montes and supervising director Alan Wan.
• Scene Six: Gonzalo Azpiri, animator and studio owner, Hookup Animation | Representing “And Every Creative Dream // Every Style”, Buenos Aires promotional animator Gonzalo Azpiri animated an action sequence of a creature leaping through the woods, onto a car and diving into an action scene true oceanic. “These types of animated backdrops end up being quite complex due to the many elements involved, but Harmony put together a lot of friendly aids to organize the work, which made my scene a lot easier to manage,” Azpiri said.
• Scene seven: Pinot W. Ichwandardi, principal animator, VaynerMedia | New York-based entertainer Pinot W. Ichwandardi is wrapping up the demo pack with “Everyone Can Express Their Deepest Dreams // Their Truest Stories”, showing a real action right hand drawing their left counterpart, which then erase the hand that drew it. ! His scene uses traditional movies, rotoscopies and animations.

Harmony 20 new features:

• The smoother structural deformation with Weighted deformation node
• Create more realistic depth, volume and animations with New lighting and shading
• Advanced environments and color management effects. give artists and studios full control over project color accuracy from initial illustration to final export
  • New color effect knots: color curves, color levels, gamma and color fade
• Design and creativity live hand in hand and break Alignment guides make it faster and easier
• Drawing improvements made for animation artists, it makes creating animations easier and faster

You can see a full one-hour description of Harmony 20 here.

For more information on Toon Boom Harmony 20 features, pricing and technical requirements, visit toonboom.com/harmony.