# Lesson 5: Creating Cross-Dissolves with Color Transform Elements

Toon Boom Studio includes a Color Transform element, which you can use to change the color properties of an element over time.

In the lesson scene, a skater does some fancy tricks on a half-pipe. To accentuate his daring boardwork, you will use a Color Transform element to create a series of cross-dissolves that change the transparency of the skater at different frames.

There are two animation sets for this lesson:

- ColorFX_Rough
- ColorFX_Final

You will use the ColorFX_Rough animation set to follow the steps in the lesson. When you have questions that you are not sure about, you can refer to ColorFX_Final to see how we did it.

To start the Creating Color Effects lesson:

1. Open the ColorFX_Rough animation set in the Lesson5_ColorFX folder.

2. Save the animation in a location of your choice using File > Save As. Saving this animation set to a new location will ensure that you always have the original to return to and use should you want to.

3. Select Play > Play to play back the rough animation.

Notice how two images of the skater appear to overlap for several frames? Well, in this lesson, you are going to make the overlapping images fade-in/out to create a series of cross-dissolves (chain mix).