Step 1: Draw Mike Ant’s Body

In this step, you will draw the body of Mike Ant using the Ellipse tool. Because this drawing must fit with the other drawings in the element to create a complete cycle, you will use the onion skin to show previous and next drawings as a reference while you draw.

To draw Mike Ant’s body:

1. In the Exposure Sheet window, click the first cell in the rough-mike element and press the down arrow key on your keyboard. As you cycle through all of the drawings in the rough-mike element, you’ll notice that there is no drawing in the rough-mike-2 cell. That’s because you are going to draw it!

2. Select the rough-mike-2 cell.

3. 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.

4. In the toolbar, click the Show Previous button and select Previous Drawing and click the Show Next button and select Next Drawing.

In the Drawing View window, the previous and next drawings in the onion skin appear in a different color to distinguish them from the drawing you are working on.

5. Select the Ellipse tool from the Drawing Tools toolbar.

6. If the Properties window is not open, select Window > Show Properties. The Properties window appears.

7. In the Pen tab, type 20 for the Maximum Size value. When you draw with the centerline tools (including the Pencil, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polyline and Line) Toon Boom Studio uses the Maximum Size value for the width of the line.

8. In the Drawing View window, draw an ellipse roughly the shape of Mike Ant’s body. Don’t worry about the actual shape not being the same as the one in the animation. You will reshape it using the Contour Edit tool.

9. Save your animation using the File > Save command.