How to draw a cartoon character for animation in Adobe Flash

Learn how to draw a character in Flash so that it can be easily animated later. No drawing tablet is needed, although it can be helpful.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Flash

Instructions

1. 

   Create a new Flash file. At this point the size and version of actionscript are not important.

   Each part of the character will be on a different layer so we don't accidentally change our artwork.

   We're going to start at the head. Press "O" for the oval. We don't want an outline on our shapes, so change the line color to transparent (white box with a red diagonal line) and the fill color to black.

   Draw an oval.

2. 

   Press "V" for the selection tool. Select the oval and copy it with command + c.

   Shift+command+V to paste in place. Do not de-select the oval. Instead choose a skin color for it.

3. 

   With the skin-colored oval still selected, press "Q" for the Free Transform tool. Shrink it down a little and you'll see the black oval is underneath it. Holding SHIFT while resizing will keep the proportions the same.

   The style is up to you, but for now we'll make more black appear at the bottom.

4. 

   In the timeline, rename the layer "head." Lock this layer so you don't accidentally draw on it.

   Create a new layer and name it "nose"

5. 

   Repeat steps to create a smaller circle which we'll use as the nose. I shrunk and moved the skin-colored circle to the left. It can help to draw the new shape away from the head shape, then drag it into place.

6. 

   Continue to create your character's head. Split the arms into three sections: upper, lower, and hand. Split your legs into sections: upper, lower, foot.
   For now we'll make just one mouth. Put the pupils of the eye on a different layer than the white part so the character can look around later. Even the eyebrows should be on a separate layer.

7. 

   Create a folder in the timeline. Name it "head" and move all of the layers you've created into it. This helps keep your workspace organized. You can now close the folder and work on the rest of the character.

   Shift+click the first and last layer to select all of them.

8. 

   Create the rest of your character using the previous techniques. Try using "R" for rectangle shapes. Here's an example of a finished character. View my other articles for lip-sync setup and animation.