Creating and Navigating Drawings and Drawing Layers

To draw, you must select a frame in a drawing element layer. By default, there is a drawing element and frame selected as soon as you start Toon Boom Studio so that you can draw right away.

As soon as you draw, Toon Boom Studio labels the selected frame with the new drawing name, which is by default a number.

You can create new drawing elements to organize your character, their parts, and props into separate layers. There are a number of shortcuts you can use to go to previous and next elements, frames and drawings in the Exposure Sheet or Timeline windows.

To create drawing layers, do one of the following:

Select Element > Add > Drawing.
Click the Drawing button at the top of the Exposure Sheet window.
Clicking the Add button in the Timeline window and use the New Elements dialog box to create a drawing element.

As you add more element layers, you can use the keyboard shortcuts to go to previous and next elements in the exposure sheet column or timeline track.

To navigate elements:

Press [F] to go to the next element.
Press [Shift]+[F] to go to the next element in the Exposure Sheet.
Press [D] to go to the previous element.
Press [Shift]+[D] to go to the previous element in the Exposure Sheet.

As soon as you add a drawing element, the first frame in the element is selected and you can draw right away. You can use keyboard shortcuts to go to the next or previous frame so that you can draw there.

To navigate frames:

Press [S] to go to the next frame.
Press [A] to go to the previous frame.

As you add more drawings, you may want to go to the previous or next drawing, whether they are on the adjacent frame or 10 frames away.

To navigate drawings:

Press [Shift] + [S] to go to the next drawing.
Press [Shift] + [A] to go to the previous frame.

For more information on working with element layers and frames, see Organizing Elements and Timing.