Should I Animate In Adobe Animate Or Toonboom?

Intro

Hello all! Today I want to take some time answering the question of this blog. I’ve already gushed about Toonboom before, so I’ll state my bias before continuing:

I love Toonboom WAY more than I love animate.

Now that that’s out of the way, I will say, I can be objective. Adobe Animate has many strengths, and Toonboom has it’s own issues. This blog is going to be structured in a way where I assign a program for a specific type of person or workflow. I’m doing things like this to avoid a generic “spec war” kind of thing. The reason being that, you can have a spec list but it won’t tell the whole story for someone who is just getting started, or can get into the more specific demands of a niche animator.

Before I get into the details, I’m assuming you’re using a desktop to animate, because neither of these programs are available anywhere else yet (though if I were a betting man, I’d expect to see flash on iOS within the next 5 years). 

The Situation

If you are just starting out with animation...

So, if you’re just starting out with animation, I think the clear winner here is Adobe Animate. As many strengths as Toonboom has, simplicity is not one of them. Animate is fairly streamlined now, and has a very low learning curve, with symbols probably being the most complicated thing in the program. If you’re just starting out and want to get your feet wet in animating or animation programs, Animate is what I would recommend. The bonus point here is that many animation programs base their design on Animate (well, Flash), so once you know this program, you’ve got a good grip on how a large part of animation programs are laid out.

If you’re on a budget...

This one isn’t as easy to judge because both Toonboom and Adobe have cheaper subscription plans. So when thinking about this, what you really should ask yourself is: How complex is my workflow? If all you want to do is make doodles, and don’t see yourself getting any other programs, Animate is the cheaper option, and you can make simple 2D projects fairly easily without the aid of After Effects or Photoshop. If you have slightly higher ambitions, but not $50 a month high, Toonboom essentials might be better. You have more tools at your disposal, which gives you more options to give that extra bit of pizzazz to your work.

If you want to push the limits of your animation skills...

For those who want to make the craziest animation they can dream of, Toonboom should be your go-to, specifically Advanced or Premium. The level of control and tools available to create stunning animation is unreal, and when paired with Toonboom’s post production capabilities, you’re looking at a great value to achieve your goals of that sick anime fight you’ve been wanting to make since college.

If you like animating tradigitally...

Tradigital animation is a term used for workflows that involve paper animation of some sort, and finishing it up digitally. For example, doing all of the rough animation on paper, and doing the line work and color work on computer. This was a workflow that was pretty big in the mid 2000’s and for a lot of indie animators who like having a tactile sense to their artwork. For these types, I would go for Toonboom. Toonboom has a subsection of tools built for this kind of work flow that can incorporate your scanned drawings, help re-position them and clean up any scratches that get registered when scanned. I don’t use this method at all (I’m not crazy), but for those who do, will find it easier and less taxing to use Toonboom.

If you like animating digital puppets...

This one has two answers. Rigging is a very complex subject and it’s something I love, and can talk about for hours, but for the sake of brevity, the categories are simple rigs + complex rigs. If you’re building simple rigs, where all you need is a simple parenting relationship, both Toonboom Essentials and Adobe Animate can work for you. For more complex rigging, and having puppets that can do all kinds of crazy stuff, Toonboom, specifically premium is the way to go. Another viable option is Adobe Animate + After Effects, and while I think it falls slightly shorter of Toonboom’s capabilities, you can do some phenomenal work with this combo.

If you like animating small scale projects...

This one goes to Toonboom. Because of the versatile compositing capabilities, you don’t really need anything else to finish a short, or a small animation. You have your effects, your rigging, hand drawn features, plus so much more and you get a lot of value from this one piece of software. While it’s not impossible to do it with Animate, and has been done in the past by many studios, I wouldn’t call it a great experience.

If you like the drawing process...

While Toonboom has much better drawing tools, I find the simpler, cleaner interface in Adobe Animate more conducive to drawing. The new Adobe Animate UI is a lot slicker, and it really allows you to focus on drawing what you need to. Toonboom has so many options, but the UI suffers a lot because of it. While I like drawing in the program, there are so many things I have to be mindful of when doing it, I can’t really let myself get absorbed in the process.

If you like changing Artstyles…

I think this one is far and away in favor of of Toonboom. There was an era when Toonboom shows looked “like flash animation”, but with the addition of textured, bitmap brushes that you can customize, a better brush engine, pulled strings for cleaner, precise work, the sky is the limit for making unique animated styles. Add on to that the compositing and puppeting work flow, and that’s when the magic happens.

If you want your workflow to mimic the industry...

This one is a tie. It really depends on where you land, but I would say to get familiar with both programs. Many studios are basically entrenched in an Adobe Pipeline (which includes Photoshop and After Effects), while other studios have fully adopted Toonboom, or have integrate both software families together.

Outro

Thanks for reading this blog! Hope this was of some value. A lot of work goes into animation, and figuring out what software works best with your situation can be a big headache, so hopefully this helped ease the process for you. While I am biased in favor of Toonboom (premium), Adobe Animate does have it’s uses, especially if you want a low cost barrier to entry. Really, both programs are at a state of maturity where you can get so much done for an affordable price that you can’t really go wrong with either. They’re both reliable (though Adobe Animate is just getting to this point with the release of CC 2020), and both have been used for large scale productions to success. 

That’s all for now! See you next time.