Group project - Animation thoughts

I have been thinking about animation approaches. So I took the first scene and drew it out as if I was going to animate by drawing everything. Then I got a bit more realistic and sensible and decided that it is probably worth just drawing the elements into Flash and using Flash as our animation tool. I'm not entirely sure how it works if you hand draw it all.. do you have to add colour, ink the lines and cut around the characters in each frame seperatly or can you do it all at once on the computer? Instinctively I have thought that its best to run with what we know at the moment as it could be too time consuming to figure out the 2d drawn method (I know it is a very time consuming process anyway.)

So the process I think will work is:

Sketch out characters/props needed for a scene.
Scan these in and trace and colour in illustrator.
Use layers to define each moving part.
Transfer to Flash so it is ready to be animated.

Here I have done this with our main character Dave...



I have asked Sam to render out his characters in the same style using the same method.