Onion Skinning

Do you guys know what is 'onion skin' and i'm not talking about the plant??

ok. i googled and this is what i found based on Wikipedia

Onionskin or onion skin is a thin, light-weight, strong, often translucent paper. It was usually used with carbon paper for typing duplicates in a typewriter, for permanent records where low bulk was important, or for airmail correspondence.

There's a story behind it. We have to draw a cartoon using Onion Skin tool in Flash CS3. So, i try to do it by watching the video tutorial about it and yeah.. the onion skinning its like translucent paper which we can trace exactly the same with original image. Let me tell you step by step on how to do onion skin in flash CS3. First, i would like to show you the original image and the image that i draw.. almost look the same.. and of course imitate image that i drawn cannot 'lawan' with the original image.. tee hee..

Original Image (Sin Chan)

I think most of you are familiar with this Japanese cartoon Sin Chan.. So, i draw exactly the same image by using onion skin tool in Flash CS3. And this is what I got.

Imitate Sin Chan (Trace by Me)

Haha.. almost look the same.. but my image look not really smooth drawing.. and the colors of the image were not the same.. hee.. but it's alright.. my first trial using Onion Skin tool in Flash CS3. 

Here I provide you the steps to do onion skinning in Flash CS3.

1. First, you select image you want to draw and import to library. As you can see, i choose Sin Chan image.

    Click>>File>>Import>>Import to Library

2. Insert new keyframe in Frame 2.

    Right Click>>Insert Keyframe.

3. On Frame 1, click and drag your image to the stage.

4. On Frame 2, click on onion skin tool so you can see the same version of the original image.

For your information, the buttons for onion-skin mode can be found at the bottom of the timeline, to the far left before the division marking the layer control area. There are two buttons--one for onion skin, and to the right of that, one for onion skin outlines.

5. Start tracing your image on the Frame 2. Once you are done, you not longer need your original image.

6. Remove the first keyframe by right click on it and select remove frame.

7. You, now have one frame. Then, turn off the onion skin tool.

8. Final step, click the image and convert to graphic symbol.

    click>>modify>>convert to symbol>>graphic

    The image (graphic symbol) is in library.

Good Luck..!! You can try draw cartoon animation using Onion skin tool in Flash CS3.