Creating Perspective Grids For Your Projects

Toon Boom Animation:
Creating Perspective Grids For Your Projects


Perspective is always a bit tricky to get right, especially if you are still new to drawing! Adding this skill on top of animation can become quite overwhelming. Here is a simple trick that will help you to save time and effort while working on your animation project.

Creating Perspective Grids in Toon Boom Studio

If you have learned the basics of perspective, you know how to draw your horizon line and vanishing point. From there you can create a full grid. By using Toon Boom Studio’s 12 Field grid, you can easily trace your lines at equal distance to make a clear and useful grid. This image shows an example of a one vanishing point perspective grid and a two vanishing point perspective grid:

We suggest that you create this grid on a separate element. This allows you to activate the light table and use this grid as a reference.

You can use this method to create backgrounds or shapes that require accurate perspective. And since the grid is on another layer, you do not need to erase any guide lines. Once you are done, you will just need to delete the Grid element in your Timeline!

Using Perspective Grids in Animation

It is also possible to use these grids for animation. For example, this grid has two vanishing points:

You could use this grid as a reference for a 3/4 walk animation. You can see this demonstrated in the next image where each square equals one step:

Trying to create an animation like this without any visual references can be quite tricky and give unpleasant results. Save yourself some time and headaches by using the grid guide lines.

Reuse your Grids by Creating Templates

Why redraw your grids over and over when you can reuse them. In Toon Boom Studio you can easily save each grid as a template and store them in your library to use whenever you need to. To use the Library to store all your grids as a template, simply create a new catalogue called Perspective Grids and then drag and drop the selected cell into your library! Each time you create a new grid, make sure to save it. You just never know when it might be useful again!

Link: http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/eLearning/tipsTricks/creating...