Just for fun I’m posting gifs of two similar characters animated about the same way. One was made in Synfig, the other in Anime Studio 11. Would anyone like to guess which animation comes from Synfig?
http://singadream.com/4forumfriends_htm_files/lion%20head%20roar01.gif
http://singadream.com/4forumfriends_htm_files/lion%20head%20roar02.gif
Uhh… I think it’s the first link. The rendered gif hast artifacts - definitely Synfig.
What is my first price? 
P.S. Was listening to ‘Circle of Life’ when clicked those links. Some coincidences.
Hi Svarov! Actually, the Synfig lion is the second link. But you deserve a prize for your wolf, I like it much more than my lions. With Magick++ the Gif rendering in Synfig was better than with Anime Studio, it was the only part of the process that was easy. (Synfig version 1.0.10 crashed constantly when animating Bezier handles.) Edit: I re-installed 1.0.02 and it didn’t crash anymore.
Without the crashes I was able to improve the animation of the Synfig lion: http://singadream.com/4forumfriends_htm_files/lion%20head%20roar02.gif. So my first experiment in comparing the two programs shows them to be similar with no clear winner. Anime Studio has the advantage of “smart bone dials” with which you can automate certain actions (like the lion’s roar) and use them in the animation at any time and at any speed. I don’t know if this feature is on the wish list of Synfig users. - Steve
You’re some lucky man. On my Windows 10 PC Synfig 1.0.2 is very unstable. But the last development version (1.1.11) is much better, although it doesn’t have some important functionality for me like ‘Low Res’.
Nice lion, but I think the one made in Anime Studio looks a bit better 
Well, good luck with Synfig, but I warn you: stability is one big problem for now. Keep it in mind and backup your work more often.
I agree, the Synfig art tools are new to me and it’s a struggle to get it to look halfway like I want. Since my last post I found out about time loop layers - sort of. I wonder if the action can be inserted somewhere into the timeline.
I also have Windows 10 on a fairly old machine. If it continues to work I’ll wait until there is an official stable version - the first try with a developer version was not good. Thanks for your comments. - Steve
Hello
About of timing and/or time controlling, the last versions have a new “time layer” that once You learn about it, it turns to be very usefull
See the following link and the sample of darkspace65:
About rendering of gif animations:
I the animation of lion2… I notice some kind of antialiasing, which I don’t understand, because for antialiasing some pixels have to be partially transparent, but AFAIK gif animations only allow full transparency or full opacity… 
Hi Hulf,
Thanks for your informative post. I’ll test version 1.0.11 and hope it works better on my computer than the one before. An alternative to Free Time would be switch layers for simpler tranformations. But the dynamic shadows looked interesting, too. It’s good that the program is being developed further.
I don’t know why there is anti-aliasing in the Gif. Maybe because of gradients? Or just an old computer? Well, time to go on testing.
