This tutorial will help you understand the basics of Easytoon to the max. I guarantee you, If you read this whole tutorial you will know everything you need to know about Easytoon.

This tutorial consists of 3 IMPORTANT sections:

---"how do u ezyt00nz"(Beginners)
--"Hey I'm starting to get the hang of this"(Medium)
-"I've mastered the basics"(Advanced)



[SIZE="5"]How do you animate with Easytoon?[/SIZE]

Well, the first thing you need is to download Easytoon, which you will find in this thread:

http://www.stickpageportal.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54510
*It doesn't matter which version you download, any will work.

After you installed Easytoon, a menu will appear.


As you see, you have quite lots of tools in here. I will only show you the important ones.
Let's get started with the basic ones,

- - This button creates a new Easytoon file.
- - This button opens up a saved Easytoon file.
- - This button saves an Easytoon animation you have created.
- - This is one of the most important buttons you need to know, this button converts the saved animation into gif. format. You will know later on this tutorial why it is important.
- - This button creates a new frame.
- - This is the play button, to play your animation of course.
- - This button inserts a clean frame in-between 2 existing frames.
- - This button deletes an existing frame.
- - This button CLEANS an existing frame.
- - This button lets you capture a selected area.
- - This is the pencil tool.
- - This is the fill in tool, it lets you fill in a color on a selected area.
- - This is the line tool.
- - As you see, these are shapes. You can select a shape you want to draw into your animation.
- - This is also very important to know, If you increase the Pen settings, the thickness of the pencil tool will be far greater. If you decrease/increase the Eraser settings, then the thickness of the Eraser tool will be far greater/lesser than.
- - This is the Onion skinning tool.
- - Color Selection.
- - This is the Black/white effects button.
--- - This is also VERY important, If you decrease it, the animation will run smoother. If you increase it, It will be less smooth.
_____________________________________
So, you got a recap on what every button does. Congratz. Now let's get to animating, shall we?

As you see, I drew a stickman in 3 frames. And this happend.
Blue stickman - The frame before your current one.
Red stickman - The frame after the current frame you are on.
Black stickman - the current frame you are on.

Easytoon was MADE easy to use, you just gotta know the basics and you will figure it out VERY quickly.

_
Onion skinning is probably one of the most helpful tricks you need to learn. This is how to do it:


First, press the insert button.

Then, you press the Mask button. This automatically copies the last frame you had, now you have 2 of the same frames.

Easy right?
That's the basics.
_____________________________

[SIZE="5"]Hey, I'm getting the hang of this![/SIZE]

Now that you have learned what each and every button does, It's time to start animating fer real.
There are 2 processes you must always know.

1, Easing.
2, Physics.

If you want your animation to look good, you must know how to EASE your animation.

Here is an animation without easing:


Now here is an animation WITH easing:


See the difference?

In the first animation, each frame the ball looks like this: -|---|---|---|-
(- represents the frame rate and the '|' represents the ball.)
As you see it's traveling without ease and it looks very choppy.
However, if you add more frames with the ball, like so: -|-|--|---|-|-|-
The animation will look MUCH better. All you really need is patience.

This is where physics come in.
After you know how to ease WELL, you gotta start practicing with some physics tests, such as the "Dropping ball".

This is how a BAD physics test might go:


And this is the GOOD way to do it:


You can clearly see the difference, the larger the ball is, the less impact it's going to take from the ground. The smaller the ball is, it's going to take a lot of impact from the ground.

_________________________
[SIZE="5"]I've mastered the basics and I'm ready to take on the world![/SIZE]

So, you've learned everything you needed to learn, this is your destiny.
Your gonna learn how to do Effects here.

some effects in Easytoon are pretty much 90% easing, so make sure you know how to ease animations well before you try to do effects.
Effects should come from imagination, there are many things that could be done. I will teach you how to do the simplest of all, explosions.





There are many kinds of explosions. You just have to get creative.



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[SIZE="4"]
Trails and Random Effects[/SIZE]

The trick to making perfect trails is pretty easy. Take a look at this:

This is an animation without trailing:


As you see, it looks quite choppy and very ugly D:

Here is an animation WITH trailing:


See the difference? Clearly the animation with the trailing is the winner here. But what is the trick to make it look so.. good?
Well there's only 1 trick to it.

The faster the object moves, the longer the trail will be.


The slower the object moves, the shorter the trail will be.


This way works perfectly, this is how I animate aswell.
__

So I've heard alot of people are trying to do beams and stuff like that. It really depends what your style is.



This is a pretty simple beam, right? Here it is in slow-mo.



Beams could also get very complicated.. like this:



_________________________________________________

X - HOW TO UPLOAD YOUR ANIMATION

After you saved your animation in gif. format, you go into www.filebox.me



You browse and upload the gif you saved, and this will come out:



I arrowed (in red) the lines you need to copy n' paste onto SPP.

its pretty helpful...alot of it...thanks

Off topic:ha first one to post lol

Nice dud that kinda helped u should make another tut for easytoon

Whoa Nice Tut. Im HORRIBLE in easytoon but with this Ill get Better in no time :D

Great job on this tutorial. I don't use EasyToon, but if I ever pick it up again, I'll definitely use this for help.

Thank you guys, I'll definitely add more stuff to it soon.

Quote from Slippery-Q

Great job on this tutorial. I don't use EasyToon, but if I ever pick it up again, I'll definitely use this for help.

Yea someone should sticky it.

trying to spread the tut.
its off now

Thanks man.

Excellent tut man, if I was a newby I would use this. (But I'm not so yea . . . )

thanks man now I can do easytoon better :)

Thanks tdw and stickdude.

Wow nice tut man....

this helps alot