I would like to suggest a feature for Cartoon Animator that allows users to select part of a sprite and bring only that selected region above another object or character.

Currently, if a hand is a single sprite, the whole hand has to be either above or below a prop. This makes it difficult to create natural interactions. For example, when a character is holding a cup, the palm should stay behind the cup, but the thumb or front fingers should appear in front of the cup.

My suggestion is a tool such as “Partial Sprite Layering,” “Sprite Region Layer Override,” or “Create Front Cutout from Selected Region.”

The workflow could be:

1. Select a sprite, such as a hand.
2. Draw or select a region, such as the thumb or front fingers.
3. Create that selected region as a linked overlay layer.
4. Place a prop, such as a cup, between the original hand sprite and the selected overlay region.
5. The selected region should still follow the original hand’s movement, rotation, scale, and pivot.

Example layer order:

Thumb / front fingers
Cup or prop
Palm / original hand
Arm
Body

This would make it much easier to animate natural interactions such as holding a cup, phone, microphone, bag, weapon, or another character’s hand. It would also help with hugging scenes, character contact, and situations where one body part needs to appear partly in front of and partly behind another object.

This feature would save users from manually cutting sprites into many separate pieces in external software, and it would make Cartoon Animator more flexible for storytelling, dialogue scenes, and character interaction.