First Animation in Toon Boom Digital Pro

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Introduction

Above is my first animation after learning how to use Toon Boom Digital Pro. I bought the software (educational price) a few months ago and hadn't yet gotten around to trying it out. But finally, last week, I sat down and watched their video tutorials and I have to say I'm very excited about it.

For now, I'm still focused on using Flash because of it's programming capabilities. However, I'm eager to use Toon Boom for making animations that I can then import to Flash.

Pre-Planning

First things first. I planned out my animation by drawing thumbnails sketches with pencil and paper:

Animation Background Painting – Tree trunk

I painted this yesterday with the intention of making a short animation on top of it. The drawing was based on one of my photos from Panama. The process of painting is similar to the one I discuss here.

I scanned in the approx. 8.5 x 12 inch drawing (based on the 720x480 pixel ratio) at 300 dpi. In Painter, I made the drawing a "gel" layer and painted a base color layer beneath it. To emphasize the tree trunk being in the foreground, I painted another layer above the drawing, smudging the pencil lines. All the painting was done with the wonderful chunky SOFT oil pastel.