Day 1: The Workspace

Hour 1: Installation, Navigating the UI, Understanding Rooms (Workspaces).

Hour 2: Customizing panels, setting preferences, and saving projects properly.

Day 2: Drawing Mechanics

Hour 1: Understanding Raster vs. Toonz Raster vs. Vector levels.

Hour 2: Practicing with the Brush, Eraser, and Geometric tools in Vector mode.

Day 3: The X-Sheet (Dope Sheet) & Timeline

Hour 1: How the X-sheet works, frames, and exposing drawings.

Hour 2: Creating a new level, drawing multiple frames, and playing them back.

Day 4: Editing & Selection

Hour 1: Using the Selection Tool, grouping lines, and the Cutter tool.

Hour 2: Modifying existing drawings, scaling, and rotating elements.

Day 5: Color Palettes (Intro)

Hour 1: The Studio Palette vs. Level Palette.

Hour 2: Creating custom colors, linking colors to styles, and basic filling.

Day 6: The Core of Animation: Onion Skinning

Hour 1: Setting up Onion Skinning (viewing past/future frames).

Hour 2: Animating a simple object moving across the screen.

Day 7: Mini-Project 1

Hour 1: Concept sketching for a basic morphing animation (e.g., circle to square).

Hour 2: Animating the morph using the tools learned this week.

Day 8: Timing & Spacing

Hour 1: Theory of timing (frames) and spacing (distance between drawings).

Hour 2: Animating a coin sliding and coming to a stop (Slow In).

Day 9: Squash & Stretch

Hour 1: Theory of mass preservation and the classic Bouncing Ball.

Hour 2: Animating the rough poses of a Bouncing Ball.

Day 10: Arcs & Paths of Action

Hour 1: Understanding natural movement arcs.

Hour 2: Animating a swinging pendulum.

Day 11: Straight Ahead vs. Pose-to-Pose

Hour 1: Learning the two main workflows. Keyframes vs. Breakdowns

Hour 2: Drawing the key poses for a Flour Sack jumping.

Day 12: Inbetweening

Hour 1: The mechanics of drawing the frames between the keys.

Hour 2: Inbetweening the Flour Sack jump from yesterday.

Day 13: Anticipation

Hour 1: Preparing the audience for an action.

Hour 2: Adding a heavy anticipation pose to the Flour Sack jump.

Day 14: Overshoot & Settle

Hour 1: How energy dissipates at the end of an action.

Hour 2: Animating the landing of the Flour Sack.

Day 15: Overlapping Action & Drag

Hour 1: Animating appendages, hair, or clothing.

Hour 2: Animating a flag waving in the wind.

Day 16: Exaggeration

Hour 1: Pushing poses to make them read clearer.

Hour 2: Taking a previous animation and redrawing keys with 20% more exaggeration.

Day 17: Secondary Action

Hour 1: Adding actions that support the main action (e.g., blinking while turning).

Hour 2: Animating a character performing a primary and secondary action.

Day 18: Solid Drawing

Hour 1: Keeping volume and 3D space in a 2D environment.

Hour 2: Rotating a simple 3D shape (box or cylinder) in 2D space.

Day 19: Appeal & Character

Hour 1: Designing characters that are animation-friendly.

Hour 2: Sketching a simple character turnaround.

Day 20: Phase 2 Review

Hour 1: Critiquing your rough animations.

Hour 2: Fixing timing issues by adding/removing frames in the X-sheet.

Day 21: Vector Cleanup Tools

Hour 1: The Control Point Editor, Tape Tool, and Pump Tool.

Hour 2: Cleaning up the rough Bouncing Ball animation.

Day 22: Line Weight & Dynamics

Hour 1: Understanding thick/thin lines for shadow and weight.

Hour 2: Practicing variable line weights on character sketches.

Day 23: The Fill Tool & Gap Recognition

Hour 1: Advanced Fill Tool settings (closing gaps automatically).

Hour 2: Flat coloring an entire animation sequence.

Day 24: Shading & Highlights

Hour 1: Designing shadows for 2D.

Hour 2: Painting shadows on your animated sequence using separate levels.

Day 25: Auto-Paint & Palette Linking

Hour 1: Speeding up workflow with Auto-Paint features.

Hour 2: Updating a linked color palette to see it change across 100 frames instantly.

Day 26-28: Mini-Project 2

DAY 26 (2 HRS): Rough animation of a character expressing an emotion.

DAY 27 (2 HRS): Full vector cleanup of the scene.

DAY 28 (2 HRS): Coloring and final shading of the scene.

Day 29: Intro to Cut-Out Animation

Hour 1: Preparing a character for rigging (drawing body parts on separate layers).

Hour 2: Importing and organizing the layers in OpenToonz.

