Building Peg Hierarchies to Animate Cut-Out Characters

If you are animating a cut-out character, you can use pegs to organize and control all of the different body parts of a character.

When you are animating a cut-out character, the organization of your body parts on pegs is extremely important.

Use separate pegs for each function you want to animate. You should use a peg for every joint on your character.

For example, if your character will walk while his arm rotates on his shoulder, use one peg to move the whole character and another peg on the shoulder to animate the rotation.

You may also want to use additional pegs to group body parts.

For example, the forearm, arm and wrist all have their own pegs for rotation and then all three are on a master parent peg.

This character is comprised of many parts.

Following is the structure of this character in the Timeline. Notice that there are two main parts, the girl and her bottom dress. Then notice that the girl is organized into three main sections: Top Body, Top Dress and Lower Body.

To build a peg hierarchy for a cut-out character:

1. In the Timeline window, select all of the drawing elements in the character.

2. Click the Parent Peg button in the Timeline. Toon Boom Studio attaches each selected element to its own peg.

3. By default, Toon Boom Studio names each peg by adding a “-P” to the name of each selected element. You may want to rename these so that the “P” or the word “Peg” appears first. This will help you identify pegs more easily in the Timeline.

4. Think about how you want to organize the parts of your body and then use pegs to group and organize them.

5. You will probably have to animate some of the body parts to test and fine tune the structure. You should consider creating a peg for each body part on your character. After you have got your peg hierarchy established, you should position the pivot points on all the joints of your character.