How to Animate using Synfig Studio (Quick Tutorial, Free program)

I've been making really short gifs using Synfig Studio for about 3 years now. This is the tutorial I wish I had when I first started. In this tutorial, I not only go over basic functions, but also show you how to animate a 2-D gif step by step from start to finish.

0:00 Intro
0:55 Toolbar
1:46 Making Shapes
4:55 Speed drawing my character
5:46 Organizing layers and transformations
8:13 Using the animation timeline

My social media:

[turtlearmyjess]

There's a follow-up to this tutorial! It's over here:

[olddudemindset]

You're a beginner??? You sound like a rocket scientist to me with your knowledge of Synfig! I would love to be able to make animation like you have at the beginning of this video. I'm going to download Synfig and see if I can get something going. I Liked, Subscribed, and turned on Notifications (that's a hint for you to make more videos - ha ha!). Thank you for sharing!

[bobonthenet]

I've been wanting to learn synfig for ages but without any decent tutorials it hasn't gone well. You are a hero! I do hope you will do a lot more.

[jayrapley]

Thank you for this tutorial. It's concise and moves at an appropriate pace without leaving out anything important. It's nice having a beginner friendly video made by someone who hasn't spent years and years doing it, making them forget what is and isn't common knowledge

[cookiethecommentateror]

I'm a beginner animator too (only ever animated in Scratch) and I was looking for a good tutorial on Synfig because it was the first vector animation one I found. This was really helpful, thanks!

[TechBits-]

This is pretty sweet! I've been looking for an Adobe Animate alternative. Thanks for sharing! 😁

[MyGeekAdventures]

Super helpful! An awesome Synfig how-to for anyone getting started with this tool. Gets to the details right away and covers a complete animation example, while giving just enough information on the way to let you know why you're doing each step. Thank yo so much for making and posting this!

[peterlaidlaw]

Thanks much .. Just getting started (2 hrs) and I came back to yours to round things out .. really clear, thanks

[Edonyle]

This was sooo helpful! Thank you! Straight to the point to get quickly started. Thanks to you and the awesome developers of Synfig, I was able to make my very first animation. A dream come true!

[pipomarie]

i barely noticed you only had 276 subscribers (i'm one of them now) because this looks so professional and smooth. i'll be studying this app for online school this year and you are a life saver! Thank you~

[fernandoguzmanmelara]

this is pretty good i learned very well how to use synfig

[kiliandrilltzsch]

wow you're 3x faster than the official tutor and I understand it way better

[stankystimky]

im glad there's examples of animations using synfig studio. all the other videos just explained how to use it and didnt show me the result.

[dirtdf]

I've been looking for a synfig tutorial all over and as soon as I saw one from a Critter I knew I was in good hands <3

[isaquimpo]

i have to animate for a project and i had no clue how to use synfig and this helped me so much, thank u endlessly

[aasthajain]

Thank You so much for this tutorial. I have been struggling a lot with sinfyg but you have solved my problem completely.

[joenewbie]

Thank you, you did a great job. I have 2 monitors so i was able to watch on one and work on the other. Don't understand why you have 12 down votes I thought you did a GREAT JOB teaching.

[robot_spider]

Really great intro tutorial, Jess. Having had intermittent experience with other vector/bitmap drawing/animation tools over the years, I knew what I wanted to do, but wasn't familiar with the workflow in Synfig. You gave me enough to know where to start, and what I need to learn more about. Thanks!

[mylearningteachingjourney]

I just have downloaded this software now and your tutorial is really going to help me.

[abdelloutfi]

A great tutorial showing the most important to start with. Very helpful, Thanks so much for sharing!