Day 30: The Schematic Node View

Hour 1: Understanding nodes and hierarchies (Parent/Child relationships).

Hour 2: Linking arms to the torso, hands to arms, etc.

Day 31: Pivots & The Animate Tool

Hour 1: Setting pivot points (joints) for rotation.

Hour 2: Testing the rig and creating simple keyframe movements.

Day 32: Inverse Kinematics (IK)

Hour 1: Setting up IK to keep feet locked to the floor.

Hour 2: Animating a character squatting using IK.

Day 33: The Plastic Tool (Mesh Deformation)

Hour 1: Creating a mesh over a single drawing to warp it.

Hour 2: Building a skeleton inside the mesh.

Day 34: Animating with Plastic

Hour 1: Differences between Node rigging and Plastic rigging.

Hour 2: Animating a waving arm using only mesh deformation.

Day 35: The Function Editor (Graph Editor)

Hour 1: Understanding animation curves (Bezier curves).

Hour 2: Smoothing out stiff robotic movements using the curves.

Day 36-42: Day 36–37: The Walk Cycle

Hour 1: Posing the Contact, Down, Passing, and Up poses for a walk cycle.

Hour 2: Refining the walk cycle, copying frames to loop it perfectly.

Day 38: Head Turns & Swaps

Hour 1: Using "Drawing Substitutions" to change hands or mouth shapes.

Hour 2: Rigging a 2.5D head turn using drawing swaps.

Day 39: Lip Sync Basics

Hour 1: Importing audio and creating mouth phoneme drawings.

Hour 2: Scrubbing the timeline and swapping mouths to match the audio.

Day 40–42: Mini-Project 3 (Acting Scene)

DAY 40: Record 3s of dialogue and set up the rigged character.

DAY 41: Animate the body language and head movements.

DAY 42: Animate the lip-sync and facial expressions.

Day 43: The FX Schematic

Hour 1: Introduction to the FX Node tree.

Hour 2: Applying and tweaking Blurs, Glows, and Drop Shadows.

Day 44: The Multiplane Camera

Hour 1: Setting up foreground, midground, and background layers in 3D space.

Hour 2: Creating a parallax scrolling effect.

Day 45: Animating the Camera

Hour 1: Panning, zooming, and rotating the virtual camera.

Hour 2: Creating a dramatic camera shake.

Day 46: Lighting & Color Correction

Hour 1: Using color correction nodes to change the time of day (Day to Night).

Hour 2: Adding Light Rays and Cast Shadows.

Day 47: Masks and Mattes

Hour 1: How masks work in OpenToonz.

Hour 2: Animating a character appearing from behind a masked wall.

Day 48: Particles System

Hour 1: Understanding the particle emitter settings.

Hour 2: Creating a localized rain or snow storm in your scene.

Day 49: Distortion FX

Hour 1: Rendering, Exporting.

Hour 2: Creating a heat wave or water ripple effect.

Day 50: Rendering & Exporting

Hour 1: Output settings, DPI, frame rates, and formats (MP4, PNG sequence)

Hour 2: Rendering your practice scenes and troubleshooting render errors.

Day 51: Pre-Production

Hour 1: Writing a micro-script and drawing a quick storyboard.

Hour 2: Designing the main character and background.

Day 52: The Animatic & Setup

Hour 1: Importing storyboards, timing them to audio in OpenToonz.

Hour 2: Setting up the actual scene file, layers, and palettes.

Day 53: Rough Key Poses

Hour 1: Drawing the golden poses (the most important storytelling frames).

Hour 2: Refining the keys for solid silhouette and acting.

Day 54: Breakdowns & Timing

Hour 1: Adding breakdown poses to dictate arcs.

Hour 2: Adjusting the exposure in the X-sheet to lock in the timing.

Day 55: Inbetweening

Hour 1 & 2: Heavy focus on drawing the inbetweens to smooth the motion.

Day 56: Cleanup & Line Art

Hour 1 & 2: Vector or raster cleanup of all frames.

Day 57: Color & Paint

Hour 1 & 2: Coloring the character and background.

Day 58: Compositing & FX

Hour 1: Adding shadows, highlights, and blending modes.

Hour 2: Setting up camera moves and lighting FX.

Day 58-60: Post & Polish

Hour 1: Compositing, Final Rendering, Self-Critique.

Hour 2: A finished 10-15 second original animated short.

Day 59: Polish & Rendering

Hour 1: Final playback, fixing any popping lines or stray pixels.

Hour 2: Final render to MP4.

Day 60: Review & Next Steps

Hour 1: Watch your final film! Self-critique against the 12 Principles.

Hour 2: Organize project files, update portfolio, and plan next steps.