Step 3: Paint the Flame on Mike Ant’s Back

Now that you have created a gradient for the flame, you are ready to paint.

To paint the flame on Mike Ant’s back:

1. In the Exposure Sheet window, select the first drawing in the colorMe element. Mike Ant appears in the Drawing View window.

2. Set up the Drawing View window so that you have a clear view of Mike Ant.

• To turn off the grid, press [G], the default keyboard shortcut.
• To zoom-in, press [X], and to zoom-out press [Z].
• To pan the Drawing View window, press and hold [Spacebar] and use the Grabber tool to change the part of the window you are seeing.

3. Select the Paint tool from the Drawing Tools toolbar.

4. From the Color Palette tab, select the gradient swatch you created for the flame.

5. Click the areas of the flame with the Paint tool.

6. Scroll through the Mike Ant drawings and paint all of the flaming areas. Press [S] to advance to the next frame and press [A] to return to the previous frame.

You’ll notice that after you paint drawing 8, you will come to drawings that have already been painted. That’s because we repeated drawings 1 through 8 in the element to create a cycle. Because each cell in the Exposure Sheet window refers to a drawing in the animation set, when you update a drawing that is repeated in other frames, Toon Boom Studio updates all frames that reference that drawing.