Flash vs Toon Boom

Both Flash and Toon Boom are powerful animation software to use. Each with its own pros and cons.
I will be comparing Macromedia Flash Professional 8 with Toon Boom Studio 4; there is no other way to review and compare programs unless you have tried them yourself. I have made similar short animations on both to test out the features and this is what I found out:-


Flash 8:-
After using Flash myself, I found it harder than Toon Boom. Even though it kinda looked simpler - it was not. Drawing was much more difficult because it would sometimes try to “fix” your lines (e.g. straighten out a curve). But the way how the program registered some of the stroke’s thickness was interesting.
For the brush tool, you got to choose 10 different sizes of brush and 9 different shapes. This could have been a slight problem since I could not customise my own size. However, since I had a graphic tablet it was not much of a problem.

Flash also lined up my selected object by making a faint, coloured, dotted line appear vertically and horizontally when it thought I was trying to line it up with another object. For example, if I wanted a button on the far left of the page to be in line with another button on the far right of the page, Flash would automatically help me line up the button with a faint, dotted line. I found this very handy, which was lacking in Toon Boom.
Flash also allows me to select “a part” of a line. For example, if I drew a candy cane using one line only and wanted to remove the hook, I could use the Selection Tool and drag a box around the area I want to remove - very handy for stuff like detail. On Toon Boom, I could only select the whole line, and if I wanted to remove the hook then I had to form a break in the line by erasing.
Flash also allowed me to undo selected items.
I did notice that things were faster on Flash than Toon Boom.



Toon Boom 4:-
After animating a walking cycle on Toon Boom, I found most of the tools and functions fairly easy to use. There was enough work space with various different side bars. The layout was pretty similar to the previous versions which was a good thing because it was easy to navigate around it. Since I started Toon Boom on a previous version, the new version did not feel so alien like.

Originally when I made my first animation on Toon Boom, I didn’t understand how to move the camera and use thee pegs. However, after I finally settled down to learn about the camera, I found out it was actually pretty simple and straight forward.

There were a few things about Toon Boom that Flash did not have. For example, automatic lip-synch. Toon Boom will automatically show you (out of the possible 8 mouth shapes) which one suits any piece of dialog which definitely saves time and effort. This makes it a lot easier for the animator by helping them make the lip synch more accurate. Of course, it is possible to adjust the mouth shapes if it is required but the occasion is rare.
There are more brushes to choose from to give certain effects and a new thing called feather edge which blur out objects. this is good since for effects like smoke, using the feather edge tool allows a more believable smoke effect.


Overall, Both program are great animation software, each lacking in different things but makes up for it in the things its got.
Personally I would use Toon Boom over Flash because I found it easier to draw.



~ Message from the little elf ~