Toon Boom Studio 4.5 debuts, Flip Boom Classic ships

On Friday, Toon Boom Animation announced the upcoming release of Toon Boom Studio 4.5, and the immediate release of Flip Book Classic. Toon Boom Studio 4.5 has been updated to offer extended ease of use, more export options, and better integration with various flies. Users can now import multi-layer Photoshop files for more detailed multi-plane effects, characters and backgrounds. They can also import photos and build a library of key poses, which can then be animated using various cut-out techniques. The update further looks to streamline the animation process by integrating drag-and-drop functionality with templates, movies and photos. This allows a user to quickly consolidate all of the required materials for a project. After finishing a project users are offered more export options, such as iTunes and YouTube.

No official release date has been set for Toon Boom, but customers who purchase v4.0 will be e-mailed a free upgrade license upon the release of version 4.5.

Flip Boom Classic is a successor to Flip Boom, and attempts to bring animation tools to people of any age or skill level. Classic provides users with the tools needed to generate flip books based on pictures they have drawn or shot; they can then print their creations, or publish animations directly to an iPod.

Each release is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Toon Boom Studio 4.5 is currently available at a special pre-release price of $330, valid until July.31, while Flip Boom Classic is being sold for $40.