One of the problems with getting started in animation is the cost of getting setup. Free cartoon software can be found out there, but it’s often not as good as if you had spent just a couple of dollars. Even after you find and buy the perfect animation software, it’s pretty imperative that you purchase a drawing tablet, especially for 2D animation.

» Buy Flip Boom with Drawing Tablet - $49.99

I spent a good amount of time looking for a drawing tablet to advertise that was affordable, which is how I ended up advertising the $69 Bamboo version on the right. To get started then, would cost about $100: $39 for Flip Boom and $69 for a drawing tablet.

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In this oh-so-festive time of year what kind of blogger would I be without doing something for Thanksgiving? This article will show you how to create your own cartoon turkey with Toon Boom. If you don’t feel like making your own turkey drawing, you should feel free to download the free Toon Boom template here.

Note that this template will be drawn with Toon Boom 4.0, so if you’ve recently upgraded to 4.5 some of these screenshots may not look identical to your version of Toon Boom.

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Toon Boom uses a palette system to maintain its colors. The benefit of this system is that once you create the colors for a character you can easily import that palette into any new cartoons you create, making it easy for you to maintain a consistent design for your cartoon characters. This tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating a new palette for your cartoon characters, and will show you how to save that palette for future cartoons.

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The automated lip syncing capabilities of Toon Boom Studio are both useful and impressive. However, no matter how well it translates your sound files there’s always some part of the lip sync that will need to be adjusted manually. The automated lip sync is simply not sophisticated enough to capture every nuance of speech. This lip sync tutorial will lay the foundation for you to do manage this process manually.

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For some time now Toon Boom animators have been crying out for a proper blur effect to add to their arsenal. If similar vector-based applications like Flash can manage to create bitmapped blur effects certainly Toon Boom can emulate that success?

Toon Boom Studio 4 sought to bridge this missing feature with a feathering tool. Unfortunately, the limitations of this new tool were quickly uncovered.

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Toon Boom today announced that they have a new animation program in time for the holidays this year. The program is called Flip Boom, and it’s clearly targeted at a young audience.

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Toon Boom is a very powerful animation program, and like many programs it is not always as user-friendly as it should be. This is a very basic Toon Boom tutorial, and will show you how to create your own cartoon of a nice looping walk cycle, shown here. We’ll also cover the basics of creating parent/child relationships and adjusting pivot points.

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Animating is far more enjoyable when the characters you’re working with have a strong personality, and the recorded voice audio is of high quality. Cheese is an amazingly funny character from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, a great show on Cartoon Network. This Toon Boom tutorial will walk you through recreating this short commercial found on YouTube:

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In a previous animation tutorial we discussed the steps necessary to create your own cartoon. I’ve since come to the conclusion that the article, while complete, was a bit too complex for a beginner and contained too many steps. The animation tutorial has been condensed into a more succinct five steps that will be used in the future. All Calico Monkey animation projects will follow this five step plan from now on, so expect to be referred to this page in the future.

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This development entry will show the process of creating a scene, and its evolution from sketch into full blown animation. The scene I’m detailing is when Sparky turns quickly to face Meat, and then rushes towards him.

The first step has been shown before, creating the storyboard:

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